Let me give you some examples…

The guy who thought about sticking that thing on a battery that indicates how much power is left had a great idea (and is reaping millions).

The Nintendo Wii is a great idea. It’s so revolutionary that it’s the bestselling video game console in the world right now. It’s so good even grandmothers want to play it and it’s catapulted Nintendo right back into the video game industry.

Viagra is a great idea! And Pfizer and all the counterfeits selling the little blue pill are making tons of cash as well. (And all the housewives are happy!)

The WHEEL is a great idea (haha!). Almost everything that works today needs the freaking wheel. Whichever caveman that invented the wheel should be made a god. Too bad patents weren’t invented before the wheel or he (and his descendants) would seriously be rolling in the cash.

So you see, many great ideas out there are making it really big today. It’s normal – great ideas make money. But I think you know that already.

However, an idea is NOT enough.

If it stays in your head as an idea and you don’t do anything to turn it into a business, it’s basically as good as all the masturbatory fantasies you’ll never share with anyone. You have to TAKE ACTION.

Let me share with you a real-life example. I met this stranger recently at some event and as usual you say ‘Hello!’ and then as with all new people you meet, you customarily share what you’re doing to make money in this life (as if your job defines WHO YOU ARE… bleh!).

Anyway, I shared with the fella that I was an Internet marketer and immediately he had this quizzical look come upon his face as he obviously didn’t know what the heck is an Internet marketer (I get that ALL the time).

So as usual I’d go on my little introductory round about what Internet marketing is all about and a little bit of what I do here and there so that people have a firmer grasp about what it is that I do.

And after my little sharing session, his eyes lit up and he told me he had this great idea that he always wanted to do on the Internet and he wanted my opinion on it. So he shared his idea and at the end I gave him my feedback on it.

But that’s not the point here.

The point is I asked him, ‘How long have you had this idea for?’ And he told me he had for almost two years.

The conversation ended around there but as I reflected on his answer, I realized that TWO years is a long time to just sit on something you really want to do. And you know what the crazy bit is? I bet the fella is just going to continue to sit on that idea and the two years will become five, ten, and then poof!

Your great idea never got out and it’s as good as you know what.

Just go and get things done!

Good ideas alone are not good enough! They need to be MANIFESTED for them to do some good and produce some results. All the good ideas you know and see about today are no longer just good ideas – they’re REAL successful businesses and that’s why you know about them now.

And the thing is your idea doesn’t need to be perfect at all before you get started. Just get the ball rolling now and things will simply adjust themselves along the way. Do you think that Bill Gates had the perfect idea when he thought about Windows?

No! If he did, we’d all be using Vista 15 years ago and there’ll no longer be any updates since (because the idea’s ‘perfect’). But we didn’t start with that, I was using some crummy Windows 3.1 back in the day and Microsoft’s been tweaking the product ever since (AND it’s still got problems till today).

So if the 2nd richest man in the world can start with a less than perfect idea and make it to where he is today, who are you to insist that your idea or product needs to be perfect before you get the ball rolling?

And most times…

You don’t really need to invent a new idea at all. A lot of the great companies today didn’t invent the idea, they just EXECUTE it better.

McDonald’s didn’t invent the hamburger (the city of Hamburg did) but they execute the idea better than anyone and that’s why they’re so damn rich.

Henry Ford was the one that invented the car but his company is losing market share to the Japanese year by year. They just execute the idea better.

Google didn’t invent the Internet search engine but ‘oh boy!’ do they do a damn good job of it and their share price has quintupled since its IPO.

So you see, you don’t even need a new idea nowadays to make it big; you just need to do it better. So quit the need that your idea needs to be perfect, quit the need that you need all the stars and planets to be aligned before you launch your product and just get it done.

“How do I make money online?”

As usual I answered the question the best way I knew how…

You see, I somehow get the feeling that when people ask this sort of question, they invariably presume that Internet Marketing is some magic bullet that can make you a lot of money fast.

And to be fair, that’s how marketers selling Internet Marketing opportunities like to portray it. Because getting rich quick on your computer is very sexy (and being sexy sells!).

