Everybody wants to start their internet business and make money online.

It sounds magical, having a website, and making money while even sleeping, right?

This is what all the internet marketing gurus tell us. They show us the pictures from a nice beach, having a beer while working on a laptop. They tell us how easy it is to make money online.

So called gurus are good at what they do, and they know how to create the dream job before selling it to us.

Since their job is to sell you the dream and make money out of it, they will never tell you a little secret about internet marketing.

Internet Marketing is BORING as Hell

Yes, you’ve heard it right. I’m telling you the truth; internet marketing is one of the most boring things you can do for living.

How come? Don’t I always tell you that I love internet marketing. I really enjoy what I do?

Yes, but let’s talk about reality for a minute.

Overall, probably 1% of internet marketing is fun, creative and enjoyable. It is the part when you need to use your right brain.

How about the rest 99%?

It’s data entry & so many repetitive tasks, all the left brain stuff you need to do to be able to succeed.

This is where most beginners fail.

Most beginners fail because they believe in the dreams sold by so called gurus, and their expectations are sky high.

They all want to work less, make more money, and do it fast…

If you are a beginner in internet marketing, forget about all the dreams sold by gurus.

Start fresh, and get ready to countless hours of work, mostly boring, data entry type work.

How About Automation & Scaling?

Unless you excel in doing all the tasks by yourself, you will never be able to automate & scale by hiring other people.

Automation and scaling is an art in itself, and most gurus make it sound like child’s play, in reality, it is not.

If you can make $10/day with what you do, it won’t be a piece of cake to do the same thing 1000 times, and make $10,000/day. Trust me on this.

You Have Killed My Dreams, What Am I Gonna Do Next?

If you are serious about making money online, start with setting your expectations low. Forget about all the hype you’ve thought by so called gurus.

Get ready to work hard, I mean really hard.

Learn every single task, and start creating a system by using your right brain. Always think about how you can automate the task you are working on.

Next time your neighborhood’s friendly guru tells you “it’s so much fun & easy to make money online”, you know the truth & you can tell him “yeah, right”.

Spring is here, and the weather in New York is gorgeous. After a long, and freezing winter, this weather is exactly what we have been waiting for.

All the streets are packed with people, walking around, shopping, trying to get the best out of this wonderful weather.

And I’m at my wonderful midtown office, writing this blog post on a lovely Sunday afternoon. What is wrong with me?

Entrepreneur BS

Ok, here’s the deal, I won’t bore you with a long blog post, instead I’ll simply cut to the chase.

Most of the entrepreneurs I meet are great at talk, motivation, and all the blah blah. They talk about how luck is so important, how they have tried that, thought about this and that, etc.

I can comfortably say that 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs or self-employed people I’ve met till day have all one missing ingredient in common, and it is hard work.

Feel free to lie to everybody about how hard you work, how dedicated you are, etc.

When you go to bed, and put your head on your pillow, ask this question to yourself, and be honest;

Do I work hard enough?

You can lie to anybody else, but not to yourself.

Please, ask this to yourself tonight and be honest.

I have met a number of people who are new to making money online since I’ve been in this business.

Most of the people who are new to internet marketing world are good at tons of skills such as being smart, doing extensive research, following trend setters, learning new things daily, etc. But, most of them have one thing in common: Being afraid of taking action.

Being afraid of taking action is like cancer. If you can diagnose the problem, understand the reasons for it, and start treating it, you might be successful. But if you spend months, even years with being afraid, it might be too late to take action on.

Why am I Afraid to Take Action?

Ask this question to yourself, be honest, and come up with your reason(s).

Do you spend countless of hours reading about a topic (e.g. google adwords), feel like you know everything about the topic, but don’t know how to launch your first campaign?

Do you lack of knowhow due to insufficient research & study?

Are you scared to take action because you don’t have the luxury of spending any money online?

Take a piece of paper, and write down: “Reason(s) Stopping me to Take Action:”

Ask every possible question you can think of to find out the reason(s) of being scared to take action, and write it/them down on the paper.

