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Early this week a guy came to me desperate for help. His story, unfortunately, is all to similar to so many others. No one gets into making money online because they’re already millionaires and just looking for a change.

Well, maybe “no one” is a bit extreme but we could probably count those people with the fingers on one hand.

Anyhow, what I told him in the privacy of our forum I thought I would share with everyone. It’s a very important lesson that EVERY rookie needs to adopt as a law.

Tell me if this story sounds familiar…

“I’ve been trying to make money online for
months/years now. I’ve bought every report
and still nothing I try seems to be working.
Whats worse is my spouse is REALLY OVER IT
now. Our finances are so screwed up that I
literally must do anything I can at this point
or I could lose my house. Please help me find
the right path and the quickest way to
MAKE MONEY NOW!”

It’s basically the same story I get from every one who comes to me for help. If that story sounds anything like what you’re going through right now then you need to read EVERY word of this blog post.

Turn off the TV

Ask someone to watch the kids

Food can wait

I don’t consider myself a guru, and I don’t like that some people are starting to call me one. I’m just a normal guy who never gave up on his dream. It wasn’t long ago that I had that same sad story.

My wife was pregnant, working full time, and a full time college student. While I was at home desperately trying to figure out how to make money online. I went 5 months without making a dime and my family had all the smack talk in the world about “how could he be doing that to her.”

What I’m about to tell you is the “mental flip” I experienced that cured myself of that story of desperation. The secret is right under your noses and the “guru’s” are practically screaming it at you. However, it’s not the fun and exciting part of their lessons so it’s easily skipped over.

The Problem

“10 yellowbelts does not equal 1 blackbelt”

This one is not really your fault, it’s the fault of every over hyped salespage that promises you money overnight. Sure, it really is possible to make money overnight. Just not as easy as it sounds for the brand new rookie with no list, no website, no budget, and no skills.

However, just because I took the blame off of you doesn’t mean you’re free and clear. You need to realize, here and now, that making money online is going to take some work. It’s no different from any sport, trade, or martial art.

In order to get your blackbelt you first need to master the white belt phase, then yellow, green, blue, red, finally you get to the blackbelt level where you are really kicking ass.

In baseball you start out in T-ball, then little league, middle school, high school, college, minors, then finally you get into the pro level in the major leagues.

What most people are doing is buying an ebook or course, then trying it out for a couple weeks. They don’t make thousands. Instead maybe if they were lucky they made $100, but most of the time they come up with nothing.

So then the rookie see’s another promising course and repeats the process only to quit at the yellowbelt level again. Years go by and this is where we get to the part of the “story” where they claim to have tried everything.

Yes, they tried everything but they also quit everything. They got their yellowbelt and then quit because they couldn’t beat up all the other blackbelts.

I’m no different then you. I have literally cried because things have gotten so hard. I swore up and down that I was going to quit. “It’s too hard, it’s not worth it, I want to try something else.” Trust me, Russell Brunson (my mentor) has heard me make every excuse under the sun.

I’ve been there!

Instead of quitting forever though – I just quit for that day. I would storm away from my desk yelling at the walls about how my membership site software just wouldn’t work. Or my Adwords account was costing me more then it was making me.

I would tell Chaunna (my wife) that I quit for today. I’ll get back to it tomorrow with a better attitude, clear mind, and rejuvinated patience.

The point is that I never fully gave up. I pushed through the awkward mindbreaking levels of whitebelt and yellowbelt. It’s because I pushed through, that I got into the higher levels where things started “working” and money started coming in.

It wasn’t floods of money either!

I took me about 8 months to go from $30/month to $1,500/month. I call that $1,500/month my greenbelt phase. Things were starting to really click at that phase and it wasn’t hard to duplicate what I had done a couple times to get into the $5,000/month (my idea of a redbelt).

Now, because I was willing to stay disciplined and focused I’m making 5 figures per month. Just like you though I still get stuck. This year I did less then last year. I got fancy, tried a lot of different things, tried to do things “my way.”

I’m back on the right track again finally after the last couple months and $500k to $1mil is within my reach this year. I don’t say that to brag, but to show you what is possible when you practice discipline and focus.

The Solution

“There’s a reason why the basics are called THE BASICS”

If you’re a rookie then you are a whitebelt. Just like when you practice a martial art, like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, in real life you’ll start out with a few basic punches and kicks. When you master them, then you will be ready for your yellowbelt.

When you are a yellowbelt you’ll be given a few more punches and kicks that work a little bit faster and more effectively, so on and so on until you’ve reached your blackbelt.

What are the basics you should be practicing?

No matter what you are doing from affiliate marketing to selling your own product or service. There are some basic marketing strategies that you must master. Below you’ll find my opinion on what these basics are and some exercises you can do to master them.