But the truth is a lot more different than you think.

Yes, we get to work from home, we can choose how many hours we want to work a day, we can make ten thousand dollars just sending out an email, the websites work on autopilot. All that sexy stuff is TRUE.

But to get there… oh boy, there’s a lot of work and LEARNING involved.

Which is what I do my best to tell those people who ask me about Internet Marketing – you have to learn how to do this.

There’s no shortcut; you either spend some time and money to educate yourself or you can spend EVEN more banging your head around wondering why your website doesn’t make money (because it’s broken, stupid).

You see, it’s just like learning how to drive a damn car.

You can’t expect to throttle 110km/h down a freeway when you haven’t learned how to shift gears, can you?

But that’s the feeling I get most times from most people – they expect to make all that ton of money without investing first into their own damn education!

I remember when I first took driving lessons years ago. I thought the stupid clutch was the dumbest thing humans ever f___king invented. I mean why the f___ do you have to learn all the shit before you get the car to even move two bloody inches? (You won’t believe the amount of times I stalled…)

But in the end, I got the hand of it. I learned how to steer pretty quick (playing Daytona at the arcade came in handy after all), brake smoothly, shift gears, check the traffic conditions, stare at that pretty girl down the street while still avoiding a car wreck – I got pretty good at all that fancy stuff. And I passed my test.

It’s the same with Internet Marketing…

You need to learn all that small, nitty-gritty stuff before you can expect your online business really work like a well-oiled machine.

You need to learn how to buy your domain names, work with hosting, ftp, basic html, niche research, product creation, copywriting, driving traffic, etc before you can start seeing real results taking place.

It may seem really hard at first (like that stupid clutch) but eventually things become a whole lot easier until it becomes AUTOMATIC. But the point is you need to learn how to do it in the first place – learn how to walk before you learn how to run.

So if you are just starting out and you have not much of an idea how to get going, the answer is pretty straightforward – LEARN how to get going. And you do that by investing in a solid product that will teach all the fundamentals on how you can build a successful online business for yourself.

Which naturally leads to this question…

which I’ve been asked many times before – “Which product would you recommend?”

And I ALWAYS recommend Derek Gehl’s Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The Internet (I know, it’s a mouthful).

It’s the all-time bestselling Internet Marketing product out there and they update their content every year (if you’re buying one, make sure you get the 2008 version). It will teach you everything you need to know about Internet Marketing from A-Z and all the information that’s contained inside is more than enough to help you make your first $10,000 on the Internet.

I’m serious about that bit (the 10k bit). Why?

Because I started off with Insider Secrets myself and my websites have already made over six-figures entirely online, so that’s why I know.

In fact, I started off with three different products.

The first one was Stephen Pierce’s coaching program where I basically learned how to buy a domain, hook up a host, setup a blog, create a squeeze page, and article marketing. There was more stuff along the way but by then I kinda moved faster than what the program was teaching me.

The second product was Insider Secrets. Mine was the 2005 version and I read the whole thing front to back, back to front and I soaked up all the information in that entire thing. It become my Internet Marketing library – whenever I got stuck or got lost somewhere along the way, I would refer to it.

And the last thing I had was I simply MODELED what the internet marketers out there were doing. Instead of actually digesting the content they were selling, I was more interested in observing HOW they were selling that content.

That was the KEY. I simply watched and watched and watched how these mavericks were making money online and I simply modeled them for my own enterprise.

So to sum it all up…

If you have more than $2,000 to spend then you may want to invest in a good, personalized coaching program to get you up to speed. But I’m assuming most people don’t have that money (or too cheapskate) to spend two grand, so I say just invest $197 in getting your own copy of Insider Secrets.

Now if you can’t even bear to invest a measly $197 in something that will teach you how to make $10,000 six months from now, then you really don’t deserve to be successful in this AT ALL.

There’s obviously no guarantee that you will succeed (that’s called LIFE – get over it) but if you diligently follow the steps listed inside and you just take action, I don’t see why you shouldn’t succeed at all.

Because seriously I’ve met enough people to know that the biggest bottleneck to success is NOT the lack of information but the bloody lack of action.

