Overnight Success and Instant Riches – Myth or Reality?

Yesterday, I told you that I made $1,000.20 in a night.

And that’s true. But in a greater context, it’s not true. No, I didn’t yank your chain, I really did make that much money in one evening. But in the greater context, we have to look at how I reached the point where it’s possible for me to make 1k in one night.

You see, in another sense, that headline could just have easily read “How I made $1,000.20 in a Year”. Doesn’t quite have the same impact, though, does it? But it has been a little over a year since I made Remarkablogger into a real business.

Over that time:

• I grew my subscribers to over 2,600 by providing the best free content I could create. 
• I grew my Twitter followers in a few months to over 2,100 by providing value and engaging with people. 
• In less than a month, I have grown my Remarkanotes email list to over 300 subscribers by providing cool links and information you can’t get on the blog.

Sometimes, what I have to offer is not free. Sometimes, it costs a little money. My strategy is dead simple, and it works: make the free stuff great, but make the paid stuff flat-out amazing. There’s your big internet marketing “secret”, right there. Really sleazy and spammy, huh?

So before I go off on a tangent about internet marketing, let me make my main point: it took me at least a year of hard work and intense study to achieve my “overnight” success. Luck had nothing to do with it. I am not part of some “elite” or “A-list”. I started at the beginning, just like everyone else.

Many of you are at the beginning right now.

Yes, You Can

What I’m doing and what I’m showing is attainable. When I started doing this, I made anywhere from a couple hundred bucks extra a month to several thousand dollars… but in some months I made nothing beyond my day job at all. We’re not talking about insane, unbelievable amounts of money, here. 

Example

Say you write an ebook and you want to sell it online. Let’s do a little math here to show you what I mean (by the way, I hate math, but I hate it much less when there are dollar signs involved). Let’s say your ebook sells for only $19.99 and you sell only 10 copies of it. That’s about $200 you didn’t have before. If you take out hosting and domain costs for a product website and pay-per-click advertising costs, you should still have a profit.

But if you sold that product from your self-hosted blog, and you have been building up an audience that is hungry for what you have to offer, your costs are less and your sales will be greater. Let’s say you sold 10 ebooks without the expenses of a new domain/hosting and online advertising: that’s $200 free and clear.

That’s your cable bill, or perhaps your electric bill. It’s slightly better or more Christmas presents. It’s you finally taking your wife out for a nice dinner and a movie. The point is, you have it. 

With a little more work, you could have a product that sells for $39, $47, $129, or even $197. If it’s something your audience wants and is willing to pay for, then you’re really in business. Selling 30 copies of a $39 product earns you $1,170. That’s not a lot of sales, by the way–not for something sold online.

Affiliates

Let’s take this to the next step, now. Say you create an affiliate program for your ebook so that other people can sell it for you. You make a chunk and they make a chunk. The profits from the higher sales volume utterly dwarf what you’re paying out to your affiliates in commissions.

Using the previous numbers, let’s say that on top of the 30 sales at $39, you also have 5 affiliates. These 5 affiliates collectively sell a total of 50 of your ebooks for a 50% cut. That’s another $975, for a total of $2,145.

How to Begin

These numbers are ridiculously conservative, because I don’t want you to think I’m exaggerating. The truth is, you could easily sell more than 30 copies. You could easily have more than 5 affiliates, and those affiliates could easily sell more than 50 ebooks collectively.

Again, my point: this is totally realistic and do-able. It’s not some impossible dream that only some people can do but others cannot. You can do this.

But you can’t reach the point where I’m at right now unless you take the first step.

Online Business School will get you started.