Solve the Problem

In the first step, if you were honest to yourself, you should have a piece of paper with the reason(s) that stop you from taking action with a title of “Reason(s) Stopping me to Take Action:“, correct?

Now, cross out the word Reason(s) and write down Excuse(s) instead.

There is absolutely NO reason to stop you from at least trying. All the reasons you’ve come up are your own excuses.

Take Action Today

Whatever the excuse you have, there’s a solution out there. Most of the solutions are in your mind. You should start with changing your mindset, and get ready to make money online.

Don’t ever be scared of failing in internet marketing, but always remember to take bearable risks for your situation, such as not risking your retirement fund.

Your success in internet marketing depends on your actions, so don’t wait another day, and take action today!

Also, check out this post I’ve written about 5 Reasons You Fail To Make Money Online to get you started with some ideas.

You’ve probably heard the term; “Think outside the box!” many times in your life. You’ll probably ignore it next time you hear it, again. Maybe it will remind you a brand, or a cliche quote.

For a few minutes, forget about “Think outside the box” cliche, and let’s talk about some history.

The history of humanity is the witness to great inventors, warriors, empires, kings, scientists, and smartest people who have done something remarkable during their life time. These people left a remark to the humanity, not just lived an average life.

Yes, some of them are geniuses, and some just were luckier than their peers.

But, have you ever thought about the common characteristics of the greatest people in the world history?

Is it being the smartest? or being workaholics? or being great leaders?

The answer is; none of the above.

The correct answer is;

All the greatest people in human history were lateral thinkers.

Lateral Thinking is the Key Ingredient of Creativity

When I was at high school, I had an AP Calculus teacher who wasn’t very popular along the students. Instead of showing us how to solve a tough calculus problem, her main focus was to show as many possible different ways to solve the same problem.

At the calculus exams, whoever solved the problem with the most common way used along the others would fail even if the answer was correct, and you would only get a high score if you had the most unique way of solving the problem.

We were too young and inexperienced to understand the value of this approach, but did our best to come up with alternative methods to solve the exact same problem.

Can You Become a Great Lateral Thinker?

Lateral thinking is not like leadership. You don’t need to have the skills in your genes. You can keep practicing, and improve your lateral thinking skills.

The easiest way to start is with brainstorming. Try to come up with alternative ideas to the regular, daily and usual things you observe in your personal and business life.

You don’t need to start implementing these right away, but when you start to train your brain’s right side for alternative approaches in daily life, it will be easier to adopt lateral thinking culture in the long run.

How to Implement Lateral Thinking to Your Daily Life?

Most of your business & personal life relies on Problem Solving. Your goal should be to try to look at the daily problems from a different perspective. Just like my high school calculus teacher, try very hard to come up with alternative ways to solve the daily problems.

Since I’m in marketing, my lateral thinking examples are usually about marketing topics. Here are just a few ideas to get you started. Real life examples are always better than textbooks. So, here we go;

• How we’ve sold 13 times more coffee within 2 months

A few years ago when we were trying to sell more Turkish Coffee, we’ve faced a bottleneck in the marketing plan. There were only a limited number of people in the US who even heard about Turkish Coffee. The niche market was limited, and already dominated by us (and another competitor).

With a simple lateral thinking session, I’ve come up with a new marketing plan to target only “Espresso Drinkers”. Espresso market was much much larger than our market, and we were so sure that if an espresso lover tried Turkish Coffee, they’d love it and become a returning customer.

After running our marketing campaign for over 2 months, our Turkish Coffee sales have increased over 1200%. Yes, you’ve heard it right. We’ve sold 13 times more Turkish Coffee than we used to sell before wearing our lateral thinking cap.

This is just a simple lateral thinking example while you are approaching niche markets.

• Debt Consolidation Services Marketing Success

When I was new to affiliate marketing, one of the niches I’ve researched was “debt consolidation services”. There was so much competition in the niche, it was close to impossible to turn a profit with PPC traffic (for a beginner).