So like I said, it’s like learning how to drive a car. No one gave you a guarantee that you’d pass your driving test, right?

But if you learn all the necessary and DO all the necessary, there’s no reason that you’ll pass the damn test. And you WILL.

Ditto with Internet Marketing and anything else in life.

And don’t you just love that?

Back in 2006, Jo Han Mok and Ewen Chia were running previews for their 2-day Internet Wealth Code seminar. Out of interest, I went down to one of the previews they were holding at Sheraton Towers. I sat in and the two marketers began sharing about what this whole Internet marketing thingamajig was all about.

Quite simply, the most fundamental way you can make money on the Internet is to sell a product. That’s nothing new. People buy products ALL the time; from toothpaste, magazines, clothes, books, paper, ass wipes, whatever. People are have been buying stuff from other people for millennia. That’s what business is all about. Sell someone a product they NEED. Just that this time it’s done over the World Wide Web.

In fact, I like to think that the concept of a business is much, much older than the concept of a job (ever thought of cavemen wearing a tie and owning a 9-5 job? Ha! But I betcha they were selling aphrodisiacs to other cavemen already). So if you think that being in business is some new-fangled scheme for lazy-smart people, think again.

So basically I learned in that preview that you need a product to start selling on the Internet. Besides affiliate marketing (where you sell other people’s product for commission), the only other choice you had was to create your own.

And the easiest way to create a product is obviously creating an INFO-product.

But of course, if you have a talent at creating physical products (cups, car engines, automated ass wipes, etc), you could do that too.

So now the question became ‘How do I create an info-product? I don’t know anything about anything to put into a product at all!’

Which brings me to the point; find an expert to work with you. And create an info-product based on his/her expert knowledge in his/her field. So Jo Han and Ewen gave us in the audience a live example of how they worked with an expert to create an info-product.

They basically took out a laptop, hooked up a microphone and started interviewing Marlon Sanders (another Internet great) on what it took to build an Internet business empire. They recorded the interview, had it cleaned up, did the transcripts, threw in some worksheets, wrote the salesletter, made the site live and wah-lah! Instant product. Selling for $49.95.

‘Brilliant!’ I thought, ‘I could do that too!’

Which is exactly what I did. At this time, I already knew Adam Khoo for a few many years already (I met him when I was 18) and I decided that I wanted to do exactly the same thing those two blokes did to Marlon Sanders; interview the expert, have it recorded, turn it into a product, etc.

So I approached Adam with my idea, told him I wanted to interview him about how he made his first million at 26, turn it into a product, and we’ll split the profits. He had nothing to lose and I was doing all the work. It was essentially free money for him if the whole project worked out.

You know what Adam did?

He REJECTED my idea. And then he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He told me that instead of going through all the trouble of interviewing him and creating a new product from scratch, why don’t I just sell his current products for him online? And he showed all his shiny CDs, books, and courses, and he told me he could digitize them for the Internet, etc.

I am sure my mouth was hanging open after Adam hit me with that jackpot of a counter-proposal. You mean this multi-millionaire businessman wants ME to sell his products online for him and have a share of the profits?

‘You got to be kidding me’, I thought.

But he wasn’t. He was dead serious and he was willing to give me a chance even though I was starting from ground-zero (ain’t he a great chap?). And so I grabbed that chance and I told myself that I better make the best use of this opportunity given to me.

And I did. That meeting sparked off my Internet marketing career; all of Adam’s products online have been greatly successful and I’m proud to say that I had a leading hand in creating that.

SO that’s my story. I found an expert, I made a proposal, and today the whole Internet machine is still moving along fine. Honestly, I don’t think I could have done any better if I had done this all by myself. Working with Adam has and still is a tremendous pleasure.

As you can see, there are many great benefits to working with an expert. I’m not the only one that’s doing it! There are many people out there who at great at what they do but real duds when it comes to marketing their knowledge (in my case, Adam of course is NOT a marketing dud). So they have marketers do that bit for them. That’s where you come in; YOU become the marketer.

