Ok lets start with your questions. No. 1 -

Name: emigre

Have you ever felt less than motivated sometimes? Things just get kind of boring or lose steam after awhile and you go for days not doing anything that helps to generate income. What do you do when you feel less than focused over a period of time.

Adam says:
Yes of course! I’n a lazy SOB most of the times. Its just that I make sure I get done the things that NEED to be done. Remember the last time you had to go to the loo to take a dump? I bet you were 10000000% motivated to make sure you got your ass on that toilet seat.

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Oh man, you guys have got to see this one!

Who does he think I am? An idiot!?
I’m a Mensan with an IQ so high that next to me, your existence wilts to a sorry attempt at impersonating intelligent life on Earth! (shameless plug + caustic insult…)

Take a look at this email I received from a “customer”:

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Interesting title eh?

I got an email from a guy (منال عل that’s his name) who’s obviously very conversant in arab:

كيف أستطيع تحديد هدفي بغاية الدقة؟؟المشكلة أنني قرأت كتاب مبادىء النجاح ولم أستطع تطبيقه لأنني ليس لدي هدف واضح؟؟؟

Whoaaa… way cool. But I obviously cannot read any of the words and give him a reply.
And if you didn’t already know, arab reads from right to left (that’s why the ??? are on the left if you noticed).

Anyway just a fun post for you.

I thought I’d start a reader question thingy so that we get to share some information which other people may find useful as well. If you actually read the comments on this blog, you’d find that I take the time to answer questions left by readers (you!).

Sometimes I wonder if people know I actually reply to those questions via inserting my answers in the comment body. So to avoid that second guessing, I’ve decided to just post questions on the blog so that everyone gets to benefit from it.

So let’s start with the first one:

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I received a comment from a friend of mine. Must share! Must share!:

TY Teh says:

Whoa! That’s a lot of energy there boy.
I know that I’m not qualified to be saying this, since I have not experience this much in online marketing, but you shouldn’t really let this bother you too much.
Of course, saying this is easy for me since I’m out of the equation.
If I’m in a similar situation I probably won’t be talking logic to myself.

On the other hand, regardless of the situation, I think you might want to think very closely about what you just communicated to your readers who have been following your blog regularly. Deliberate or not, the tone set for your post was negative and I don’t feel very empowered after reading it. Underneath this post also happens to be your mygratitude.com posts. Won’t that defeat the purpose of writing about your projects? Sure, the title caught my eye (or maybe not) but really, I guess I would rather not read it. What is my take-home-value from reading a post like this? (aside from the Chargeback thing, of course)

Now, I know I’m gonna be unpopular after this, but as a friend I thought I better warn you about this. Maybe I should just email you privately, but since your blog is all about making mistakes while succeeding on the web, this approach seem fit. I’m still a loyal reader and I hope for the best of success for you. Go make another dent on the world!

And he left a 2nd one:

By the way, if you choose not to post this, I understand. Just make sure you get the message I’m trying to give here.

So my reason for doing a 2nd blog post in less than 5 hours (first time! Yay!) is that after reading a comment like this, it’s great feedback for me. So TY, yes of course I’ll share your comment because it provides great dialogue. So let’s continue…

I realised that I may have come across like a raving mad dog with foam between my teeth but you know I’m not that hot under the collar. But anyway, before anyone of you really start to think I’m a real brat, like me further share my experience with this chargeback (cough! Dirty word!)…

When I got the email, I was definitely pissed peeved. I was thinking ‘Idiot!’ straightaway for reasons already explained in my previous blog post. If my words come across as a little too hot to handle, please remember I like being as honest and as real as possible for my readers (you!) of this blog.

Of course it would be nice to blog about, “Hey I got a chargeback, but I’m cool.. I know it’s part of business anyway.. blah blah” but where’s the excitement in a sanitized post like that? Besides I wasn’t really feeling like that at all. I was not happy with the chargeback and I wanted to express it as I typed about it. I wanna be real to my readers. And you know why XX is so popular right? She just lets spill!

Does a chargeback bother me? Well yes and no. Yes because it’s a stupid chargeback after all and no because there’s nothing I can do about it anyway and I don’t let it bother me after my initial 5 minutes of boiling thunder.

I’m sorry if I may have come across negative to some of you but hey, what we type can mean so many different ways to different people. Of course I’m grateful to my customers (gold), I’m grateful to be in a position to receive a chargeback! (You have to be selling stuff before you can get chargebacks in the first place).

I don’t want to sound like a complain queen (ha! so Singaporean)(joke ok..)(don’t be so literal.) in my previous post because I understand all that stuff about taking responsibility for my actions, living above the line and always having a useful response to any event and if I did sound like I was whining and sulking in my previous post, yah ok I was. Haha! But anyway…

Does this post have a totally different ring to mygratitude posts? Yes. But I’m no 24 hour saint. We all run the guantlet of emotions and it’s fun to do so. Did you have take-home value from reading the post? I’m sure you did. There’s always stuff to learn and if not, you can always have a good laugh at this bugger who’s writing these posts for you.