But, I knew so much about debt. While I was a student, I was in both credit card and school loan debt. I knew how to help people in debt with my real life experience.

Instead of trying to sell a debt consolidation service site, I’ve created a simple blog sharing my story. I’ve posted step by step how I’ve gotten out of debt with recommendations to services/products I’ve used. Such as books to change my financial mindset, a few digital products to get my finances organized, etc.

People loved my blog, and my organic traffic kept increasing every single day. With some simple lateral thinking, instead of diving into an uber competitive niche, I’ve come up with an alternative solution which mad me money while helped people to really get out of debt.

• Craigslist Marketing Example

I’ve written a pretty long post about my craigslist marketing example, so I won’t be rewriting about it here.

Feel free to read it to get another example of successful marketing idea due to lateral thinking.

Above are just 3 simple real life examples of lateral thinking from my personal experiences. I hope they will get you started with your own brainstorming.

Keep Following the Trends or Start Setting the Trends

Whether you have a local business, a 9 to 5 job, or simply trying to make money online, today is the day to make a decision:

Will you settle with the word; average in your business and personal life, keep following trends set by others, or will you start working on lateral thinking to make a change and start setting trends in whatever you do?

Further Reading Recommendations about Lateral Thinking

I’d love to hear your real life successful lateral thinking marketing examples. Please share at the comments section below. If you got stuck and need lateral thinking ideas, why don’t you also share them, and we can start some brainstorming and try to help.

Photo Credit: Holger Eileby

I am an entrepreneur, and I have many entrepreneur friends.

In general, one of the common characteristics of entrepreneurs is not being a team player.

We like to do things our own way instead of relying on other people. This is great to some extent.

But trying to be a “one man show” can be a bottleneck in our business life when building a team, or asking for help.

How I Saved $100 in 30 seconds by Simply Asking

I was on Dell’s website shopping for 2 sets of new computers for the new office.

When I’m buying a computer, I am a kid in a candy store. I want to get everything.

After configuring both systems, I was confused about an option on one of the monitors, and I have decided to do a chat with a Dell rep.

I know from experience, and I wasn’t expecting to get a clear answer from Dell’s customer service, but I was surprised.

The customer rep on the chat was very helpful, and answered my question quickly. He’s also recommended a few cool stuff on sale.

Since, I was already over my planned budget for these 2 computers, I told the rep; “I’m already over the budget, but I don’t mind adding your recommendation if you can offer me an extra discount”.

I was expecting an answer like; “you can search for coupons online, or unfortunately we cannot do that, etc.” btw, I’ve already searched for coupons, and best possible deals online. So, I was getting a good deal.

Anyways, the rep said; “Sure, let me take a look at it”.

Within 10 seconds, he’s sent me a link, and when I’ve clicked the link, I have received an additional $100 in my shopping cart. I didn’t have to reconfigure anything (you know it takes time), or play with the shopping cart, etc.

$100 is better than $0. When you adopt this mindset, you can negotiate more in business deals. And, that’s what I’m doing.

At the end, I was a happy customer of Dell, who happened to save extra $100 by simply asking for it.

Dell also won from this transaction. Because I’ve decided to add a Quickbooks Pro 2010 to the transaction, which I was planning to purchase at Amazon. And I’ve left as a happier customer.

Internet Marketers Hesitate to Ask

I have met and know many brilliant internet marketers around the world. One of the main problems with internet marketers is; they are usually a “one man show”, and they are not great with communication.

If you work out of your house, and like to do things your own way, don’t worry, you can still ask for things and it really doesn’t hurt.

If you are in affiliate marketing, are you asking anything else other than a payout increase to your affiliate manager?

Here are just a few ideas you can ask to your affiliate manager;

• Custom creatives for a specific offer
• Custom landing pages specifically for you
• Keyword lists
• White label deals
• Specific toll free number only for your LP (if the offer has a toll free # on it).
• Customer demographics data
• 200 creatives (110×80pixels) to test on Facebook Ads
• And the list goes on….

Your affiliate managers are always ready to help.