Even if you don’t have any experience whatsoever, that’s no excuse (as I’ve proved). All you need to do is to show that you are really serious about succeeding online and prove it to the expert that you can get things done for him/her.

I proved how serious I was by showing Adam the money I had invested in Internet marketing courses (over S$3,000 back then), the research reports he wanted to see, and telling him that I was willing to work for ‘free’ – if I don’t create results, I don’t get paid.

If you need more validation approaching an expert, use my story! (I magnanimously give you permission… hohoho) Tell them about my example, how successful it has turned out, and you’re willing to do the all the work that’s needed to produce the same RESULTS.

And why not? Sitting down waiting for something to happen isn’t going to buy you your luxury toilet bowl (with the automated ass-wipe function) anyway. So get moving.

Just to recap, here’s the question from Low Hang Wei which kickstarted the whole thing:

I have been looking at your blog for some time, since the launch of SSMM to be exact. Some days I envy you for the good luck of having the rights to publish Adam Khoo’s extensive range of articles, SSMM and any other projects that you’ll be carrying out. However, I know that it’s not luck that got you to where you are – it does take courage, hardwork and other qualities to approach a millionaire and set forth a proposal.

Now that you’ve been in touch with some of the more prominent figures in Singapore, I’m sure your knowledge will be on a whole new level. Therefore, I would just like to ask how would you carry out your internet marketing strategy if you were left on your own, with just your computer, internet connection and $200 to spare?

I’m looking forward to your answer, because like you, I do want to become an internet marketing millionaire too.

So let’s dig deep now and ponder the question to how I (or you) can start making money online with just your computer, internet connection and just $200 to spare.

Ok assuming you’ve got the knowledge required to make money online (coz if you don’t, you’re just shooting blind…) then all you would need to do is to start executing what you know.

First Step: Switch on the computer.

Ok kidding… My first step would be to pick a niche market.

I know you’ve heard that a thousand times before. pick a niche market, pick a niche market, pick a niche market blah, blah, blah.. But it’s true! You need to pick a market. Period.

And that market could be anything. Adam Khoo is in the niche of self-help/personal success and that’s because he’s an expert in that area. What is your expertise?

Obviously you may want to stay away from the ultra-competitive niches (for now…) like golf, weight-loss, internet marketing, etc because there are really a lot of big boys out there clamouring for the consumer’s dollar and if you just try to plonk yourself in a market like that, your voice could very well be lost.

Especially if you’re just starting out online and you’re still learning the basics, my opinion is to pick something less competitive. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay away forever, you can always enter those markets when you know you’re ready for it.

So how do you pick a good niche market?

Well, I would start maybe with what I’m good at and then I would do keyword research on how marketable is that market. If the numbers look good, then it could be a good place to start off with. You can use the Overture tool to guage the demand for a market: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Obviously there are other ways to pick a niche market but I can’t list them all here… (take forever!)

2nd Step: Pick a Good Domain Name

This part’s important because this domain is gonna stick with you all the way, so make sure it’s a good one. Your domain name should be based on the keywords you want to optimise for, relevant to your market and your business/product. So take some time to choose a nice domain name.

This is also the first thing you’d spend your money on. It costs $9 (or less) a year to own one, so please don’t be cheapskate about this and then use a free yahoo or geocities site… If you can’t bear to spend $9, don’t do any business anywhere period. Go be an employee. Ha!

You can get them from namecheap.com or namesecure.com (it’s NOT an affiliate link). Please don’t get it from godaddy! I heard that if you’re caught for spam or something, godaddy can freeze your account and lock your domains and when that happens, they basically own your domain and you’re really stuck.

3rd Step: Get Reliable Hosting

So after you’ve got your domain, you need somewhere to host it. I hope I don’t have to explain what is a webhost and what it does (because it’s geeky stuff) but you need this. Basically, a webhost is someplace where you host your domain name and your files so that people from the internet can access your website (arghh.. I did it! I explained it. Somewhat…)

I personally use bluehost. I find it really good and real value for money. You can get it here: bluehost.com (NOT an affiliate link too). You don’t have to use bluehost, you can pick whatever host suits your needs.

