"The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning."

Oprah Winfrey

Be a specialist

At school you had been taught that you needed to know as much as you could about all kinds of topics that you were probably not even interested in (e.g. for me the horrors were math and physics…). It would not have made sense to have been focused on just one of these subjects because if you had done that, you would not have made it to the next grade.

In Internet marketing it all is a little different. Here, you should NOT try to be the 'Mr. or Mrs. Knowitall' but the specialist, the go to guy/gal, in ONE area of Internet marketing. This can be e.g. an SEO expert, the software developer, a Google Adwords specialist or a copywriter or more recently, the Web 2.0 guy/gal.

Personally, I would brand myself as the software developer since that is where my expertise is. But more recently, I have also become very experienced in creating VRE (virtual real estate) websites using Wordpress so I can also say that I am a blogging specialist.

Whatever it is that you do, make sure you learn as much as you can about your area of expertise. Strive to become the best you can be. Just like a doctor or a lawyer learns everything he can about his medicine or laws, you need to do the same in your area.

And it never stops. If you have a passion for something, you will like it to learn more and more about it in order to become the best.

Give me crap and I’ll let others know…

Personally, I love to educate myself about all the new ways of making money online (this is a treat of all the top Internet marketers – they never stop educating themselves!). I am the kind of guy people want to have on their lists because I am constantly buying their stuff – presupposed it’s not just rehashed material (and if it is, I'll get myself a refund).

As long as I am getting at least one good idea from a product which can make me more money when implementing it in my own business, I won’t be asking for a refund. But give me crap and not only will I be asking for my money back but I’ll let my list know about it as well so they can avoid it and not waste their hard earned money…!

Focus on one project at a time

When I was attending the Internet Millionaire’s Bootcamp in London in October of 2006, Mike Filsaime said something on stage that I’ll never forget: “You need to focus on one project at a time”. Even though it sounds so simple, most people do completely the opposite.

Focusing on one project at a time will bring you income much quicker than trying to get multiple projects finished at the same time – something which can almost never be achieved. So the key to success is just to focus on the one project that will be bringing you the greatest revenue within the shortest amount of time.

You know, even I, as a very experienced Internet marketer, sometimes made the mistake of wanting to achieve too much at the same time. Instead of working on one project until it was finished, I was trying to handle 3-4 projects at a time. And the result was that nothing got finished in time and my income was suffering from it. Because not being able to finish a project means less income.

In Internet marketing, you better come up with new products quickly because you will soon be forgotten if you don’t. You must be the innovator, the one who is coming up with new, helpful products that your subscribers and customers want to buy from you.

(For example, that's why I relaunched my Niche Content Websites - membership site because I saw that my business wasn't different enough from the businesses of others who were selling the same kind of products. I wanted to get a better USP - a unique selling proposition which was better than most of my competitors by selling UNIQUE websites to people who are interested in making a living from niche type of VRE websites. This has become the solution for people who can't design their own websites or don't know how to implement monetization modules - now everything's done for them…!)

If you don’t know what they want, ask them! Your products must become the solutions for their problems.

Outsource everything you don't want to do yourself

And you don’t even have to create these products yourself. That’s what outsourcing is for. No one is expecting from you, if you e.g. have a great idea for a software tool, that you need to create it yourself. Just hire someone on Elance.com or ScripLance.com, tell him or her what you want to have done, and they’ll do it for you – at a very reasonable price.

For example, I had my AffiliateTurbo software programmed by a programmer which I found on ScriptLance. I paid about $400 for it and I made more than $10,000 from this tiny investment. And the same was the case with my Blog Promoter software. (in the meantime, I’ve sold both businesses for several thousands of $$… they simply were too work intensive as they required a lot of updates on an almost daily basis).

By knowing what you want to achieve and what your goals are, you'll actually get there much quicker. You simply need to be the one who plans it all - it's not necessary that you are doing everything yourself. And all the steps which are needed to get there, will fall into place almost automatically.

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(This article is an excerpt from my Revenue Blueprint ebook. If you liked the article, then why not get yourself a copy of the complete works at http://www.revenueblueprint.com/ ?)

Tags: adsense, adwords, affiliate, ebook, google adwords, internet marketing, mike filsaime, seo, seo expert, vre websites, web 2.0, websites

I am answering a new question here which I got from one of my subscribers. This answer is with regards to a promotion which I sent out for my Niche Content Websites membership site:

Hi,

I've had VRE for awhile now and was getting ready to put some sites up when Google came around with their last slap with the Adwords arbritrage thing. Many folks lost their Adwords account and many of them were pointing to their VRE sites.

With Google penalizing Adsense sites, like VRE, where there are just a few articles posted and tons of Adsense ads, how can anyone really use vre anymore? I know that Google isn't the only fish in the sea, but unless you use Adwords to get traffic, you are basically stuck with just writing articles, manual linking etc. Does not seem like a very good use of your time.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Peter T.

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My answer:

Hi Peter,

The abbreviation VRE in itself does not imply that these sites will get punished. Google did not punish real content sites with genuine articles and enough other links or ads to click on. What they did punish were sites which had NOTHING ELSE there but a bunch of links and no content whatsoever and two Adsense blocks at the top so this was the only thing people could see when they arrived on such a site. Most of them were sites built with so called portal builder softwares. I have more than 60 of these real article VRE sites online and I still have an active Adsense account.

And I don't agree that Adwords or Google Arbitrage is the only way of getting traffic. Things like Web 2.0 (Digg, Technorati, Squidoo, YouTube, Google Video, MySpace etc.) can have a HUGE impact on the number of visitors. Personally, I'm getting more visitors from using these techniques than from the search engines themselves. This is true especially for non-unique sites and content. The problem with it is that people are just too lazy to drive traffic to the sites.

They want to upload them as they are without changing anything and just put a link out there so the spiders come over and they can make money on autopilot. Sorry to be so blunt but it simply doesn't work that way. There IS work involved in making money from these kind of websites or all members of so called VRE websites would be making enough money to quit their jobs. The ones who are getting active in driving traffic to their sites are really enjoying a healthy income.

So I'm sorry to destroy a dream bubble that you can have some kind of push-button solution. Yes, you still need to get links, you still need to submit articles, you still need to make posts on related forums etc. etc. or these sites are collecting "digital dust" and no one will visit them!

Best regards,

Detlev Reimer

Tags: adsense, adwords, search engines, technorati, traffic, vre websites, web 2.0, websites