They might be nice to you when you keep asking “How Can I Make Money? Could you help me?”, you won’t only be labeled as a newbie, but you will also be made fun of. And asking questions like “how can I make money with affiliate marketing” really won’t help. Or hearing which offer converts the most at the network won’t make you a millionaire.

Instead, prepare smart questions, and ask for help without hesitation.

Remember, whether it’s an affiliate company, or a direct offer you are promoting, they are the ones who need to help you.

At the end, you are sending them more customers, and helping them to make more money every single day.

It doesn’t hurt to ask, prepare your list, and pick up the phone to call your affiliate manager today, and ask for help.

I have a good friend whom I met when I rented my first office in NYC over 4 years ago. His name is Boris.

It was during September 2005, and I was renting my first office to launch my ecommerce business. Boris had an office in the same floor, and he was also launching his local service business at that time.

Both being entrepreneurs, and owners of 2 startups in the same building, we have become friends right away.

Boris was a very smart guy with great potential. He was probably the best sales person I have ever seen in my life.

One day, while we were having lunch in Dumbo, New York, near our offices, he’s overheard a conversation between two gentlemen who were also having lunch at the next table, and Boris found a way to join the conversation without interrupting them.

Within 30 minutes, he has sold a big ticket contract to these people. It is hard to explain, but when Boris started talking, you didn’t have a chance to say no to what he sold. He looked and talked trustworthy, friendly, and he was pretty persuasive.

He was so good at sales, he could pretty much sell anything. That’s the main reason his business started growing pretty fast.

Boris had another skill; networking. He pretty much knew every key contact in New York City. Whenever I needed a contact, it was enough to ask him. He could find the best electrician, customs broker, accountant in the city. He had a great network of business people.

While I was becoming close friends with Boris, I had realized something. He had a huge bottleneck in his business mindset which was going to keep him from becoming one of the most successful businessman in the future.

He was too perfectionist, and he wanted to do everything by himself. Even though he had usually one employee helping him, he was the guy trying to do everything by himself, and also burning out himself with all the unnecessary details.

Boris kept growing his business, and launched an import export company. Don’t get me wrong, he is still very successful compared to many entrepreneurs I’ve met. But he is wasting his huge potential by still trying to do everything by himself. And as a friend, I still tell Boris, he needs to start trusting people and create a team.

Left Brain vs Right Brain Mindset Approach

I won’t get into the details of how important it is to create a team and bore you with my tips. Instead, I will show you how I approach this in my own business.

It is all about the specific tasks. Is it a task that require to use your left brain or right brain? If you can answer this question, it is easy to come up with a plan.

Most business owners ask this question to themselves:

Should I hire somebody for this task, or Should I do it myself?

1. Create a business process flow chart

You can google some examples if you are not familiar with drawing a business process flow chart. Then use a free service like flowchart.com or even photoshop to create the business process flow chart.

2. Mark each step in the flow chart as L or R

For each step, I add a letter L or R. L means left brain, R means right brain.

Let’s say I’m building a network of product review sites. Choosing a niche would be the first main step. I’d mark this step as R. Because choosing a niche is the most important part of this project, and it needs experience and knowhow. It’s not something I can teach somebody in a few minutes. But uploading a wordpress would be L. Because I can create a short screencast video and teach one of employees how to upload and setup wordpress.

You see where I’m going from here right?

If you clearly identify the business process steps as L and R, your job becomes much easier to find the right people and manage the project.

3. Time to find people

Since I have clearly identified the steps with L and R. It’s time to find the right people who will be doing the left brain tasks (teachable, kind of easy, more data entry type).

This is the step which shows if you are a good businessman or not. You have options; hiring full time, part-time, outsourcing, crowdsourcing, or even finding a JV partner.

4. Proper Training & Management

When you found the right people for the tasks, it is time to train these people and manage them.

5. Working less hours for more success

Now, I have a team of people (full time, outsourced, part time, etc.) well trained, and working on the tasks simultaneously, like the workers in a factory assembly line. As the business owner, I can focus on managing the team, motivating them, planning for scaling, and enjoy working less hours for more success.

