A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

Ever since reading Gerber’s E-Myth books and Rich Schefren’s original “Manifesto” document, I’ve become a big fan of creating systems within my business and describing them with process maps.

If you don’t know what a process map is, it’s a simple flow chart that describes how to do something. You have start and end points and then boxes containing the steps needed to complete the process, all linked by arrows so that you can easily follow it through. Sometimes you might have a decision box that asks a question and the flow branches depending on the answer.

Click on the example image to see it full size.

I currently have about 14 process maps that I use in my business. Rather than sit down and try to think of all the processes I need to map out and then draw them, I like to create them when I’m actually doing the task. That way, I know I’ve got all the steps in place at the right level of detail and my set of process maps therefore grows organically over time. Most of my maps are hand drawn on squared paper then, once they’ve been refined and corrected and when I get the time, I draw them using a software package. I happen to have a copy of Microsoft Visio so I use that but there are some much cheaper programs available that will do the job just as well (Google “flow chart drawing software”).

So why do it?

The main reasons that I create process maps are for consistency, to avoid making mistakes and to avoid having to think so much. They’re also a very good way of documenting the business so that anyone can do the work and can also be a valuable asset if the business is ever sold. At another level, you can use them to analyse the business and see if there are any areas that can be automated or made more efficient.

Some of the processes (such as “Order Processing”) I do on such a regular basis that I don’t need to refer to the process map each time. But even then, I sometimes get distracted part way through or I might be feeling a bit fuzzy headed one day so it’s really useful to have the process map there to refer to, just to make sure I’m doing everything I need to do.

Where they really come into their own though is with the occassional, monthy or annual tasks. I have process maps for performing the monthly payroll and filing my annual accounts with the Government, for example, that are extremely useful. I’d hate to have to figure it all out each time and I wonder how I managed without them before.

Even seemingly simple processes can benefit from being documented in a process map. I have one for paying cheques into the bank. I mean, how hard can that be, right? Well, first of all, the vast majority of my customers pay online by credit card or by bank wire transfer so it’s rare that I have to deal with cheques. That means that, however simple the process might be, I’ve probably forgotten what’s involved each time so the map is a useful reminder. But in this case, even a seemingly simple task like paying in a cheque has quite a few steps. I need to locate the customer invoice in my accounting package and mark it as paid, move the printed invoice from my “unpaid to chase up” section to my “paid” section, fill in all the right deposit slip entries and do a few other accounting chores. It’s a real pain actually. I hate being paid by cheque. But having the process map certainly makes it all easier.

Now one of the reasons I’m mentioning all this about process mapping now rather than at any other time is because of the “OMS3 Process Maps” launch that may or may not have escaped your notice during the last few weeks.

Without going into too much detail, these guys have set up a consultancy business using a large and cheap labour force in India to take some of the grunt work out of business by doing a lot of the traffic generation work for paying customers. They say they have more clients than they can handle so best of luck to them. But what they’ve just launched is a set of process maps that they use to do all this work, the idea being, why figure it all out yourself when you can buy their ready-made and ‘proven’ processes.

Now I pretty much ignored the whole pre-launch thing and didn’t even read the sales letter but, almost on a whim yesterday, when it did actually launch I bought the package. Now I’m not actually interested in all of the processes they have described. My main motivation was to see just how they’ve put the process maps and supporting documentation together – a kind of education on how to do it properly as it were. I also thought the $97 price was a reasonable expense if they lived up to expectation.

So what did I think?

Well let me get my negative, moany criticisms out of the way first. The download instructions were incorrect and some of the downloads had the same name. I think they really should have spent the extra 15 minutes or so to use a consistent and systematic naming convention and structure for all of their files, especially considering the whole point of the exercise is to make things simple and reduce errors. As it was, I had to rename a lot of the files and come up with my own naming convention.

The quality was also a bit disappointing. I’ve looked at most of them now but the one on sending out a press release initially caught my eye because I’m about to do that myself. Now I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but the described process goes something like this:

1. Gather the information from the client.
2. Pick an online free press release site.
3. Enter the details and hit “Submit”.

And that’s about it. The supporting documentation shows screenshots of this for a single chosen site. To be fair, there is a small amount of info at the back about what makes a good press release but this particular process map itself has little value (for me at least). Maybe if they’d provided their list of free submission sites that may have had some use.

It reminded me of all the ’sales letter generation software’ that I’ve been pitched over the years. You know, the ones that say they can generate a complete and professional looking sales letter in less than 5 minutes. All you have to do is supply all of the words and pictures…

I’ve said that even simple process maps can still be very useful and maybe the press release process was a poor example (some of the others are better) but, overall, I’m not very impressed. I haven’t yet seen any major insights into extra steps that I might be missing in order to be more successful.