1.) Market Research & Copywriting (whitebelt)

Name any niche and then go find 2 magazines, 2 forums, 2 clickbank products and 2 competitors. If it doesn’t have at least those minimum requirements then it’s probably not a profitable niche. Now you must use those sources you’ve found to name 7 things that target market is already buying.

For each of those 7 items you must write down what problem that purchase solves for the buyer. Now pick one of those 7 items and write out 7 ways purchasing that product will impact the buyers life. Now pick a real life friend of yours and write them a personal email but don’t actually send it.

Pretend that friend of yours is a potential customer for that item you picked. Your email to them CANNOT be a sales pitch. You must write it like you would talk to them normally. Think about how you might tell them about a great movie you’ve just seen.

You’re job is not to sell stuff but to become a “customer assistant.” If it helps pretend you work for them and your job is to find them solutions to their problems.

In that letter you need to include the problem your item solves and the 7 ways it will impact their life. Then ask them to go check it out for themselves.

Repeat this exercise over and over until you can complete it within 30 minutes. If you can get to that point you will now be a master at identifying profitable niches, identifying the needs of a market, and writing benefit filled copy with a personal tone.

That’s the basics for selling anything online whether it be a clickthrough, opt-in, or product purchase.

2.) Creating Offers & Building A Sales Funnel (yellowbelt)

Now we’re taking all of your whitebelt “moves” and applying them to create a real life sales process. First you need to expand upon your personal letters you’ve been writing but not sending. You want to turn those letters into a full blown landing page.

For an example you can use my own EasyTaguchi.com – If you want to learn how to write landing pages like that, then there’s nothing I could recommend higher then Mark Acutt’s Cash Presell Method. Here’s a video showing you what you’ll learn in his report.

Cash Presell Method

After you’ve written your landing page you need to start driving some traffic to that page. The way I started out was by taking ten keywords related to my offer and starting an Adwords account.

I didn’t have much money so I had to keep my budget to $2/day. I put each keyword in it’s own ad group, wrote three different ads (to split test them), and turned off the content network (click fraud).

At the end of that month I had made enough to up my campaign to $5/day, then next month to $10/day. I got to where I was buying every click possible for almost 200 different keywords. It didn’t all happen over night though. It took about 4 months to get to that level and that site was making me $3,500 per month before I sold it for $15,000.

Once you’ve got your landing page, and some traffic coming in, you need to start tracking your marketing efforts. Meaning using something like Google analytics to track how many visitors you’re getting against how many sales your making. Plus how much it’s costing you to make those sales so you can see whether you are making a profit or not.

You want to know things like:

How much money am I making (on average) per every visitor that hits my page?
How much money am I spending (on average) per sale that comes in?
How much profit am I making?

Even at this point you may not be making thousands of dollars. If you can at least breakeven at this point then you are doing great. Now you just need to get some advice on how to make things better. Which is where you get into the greenbelt phase (in my opinion).

The worst thing you could do at this point is give up. It would be like trying to swim across the english channel and giving up 75% of the way across only to turn around and swim back. That would be moronic right? But people are doing it everyday.

It’s much easier to stay on course and ask someone how to make it past the last 25% then it is to turn around and re-swim that 75%.

I hope this post has made some lightbulbs go on over your head. I will continue this lesson in another blog post real soon. However, at this point you should know the importance of the basics, having discipline to stay the course, and have some exercises that you can go take action on.

What I want you to do now…

Re-read this post and create 4 to-do lists. Each to-do list should take you one week to complete. And then next to-do list should move you forward from your last. With your last to-do list having you complete the very last steps mentioned in this post.

Example:

Week 1
- Find 10 niches
- Find 2 of each item for each niche
- Name 7 things each niche is already buying
- Name what problems those purchases solve for those buyers

NOTE: If I get stuck I can ask Justin for help in the Mafia Forum

Week 2
- For each niche pick one product they are already buying and write out 7 ways that product impacts their life
- Write a letter to one of my friends about each of those products

NOTE: If I get stuck I can ask Justin for help in the Mafia Forum

Week 3
- Pick my 3 favorite niches from weeks 1 & 2
- Read Mark’s Cash Presell Method from front to back
- Go back through the report and follow along with
the first niche of my 3 favorites

NOTE: If I get stuck I can ask Justin for help in the Mafia Forum

Week 4
- Repeat Mark’s process for my other 2 favorite niches
that I picked in week 3

Show Justin and ask for the next steps

Please don’t just read this post… DO THIS POST! I’ll continue with greenbelt through redbelt in the next blog post that I write. As always I’m here for you with any questions or comment you have. Comments and compliments go down below. For complaints hold down the ALT button and press f + x.

Tagged as: basics, blackbelt, fundamentals, making money online