This is so important in business, I will also write some case studies about creating a team soon.

6. Taking it to the next level

Find team members for the right brain tasks. Yes, you need experienced people, and they cost more. But finding the people for the right brain tasks will take your business to the next level.

While you are coming up with the ideas, your right brain people will help you with decision making and managing your team. This is the only way to grow fast without losing control.

Whether you run a small local business, an internet marketing company or an affiliate marketing business, if you try to do everything yourself, you won’t achieve the ultimate success you deserve with your potential.

It is time to adopt this mindset, create your team, and turn the 4 hour workweek myth into a reality.

When Timothy Ferriss wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, it wasn’t a big surprise to me that the book had become the #1 New York Times Bestseller, #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller, and #1 BusinessWeek Bestseller.

In my opinion, the huge success behind this book was the title. Title promised a result most readers were looking for and it was the smart marketing move by Timothy Ferriss.

Every single day, hundreds of new internet marketing courses, ebooks, and trainings are becoming available to people who want to start living the dream life of an internet marketer. They all sell on the promise of the 4-hour workweek.

Whether you want to learn affiliate marketing, achieve passive income by SEO, or excel in any type of internet marketing, get ready to hear the hurtful truth;

The 4 Hour Workweek Promise is a Huge Lie

Most people think internet marketing is the dream job where we work whenever we want, wherever we want. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

I agree, making money online has some invaluable advantages over a regular 9 to 5 job. It is very flexible compared to a regular job and it is rewarding as hell when you succeed.

But, being successful in internet marketing needs a certain type of mindset, and it’s definitely not the 4 hour workweek mindset when you are just starting.

Are You Ready for the 80 Hour Workweek?

Probably, you have recognized the picture of a very happy guy on the hammock by the beach. This is a classic picture used on many make money online websites.

Let’s start with erasing this picture in your mind, and using a more realistic one:

Instead of having fun on a tropical island beach, this is where you will be spending your days and nights for a long time. So, get ready to a 80 hour workweek.

I have met so many people who were so eager to start making money online, but failed working enough to achieve their dreams. You know yourself better than anybody around you, if you are lazy and you are not ready to make some serious changes in your lifestyle, online marketing is not for you.

Especially if you are new to the game, you have to forget about the 4 hour workweek, and get ready to the idea that you will work more than anybody around you.

But, when you start understanding the internet marketing, getting more experienced by the day, it doesn’t hurt to start adapting the 4 Hour Workweek Mindset.

How to Achieve the True 4 Hour Workweek Mindset

1. Adopt the Correct Business Mindset

Whether it’s internet marketing or any business you are getting into, you have to have the correct mindset to be able to succeed. Don’t let excuses to be the barrier to your success. Keep your focus on creating a business, and dream about your long term goals, but always setup short term goals.

2. Focus on Increasing Your Productivity

Sometimes the bottlenecks to keep you from achieving ultimate productivity are easily fixable. Find the bottlenecks, and constraints that keep you from being productive and fix them no matter what. Here’s an example of how I have increased my productivity by fixing 2 bottlenecks in my workflow.

3. Always Use the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle (80-20 Rule) is the key to working less for the same amount of tangible & intangible success. Never waste your time on small, unnecessary details and never miss the big picture.

4. Create a Team & Learn to Trust Them

Many people who make money online are smart and perfectionist. Creating team is not that hard. Whether you outsource or hire full time employees, you can find the right people to work for you. But, trusting your team, giving them some serious responsibilities, and rewarding them for the achievements is the hardest part for an entrepreneur. If your team of employees feel that you trust them, they will take more responsibilities, and help you achieve your goals faster.

5. Automation is the Key to Passive & Long Term Income

When you start excelling the ins and outs of internet marketing, your goal should be focusing on creating automation. For every new project opportunity, find ways to automate the business processes to achieve the long term success. Find and use the right tools and software to implement automation in your business, such as the best project management software. When you start analyzing the possible projects from the automation perspective, you will get close to reaching the 4-Hour Workweek mindset.