On the positive side, erm… well, it shows how little you need to put together to create an info product to sell. Also, if they really are using this information to train their staff to do this work then it’s an indication of how simple the process maps and supporting documentation can be while still being effective. And that’s useful to know.

I was recently asked to write more about what it is I’m actually doing to make money on the Internet (as I promised I would). It made me realise that I hadn’t done a lot of that so here we go…

One caveat though… while I am earning a living essentially off the Net, I don’t want you to confuse me with someone who is very successful at it and really knows what they’re doing. I know a lot of theory but putting it into practice is another matter altogether. I’m learning as I go along and that’s what this blog is really about.

How I’ve Made Money

1. My Main Business

Okay, this is my primary earner. Without getting too specific, I have a product that I created and have been selling online for the last couple of years. It’s a software product so it’s delivered digitally over the Internet just like an e-book would be. For various reasons, there is an overhead associated with each sale and also commissions to pay but the overall profit margin is very high. If I could just sell more of it then I’d be earning a comfortable living rather than just scraping by.

Most of my time is spent working on this business. It’s tempting (oh, so very tempting) to kick off one or two other projects to bring in multiple streams of income and I do waste a lot of energy trying to resist this temptation. This business is only scratching the surface of its full potential and if I drop the ball now then it could be catastrophic.

Most of the marketing for this business is Internet based though an increasing amount is going offline (and yes, that is more expensive). I’m making good use of a lot of the Internet Marketing things I’ve learned but because of the target market, some of it just won’t work so I have to play around to discover what I can use and what I can’t.

As and when I get the chance, I’ll try to write about some of my marketing experiences with this business.

2. Underachieving

I was one of the successes of the first 30-Day Challenge back in July 2005 (though Ed never did add me to the Hall of Fame for some reason). It took a while to find a suitable niche so the whole thing – product, web site, sales letter, ad campaign, everything – was put together in about 15 days and my first 2 sales rolled in on the last day of the challenge.

As soon as it was over, I got straight back to my Main Business and left everything untouched. In the 2 months that followed, it pulled in about $680 (not profit). Not a huge amount but enough to convince me that the system worked. Getting my first cheque from ClickBank was also quite a thrill although they’re a bugger to cash over here in the UK.

I could have continued with this but my Main Business was demanding all of my time and I also had a bit of a problem. The niche was (and I believe still is) quite a good one but my product, that was knocked up in about 7 days, was not, to put it bluntly, of sufficient quality. While returns are to be expected, I was wasting lots of time processing them and responding to emails so in the end I shut the whole thing down with a view to doing it properly when I get the chance. That was over a year ago but I may still do that.

How I’ve Lost Money

1. AdSense sites

You may be asking yourself how someone can actually lose money with AdSense sites? Sure, it’s easy enough to put up a site that doesn’t make any money, but how to you actually lose money?

Well, first there’s domain name registration and renewal fees. They may be cheap but if your site doesn’t earn anything then that’s money straight down the toilet. Then there’s hosting fees though, in my case, I’ve got an unlimited hosting account so I don’t consider that.

But the biggest incurred cost is all those crappy software tools that the gurus told me I must buy to automate site generation and send all that spam to my blog, etc. It’s true that some of them were so bad I managed to get a refund but I still wasted hundreds of dollars on that stuff for a total return to date of about $3.72 (ah, the sound of flushing is still ringing in my ears).

Now clearly I didn’t do it right but if you’ve read my earlier posts on the subject you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of making money from AdSense in this way so I don’t need to go on about why I haven’t tried to fix the sites.

2. Other stuff

I’ve lost money buying into BizOps and various other dubious endeavours that, quite frankly, I don’t really want to waste time talking about. They’re outside the realms of Internet Marketing anyway.

How I’m Planning To Make Money

First off, I’m not about to give up my Main Business. This is my bread and butter and it has good growth potential. I just need to improve everything about how it’s set up and being marketed, and that’s what I’m learning how to do, especially with the help of Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System.

In parallel with that, Mercury is about as close to a “normal” type of niche Internet Marketing project as I’m going to get for a while, so that will be a good opportunity to put everything I’ve learned (and am learning) about IM into practice. As I’ve said though, this is a long-term project in a subject I’m truly passionate about so I’m not about to try and make a quick buck out of it.

Beyond that, we’ll see what happens. I’m not the kind of serial entrepreneur that can juggle 15 different niche sites and projects all at the same time. I think those 2 projects will keep me busy enough.

What Next?

There’s not much point in me talking about my Underachiever project, especially as I’m not actively working on any more now. But what I’ll try to do over the next few months or so is detail some of the things that have been working (or not working) for me in trying to market my Main Business online.

That’s all for now.

You absolutely must play to your strengths if you have any chance of success. This is the message from Rich Schefren in his Business Growth System course.