Which brings me to the point, please take my expressions with a pinch of salt. You know how much I ‘talk cock’ and you can’t seriously be thinking I’m serious (heart attack!) all the time. But obviously my business results and numbers are not pinches of salt, those are quite factual in fact.

So TY thank you so much for your valuable feedback because we always need mirrors to expand out awareness of things and you certainly helped. And thank you also for giving me something to blog about which I hope is great fun and interaction for all the blog readers (you!) here.

Out.

Ok ok, before I start spewing vile and you start think I’m actually a hormonal teenage girl who can’t control my emotions, let me state that I sincerely love my customers. Duh.. They the ones that spend the money on my products, so obviously I treat them like gold like they should be.

But this post, as you can see from the potty-mouth title, is about really stupid customers that make me sooooo mad. So are you ready for the drama?

Ha! About yesterday night, I received an email from Clickbank. Now emails from them are always a good thing (for obvious rea$ons) but this time I got an email that told me I have a CHARGEBACK!

Arghhhhhhh! A chargeback! Come on!

Do you know why I’m so mad?

Because a chargeback basically means the customer goes directly to his bank to dispute a charge. What this means is that this idiot bought my product through his credit card, and then when the charge appeared on his credit card statement, he couldn’t in his slightest mind REMEMBER what the charge was for. And so he goes to his bank to do a chargeback!

I mean come on! Don’t you know what you buy with your credit card!?

And it’s not like I (and Clickbank) haven’t made it clear enough for people to know what the charge is gonna appear like on your statement.

When you make a purchase, Clickbank will explicitly tell you that the charge is gonna appear as CLKBANK*COM on your statement. After payment is made, on the download page I have big ass words reminding people that the charge is gonna appear as CLKBANK*COM on your statement.

What do you need me to do? Blow it up to 72pt font, make it red and highlight it in yellow!? Or should I do a Camtasia video with sexy girls so that I grab your full-blown attention?

I mean don’t you seriously read what’s on the screen?

And if it isn’t bad enough, because it’s a chargeback, I have the sale voided AND I have to pay a bank fee for the chargeback! Arghhhh! I’m cramping in convulsions all over! (must. punch. something….)

I mean if it’s a refund, all that happens is that the customer gets his money back, that’s it. And I’m cool with that. Maybe the product wasn’t for you and you decided you wanted a refund.. ok. I can accept that because the customer has made a conscious decision about making the refund. Refunds are a part of doing business online anyway. We’re bound to have them.

(OK I know that chargebacks (dirty word!) are part and parcel of business as well, but let me rant somemore…)

But a chargeback! Argggh! It means you don’t @#$% remember what you bought at all in the first place. You’re not aware of what you’re doing. Unlike the aware customer who consciously made the decision to refund, you just don’t know what you’re doing!

You can’t remember what CLKBANK*COM stands for, so you think that the charge is a fraudulent naughty nightclub bill and you don’t want your wife to find out, and so you execute a chargeback leaving me with a void sale and a bank fee to pay AND you’re still happily enjoying my product because you still think you paid for it!

Wuuuu! That’s such a low blow….

And the thing is even if the customer realized he made a mistake and repurchased the product out of good faith, I’m still stuck with bank fee. humppph!

Who said doing internet marketing was easy?

Anyway, enough of this. I’m gonna have some sushi so I can be happy again!

Out.

OK. Before I kick off Part 2, if you haven’t read Part 1, you can do so here: Internet Success

Alright, once you’re done with that, let me go on with my tiny tirade.

Now I know this topic on FOCUS is going to hellava important to any beginner starting off on the internet because I learnt this lesson too when I was starting out. You need to be focused. Why?

Because you’re gonna be bombarded with offers left, right and center every single day from all the IM gurus out there and if you get lost in this informational barrage, you’re gonna be paralyzed! I not just talking about offers to buy stuff, you’re also get offers to download free reports or free videos telling you the latest and sexiest system out there to make money on the world wide web.

And you’re gonna receive ALL this stuff ALL the time and if you don’t know exactly what you need to do onine, you’re gonna be lost! Now how many here understand what I’m saying here or you’re going through that right now?

You’ve just got so much information, you just don’t know where to start. I know because I’ve been through it and I’d reckon that everyone will go through this when they first start out.

You need to FOCUS.

You see all this great offers that come your way, they’re gonna confuse you unless you know what you’re doing. Now I’m not knocking these offers that come your way because most times if it’s from a reputable marketer, what s/he’s offering you is going to be quality. Be it an adsense product, or a blogging ebook, or a ebay system, whatever. ALL of them will help you to make money online.