Today is the day to make a decision. Whether keep dreaming about the 4-hour workweek on a tropical island beach, or keep it real and start working the 80 hour workweek, and learn how to adopt the 4 hour workweek mindset to take your internet business to the next level.

au·thor·i·ty noun: the power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.

Authority is powerful stuff.

Authority can be abused and it can definitely corrupt…

But it can also build trust, admiration, and respect.

And when it comes to online marketing…

Authority is what works.

This is written on the first page of a free eBook called Authority Rules. It’s written by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark. It is a short and right to the point report, and you should definitely check it out (pdf link).

True Power of Authority

Can you pre-sell 3000 copies of a, yet not printed, book and generate over $100.000 within 48 hours?

No, you cannot, unless you are the authority in your niche.

This is exactly what Seth Godin did on December 2nd. He’s sold 3000 books which will be published in 2010, and generated over $100.000 revenue (going to charity in this case) within 48 hours.

Seth Godin is an authority in marketing. When he writes, when he talks, when he teaches, people listen to him, and people follow what he says.

How Can You Be the Authority in Your Niche?

1. Be Different

What makes you different from the others in your niche? If you can’t be different and unique, you won’t succeed. You are different when you start setting trends instead of following them.

2. Don’t be the Salesman

There are enough salesmen in every niche already. Don’t try to sell anything. If you want to create the trust relationship with your audience, you don’t have a luxury of offering sales pitches. Your audience is smarter than you think. People love to buy stuff, but they hate to feel sold!

3. Inspire & Lead

Your followers need inspiration, everybody needs inspiration. As the authority figure, you have to inspire your followers constantly. You have to be a great leader at the same time.

When you are the authority in your niche, people will follow what you do, buy what you recommend, and take what you offer. This is a power you can’t buy with money, and you have to use it fairly.

Whether it’s a website, an affiliate marketing project, a community platform or your personal brand, spend the time to put some hard work in becoming the authority to dominate your niche.

Whether you have a college degree or not, if you want to succeed in business life, you need to constantly improve yourself. Personal growth is the main key to become better in business and life.

If you work for a large business, you might be getting free trainings, seminars, tools and resources, that is great. If you are a small business owner, you might be trying your best to improve yourself by reading books related to your field, following industry blogs, and even entering executive education programs. These are all good.

In addition to all of these, what if you had the chance to attend a “Introduction to Statistics” class at one of the top universities in the world such as MIT or Stanford, would you take it? How about the accounting class that you’ve never taken seriously at school, but now, you know how important it is to know the fundamentals of accounting. Would you like to attend an accounting class and learn the basics from one of the top accounting professors in the world?

There is absolutely no excuse not to improve yourself with all the opportunities internet brings us.

Here are my top 5 favorite online learning resources:

• Academic Earth: One of my favorites. Academic Earth brings us absolutely free video courses from some of the top universities in the nation. Academic Earth currently offers course videos from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale.
• Open Course Ware by MIT: Maybe the tuition was too expensive or you simply weren’t accepted. You don’t have to worry that you couldn’t get an MIT degree anymore. MIT opens up its classes by Open Course Ware. Go catch a class now and get the great education you’ve always wanted.
• Yauba: Yauba is actually a search engine, but it does a great job bringing you the great learning resources.
• Itunes University: Apple’s Itunes University is currently offering over 200.000 education videos and audio and growing.
• TED: TED is my all time favorite. Nothing to add to TED, simply; “Ideas worth spreading”

Do you use any other great online learning resources other than the ones in this list? I’ll be happy to add your favorites to this list if you share them in the comments.

I have a hell of a busy schedule in April, but New York City Entrepreneur Week is coming soon, and I can’t resist to attend some of the sessions.

There’s a huge list of great speakers at the event.

If you will be in New York City between April 20th and 24th, you shouldn’t miss this event. I will update my post with which sessions I’ll be attending after registering.

Leave a comment if you will be at the event. I will be happy to meet and network.