In his book “Good To Great“, Jim Collins says pretty much the same thing. If you don’t play to your strengths, you can build a good company but not a great one.

It’s a scary thought. What if I’m not playing to my strengths – am I going to fail? And how do I even know what my strengths are?

So one of the first tasks that Rich sets in the course is to identify your own particular strengths using various methods. As a Brit, trained in the art of modesty all my life, I’m not used to thinking about what it is I’m actually good at. I felt a little uncomfortable doing this initially but in the end I found it very enlightening.

One approach is to ask friends and family what they think since an outsider’s perspective can offer unexpected insights. I actually failed to set this one up at the time but I may still do this.

Another, more introspective approach is to recall achievements you’ve made throughout your life and then try to identify what skills were required for each one. You can then look for patterns. The actual achievement doesn’t have to have any relevance to business, it’s more about personal traits and characteristics.

To give you a personal example, as a child I was a good chess player and also good at sporting activities (running, throwing, batting, PE, rope climbing, etc.). Later on, in my teens, I represented my school in athletics and completed a half-marathon. And one of my most enduring memories from the age of about 15 is getting up at about 6 am, 7 days a week to deliver local newspapers in all weathers for very little pay just so that I could save up to buy something I particularly wanted.

Now you might be thinking that my strength here is something to do with sport or fitness. Well, fitness certainly does play a part but the key traits that link all of these acheivements together are actually “determination” and “persistence”. Determination to be the best, to win or to reach the target. Persistence to keep going until I finished or got what I wanted.

And as I look back over my whole life, I see those same traits popping up everywhere. Now I know that I can call upon these strengths whenever I need to because they’re a part of who I am.

One of my favourite exercises for identifying strengths was actually mentioned in Rich Scheferen’s “Manifesto” and, surprisingly, wasn’t part of the Business Growth System course materials at all. At the top of a blank piece of paper, write the words “One of my strengths is” then underneath list 20 good qualities you have or things that you think you’re good at.

And don’t be modest. Try to reach beyond any self-limiting beliefs you might have. This is not something you’re going to show to someone else and say “look at me, aren’t I great, I’m so good at all these things”. No, it’s a personal and private list to give you a better understanding of yourself and boost your self-confidence.

Having created your list, don’t ponder it, just put it somewhere safe and get on with whatever else you need to do. Then repeat the same exercise every day for about a week. The key here is to start with a blank piece of paper each time and not refer to any previous lists you’ve made.

Although a 5 or 10-minute time limit is a good idea, I personally felt that it was more important to have the discipline to keep going until all 20 slots were filled. What you will probably find is that the first 10 are relatively easy but then it becomes harder to think of things as you reach the bottom, even though you know you found 20 the day before.

The real fun starts at the end of the week when you can pull out all of your lists and examine them. What you’ll find is that your most dominant strengths will appear on every list, usually near the top, but when you put them all together you will probably find at least 30 strengths that you have. These are the things that make you tick. Some of them you’ll think of as plainly obvious but others (often near the bottom of the lists) will amaze you as things you hadn’t really considered before.

However you identify them, these are your strengths. The particular combination is unique to you. It’s what makes you special.

Since this is a blog about me, I was going to list some of my strengths that I’ve identified but thinking about what I’ve just written, I realise that might be inappropriate at this point. Aside from the personal and private nature of my list, I think there’s a danger of comparison. Your strengths will be different to mine, though possibly with some overlap. Mine are not better than yours and yours are not better than mine. Rather than worry about what other people can do that we can’t, we need to focus on our own strengths to discover what we can excel at.

I’ll leave you with that thought in the hope that you’ll be inspired to find out what your own strengths are. Comments welcome…

Yes, I’m still following Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System, though I use the term “following” a little loosely here because, the truth is, I’m way behind with it and I’ve also been struggling to see how I can apply some of it to my business. But that probably just means that I need to review the material and put some more thought and effort into it.

One thing Rich has concluded from running the course up to this point is that there have been too few “contact points” with us on the monthly program. I think that’s true. Life has a habit of getting in the way and providing distractions and without a regular reminder, the BGS has become a bit of a background activity for me. Even with the Q&A calls in between the monthly modules, I think communication could have been a lot better.

So after months of speculation, a couple of weeks ago we finally got firm dates for the seminar and it’s coming up fast – the weekend of February 10th and 11th. I guess I should have been waiting for the confirmation, ready to book flights as soon as it came in but, after all the mucking about, I kind of lost interest so I’m still considering my options.

The seminar itself is part of the course so that’s essentially free. With travel, accommodation and expenses, I reckon it will cost me around £850 to attend. Then I have to factor in a few days of lost work through travel and jet lag. Still, it’s doable.

So what’s the seminar all about?

Well, to be honest, I’m not really sure. And that kind of bothers me. When you sign up for a regular seminar, there’s usually a 300 page sales letter that tells you exactly what to expect but in this case, since it’s just part of the course, the details are non-existent.