Adsense is a great income stream. So is affiliate marketing. So is selling your own product. So is selling on ebay. etc, etc, etc. These systems all make money, there are people out there who have proven that these systems work. The only question is which one do you want to focus on?

Because if you’re not focused on what you want and what you need to get done, you’re gonna be attracted and dragged all over the place whenever someone tells how they made so much money using this new so-and-so system. And you’re gonna be distracted. You have to be more like a laser beam than a torchlight. When you’re a laser, you can cut through any obstacles that come your way.

So pick something! If you decide to become an adsense publisher, invest in a solid adsense program and stick with it until you make it. If you decide to create your own ebook, invest in a program that teaches you how and then stick with it. Stay with the program. Learn and apply everything you have in that program and make it happen.

I’m telling you that if you just take what you have learnt in a solid program and you apply the strategies consistently again and again and again, you are going to see results. I mean it. All the small steps and actions you take will all snowball into a gigantic success story for you on the internet.

There is no magic bullet. There is no ‘secret’ to success. The real ‘secret’ is taking small consistent right action every single day and you’re gonna see miracles happen. And you have to remember that things do not have to be perfect before you start the ball rolling.

Your ebook doesn’t have to be perfect. Your copywriting doesn’t have to be perfect. Your traffic generation strategies do not have to be perfect. Nothing has to be perfect. You just have to get the basics right and that’s all you need as a launch pad to take off.

Because along the way, you’re gonna tweak your ebook anyway. You’re gonna tweak your copy here and there anyway. You’re gonna learn and apply more traffic strategies anyway. So you’re always improving and there’s really no perfect ebook, copy, blog, article, traffic system. So don’t let the idea that you have got to know everything out there before you start. Just start and the rest will take care of itself.

You see when you start something and get the ball rolling, you’re gonna learn even faster because now you’re DOING how you can make money onine as compared to just reading about how you can do it. And when you’ve got something up and running, it’s alot easier for you to learn new things because now you have something to relate all this new information to.

For example, you learn a new strategy about how you can double your clickthrough rates for your adsense ads. Because you are already running an adsense website, you know exactly how to use this new information to help you immediately and directly. You have something to relate it to.

As compared to you just reading about all these great ways to start a adsense business (but not taking the action to start) and when this double-your-clickthrough strategy comes along, you are going to become even more confused because now you know this new info is going to help you, but you have NO idea what to do with it (because you have nowhere to apply it!).

That’s where information overload occurs! You get all this great ideas and strategies, you know it’s important but you just don’t know what to do with all of it. So you get more confused which leads you to think that you don’t know enough. Which leads you to then be afraid to start at all. And so you do nothing (but still wish to start someting) but then more information comes your way and you get more confused again and so the whole cycle starts again.

Don’t fall into that trap! Just start somewhere! And you’ll know what to do with all the stuff that comes your way.

So if I can leave a tip for you in this post, it is to start something! If you’ve always wanted to start your online business (whatever model it may be), do it! Start now and take what you’ve learnt so far and apply it. Apply, apply apply. And focus and what you need to get done instead of thing how things should be done.

Because if you’re always thinking that everything should be done in some perfect way, you’re gonna be stuck. Don’t do that. Just start somewhere, even if you cocked up somewhere, you can always change it later. Websites evolve all the time. They never stay the same because you’re always learning new things and you’re always applying those new things to your website.

Start now, so that now you can decide what type of information and strategies you want to focus on. So if you’re into creating your own product and selling it, you will only take note of all the great strategies that come your way on how you can create a great product, write a killer salesletter and how you can drive traffic. That’s it!

You wouldn’t care (or give too much attention) about the new fangled system to make money with adsense, you wouldn’t be distracted about the strategy that teaches you how to up your ebay status, yadda, yadda, yadda…

You wouldn’t be distracted because you know exactly what you NEED to get your project up and running and making money for you. And you only focus on offers, reports and strategis that serve you in that area. The rest of the information that comes your way, it’s great but you can leave it aside for now. You can always come back to it later when you want to.

You’ll be able to get rid or all the ‘noise’ when you’re focused on your goal. So foucs on what you want and everything will fall into place. Remember, be like the laser that cuts through everything to hit your target.

Now I sincerely hope that this helps you in someway because I’m sharing from personal experience as a beginner who started out 6 months ago. I got so lost in all the huge amount of information that hit my inbox. Until I started the ball rolling.

Once I started taking action, I knew what I needed to get done, so I knew what I needed to learn to get those things done and didn’t care if it wasn’t ‘perfect’ because I knew that I could always come back and tweak things later if I needed to.

So don’t get lost in this IM maze, because it really isn’t. It all falls away when you know with clear intent what you want and pretty soon you’ll be making your money on the internet. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that. So go out there and make it happen!

Watch out for Part 3… I’m not done with this topic yet!

Read Part 3 here ==> Internet Marketing Focus