Bluehosts costs $6.95 a month for the 2 year plan, and that’s really cheap compared with what you’re getting at that price. I essentially paid 10 times more when I was with Hostgator!

Obviously you don’t have to go for the two year plan, it’s up to you.

4th Step: Get A Top-Notch Autorespnder

Oh! This one is soooo important, you absolutely need this. No two ways about it!

My autoresponder has been the biggest reason why I’m able to make money on the internet. Ok, maybe not exactly my autoresponder, more specifically, my LIST.

When you get a visitor, you want to convert that visitor into a subscriber and then eventually a paying customer. If you don’t have the process and the tools to do that, then basically every visitor you get can just leave without a trace and that puts you back at square one. Getting another visitor again. And again and again.

If you’re a grandmaster at driving mountains of traffic, this may not sound so bad to you. But either, it just makes more sense to entice, attract every visitor that comes to your site, get him/her on your list and continue to add more and more value to him/her.

Because it’s easier to market to someone multiple times with better results than to market just one time to one individual. You won’t get too far that way. And when you have a list, BAM, you can send out an email and you get instant targeted traffic to where ever you want to send it.

This is obviously no excuse to spam your list with stuff and send them 5 emails a day, that’s obviously stupid. I’m just showing you how powerful a list is.

Your list is going to be the most important asset you have. And the best way (or in my opinion, the only) way to handle, groom and market to your list is via a autoresponder. And not just any autoresponder but the best out there.

So you either get aweber or getresponse. Please don’t settle for anything less. You may find out later that your 2nd rate autoresponder doesn’t have a certain feature you need to automate your business (and your 2nd rate provider is by no means ever gonna improve its features…) and if by then you have a good loyal subscriber base, you’re kinda stuck.

Because to cart over you list to another autoresponders is real messy business and you’re bound to lose some along the way when you do that. So please… don’t ever have to go through that ordeal and just stick with the leaders from the get go.

Aweber’s about $170+ per year and GetResponse is about $140+ per year. In my opinion, $11 a month for an ESSENTIAL and powerful tool such as this is an absolute bargain.

I know when anyone’s just starting out, spending all this money when you don’t exactly know IF you’re actually gonna succeed online could be a tough thing to do.

But let me put it this way. You have to believe that you CAN make money online, because if you don’t even think it’s possible for you, then what the hell are you starting your online business for?

You don’t even believe it’s gonna work out!

But if you do then you will know that spending money on the essentials is a MUST. I, for example, cannot function without a domain name, webhost or autoresponder. My profits will go down to zero. Those tools and some other things are a essential to me running my business and so I gladly fork out my money to use them.

Ok so go get an autoresponder: Aweber or GetResponse.

Step 5: Make Money!

haha.. Ok I know it’s not as simplistic as to grab a domain, host it and using an autoresponder to start making money online. That’s a whole lot you have to do before your first dollar comes in. So obviously I can’t list the ALL steps you must take, here on a blog. So I won’t

Because if you’re serious anyway, you’d have already bought yourself a home study course to teach you all that you need to know to make money on the internet. If you haven’t go get one. And if you don’t want to, then I suggest you don’t venture out at all.

The first step to being successful is to admit “I don’t know everything and I am willing to invest in my eduaction to learn how to do it.”

Looking back at what I just wrote, it looks like a shopping list! I guess I was focused more on the best way to spend your $200 when starting out online, so I listed the essentials that are needed. Maybe I’ll cover an overview about what are the next steps to take to kick start your internet business but I’ll stop here for now, because this post is already long enough.

Out.

Name: Low Hang Wei

I have been looking at your blog for some time, since the launch of SSMM to be exact. Some days I envy you for the good luck of having the rights to publish Adam Khoo’s extensive range of articles, SSMM and any other projects that you’ll be carrying out. However, I know that it’s not luck that got you to where you are – it does take courage, hardwork and other qualities to approach a millionaire and set forth a proposal.

Now that you’ve been in touch with some of the more prominent figures in Singapore, I’m sure your knowledge will be on a whole new level. Therefore, I would just like to ask how would you carry out your internet marketing strategy if you were left on your own, with just your computer, internet connection and $200 to spare?