We’re told that Rich will:

• tell us what’s working and what’s not (in relation to what? his business? do I care? does it have any relevance to my business?)
• review ‘exciting’ new developments in store for us (!)
• expand on topics from the Business Growth System

And pretty much, word-for-word, that’s it. One paragraph. I think it’s a shame when these same gurus are telling us that we have to “sell” even the “free” stuff that we’re not given more information in which to make up our minds. Especially since the committment to go is quite significant for many people in both time and cost.

Despite questions being made, there are no further details on the forum except for the usual banter from people saying how great it will be and what a good opportunity it will be for networking and making JV deals.

Ahh, the networking aspect…

If I had a penny for everytime I’d heard that the real benefit of attending these seminars is not to listen to the speakers but to meet lots of people and make deals, then I’d probably have enough to buy a King Size Mars Bar by now (and they’re really expensive these days). Just bumping into the right guy at a seminar could be worth, ooh, I don’t know, two hundred thousand dollars or more. Yeah, right!

The thing is, I’ve been to a lot of these seminars and met a lot of great people (and a lot of not-so-great people), some of whom I’ve stayed in contact with and remain friends with. But in every case, apart from offering a little help and advice, neither of us have been in a position to help the other with any kind of JV deal for the simple reason that we’re in completely different markets and, apart from that, are not at the level of business where we can offer such help.

For that to be the primary motivation for going to an Internet Marketing seminar, I think one of the following 3 things must be true:

1. You’re in the “how to make money” business. In this case, half the people at the seminar will be potential partners.

2. You’re a personal or business coach. I think there’s a parallel here with the “making money” business with it’s broad applicability and “business boosting” potential.

3. You know exactly the sort of person you need to make a deal with and can hunt them down by talking to as many people as possible until you find them. But even if you talk to everybody, you still might not find someone suitable.

I’m really talking here about business/sales partners and not about finding good copywriters or services like fulfilment houses. You don’t need to go to a seminar to find them though you might meet someone who could give you a recommendation. That’s the networking side of things. But you do need to know exactly what you want first.

Otherwise, the chances of meeting someone that can accelerate your particular business is slim. You may meet lots of like-minded people and make lots of friends but don’t expect your business to explode as a result.

Okay, rant over. For now…

I have to admit that I found Module 2 quite tough. I’m starting to get my head around being a “Mediator” and what that means for my business but it’s still all a bit wooly.

Yesterday, I managed to stay very focussed on my business and got a lot done in double-quick time. As a reward to myself, I listened to the Module 3 call. It may not sound like much of a reward, working through nearly 2 hours of audio and 150 presentation slides, but I was really looking forward to it and this gave me some much needed motivation to get my other tasks for the day done and out of the way.

This module was much more to my liking. Much more concrete. I could see exactly where it fitted in and how it would impact my business. I got very inspired and fired up to think about my niche area, my vision, mission, values and beliefs. I got started on it late last night and made further headway this morning.

It was about then that I had a bit of a relapse…

Maybe it’s something I had at the weekend (I have a nasty food intolerance that can knock me right out of whack if I’m not careful) but I’ve been feeling very run down ever since. I took my eye off the ball this morning and suffered the consequences.

So what happened?

A new ‘business opportunity’ arrived in the post from our good friends Andrew Reynolds and Tim Lowe and I basically spent (wasted?) most of the morning looking at it and getting myself into a flap about what to do.

I’ve been following Mr. Reynolds for many years and can see that it could be a good opportunity for the right person. It’s essentially a training day on how to take $135,000 worth of new info products and sell them with ongoing mentoring to help follow it through. Such a brief summary doesn’t do it justice but I don’t want to give any more details here. That’s not really the point of this.

The real point is the problem it presented. And the problem was this: I was very tempted to take the offer.

Now one of the things about being on Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System is that he tries to get you to focus on just one business or project at a time. When you do that, your one focus becomes all that matters and you become immune to the multitude of ‘opportunities’ that come knocking. You might miss something good but that’s a million times better than trying to do two things or, worse, trying to grab every opportunity that comes along. That only leads to doom and failure. I should know.

Of course I could take on this new business and do quite well from it. After all, I’ve been studying it for the last 2 years or so and I know exactly what needs to be done.

But if I did, I would end up losing focus on my existing business or perhaps even abandoning it altogether. This is the business I’ve spent the last 3 years building up. The business I’m only just scratching the surface of its full potential. The business I was so fired up about first thing this morning.

What was I thinking?

Well, the offer is now in its rightful place in the bin (that’s ‘trash’ for all you States-siders). And I’m happy about that. Focus has been restored. I can breathe deeply and relax again.

But not too much, there’s work to be done…

(Go on, leave a comment, you know you want to!)