I’m looking forward to your answer, because like you, I do want to become an internet marketing millionaire too.

Adam says:
Thanks for the kind compliments, Hang Wei. I’m sure you’re on your way to becoming an internet millionaire too!

Now with the formalities outta of the way, let me attack this great question with gusto: ‘What would I do to make my first buck online with only a computer, internet connection and $200 to spare’.

Alright, I think this question is very similar to the gimmick done at the recent WIS where Jo Han and Ewen (you know them right?) had a live challenge to show how they could start from scratch, create a product, write a salesletter and make money on the internet all within 2 hours.

Well, they had a great show and they really shared lots of great and useful information during WIS. But they weren’t really starting from scratch. They had the product prepared (if not created) – a teleseminar, the software and pdfs all created, the salesletter and graphics all done (you can’t expect them to do all this in 2 hrs right?) and the one big difference they had a newbie doesn’t.

They had a LIST.

And that makes a world of difference. Having a targeted responsive list is like almost having the license to print money. Ok ok before that simplistic description makes you go around thinking the moment you have a list, you can go around just spamming them with sales pitch after sales pitch, let me make it clear that you can’t.

Every single email on that list is a real person and you’ve got to treat them with respect like a person you meet in real life. So give them great value first and then you’d have earned the right to pitch them products.

Ok, now back to the question. Jo Han and Ewen had a list and that’s why they could generate over US$60k in 36 hours. I’d assume a typical internet newbie wouldn’t have the capability to do that right from the kick off. Hell, when I started out, I was delirious when I made my first sale online, let alone the amounts the gurus showcase all the time.

So here’s what I would do as an internet newbie if I only had my computer, net connection and $200:

I’d invest in a solid internet marketing course so that I can learn what exactly I need to do to make money online. I don’t think it’s wise to assume anyone can make a decent income without having the right information to know how to do it. You’re setting yourself up for failure. So I’d invest in my education first if I don’t want to make expensive mistakes and waste time banging walls.

I’d go for Derek Gehl’s Insider Secrets. It covers A-Z all the fundamentals you need to know to make your first dollar (and more) on the internet. It’s going for $197 and to me that’s dirt cheap. You notice how many gurus price their digital products at $97-$697 (or more) and they only cover a specific method of making money on the internet.

Derek’s product gives you ALL the fundamentals of starting out your internet business and how you should run it to make money. It covers market research, keyword research, product creation, writing salesletters, building an opt-in list, setting up your payment gateway, driving traffic to your site, building a relationship with your customers, search engine optimization, pay per click strategies, yadda yadda yadda. It literally touches all bases.

And it’s going for just $197. And did I mention he mails it straight to your doorstep? It’s a physical product. So you get two thick binders (they type you sink your teeth in), 9 DVDs and some other fancy stuff. All in all, great value for money. If you think that’s a good deal, wait till you hear this.

You can get a trial copy for just $2.95.

Holy cow! (yes i hear you..) For $2.95, you get to test it out for 30 days and after that, if you don’t think it’s worth it (yeah right..) you ship it back and all you spent was just $2.95. Of course you have to foot for shipping and after the trial ends, they bill you the full amount.

This is of course a way better option than just spending the $197 out right (especially for cheapskates). But in the end I think you’ll agree with me when you receive your Insider Secrets package in the mail and you go through it, you wouldn’t want to return it at all. It’s a quality product.

Check out the $2.95 trial offer here.

Alright, I know some of you were expecting a different answer as to how I would spend my $200. But i just had to make it clear it’s not just about having $200 (or $20,000) to start your internet business. if you don’t know what to do to make money online, and you don’t want to learn, you won’t be seeing any success soon.

And I think you know this applies to any other industry as well (real estate, investing, insurance, MLM, traditional business). We always need to keep learning to continually be successful at what we do.

Anyway, I know some of you still want to know how I would go about making my first dollar online with only a computer, net connection and $200, assuming I already invested in a solid program and I’ve equipped myself with the neccessary knowledge.

So I’ll cover that next time, so stay tuned for that one.