1
Confessions of an Entrepreneur
One night I was driving my car down a long, dark, and dangerous road. It was an old beat-up car Iâd purchased with all my savings. Its list of problems was long and included an engine that continually overheated, almost-bald tires, and broken windshield wipers. It was raining heavily that night and my damaged wipers were not helping me see ahead.
The road was slippery and I had to continually slow down to make sure I wouldnât slip off and smash into a pole. A glance at my engine gauge showed that it was nearly in the red zone but I reassured myself that I wasnât very far from home. There were times when I had to park the car by the side of the road and wait for a whole hour for it to cool but I guess I was lucky that night and didnât need to do that.
I managed to keep the engine temperature just out of the red zone by not accelerating too much uphill and whenever I made it up the hill I would just let the car coast to minimize engine use. I also had other ways of keeping it cool, like keeping the air conditioner turned off.
dp n="19" folio="2" ?As my car rolled, the only thing I could see were red traffic lights and headlights passing through the busy intersection at the bottom of the hill. At that point, I began thinking about where my life was. I realized that Iâd spent over 10 years in school and another six years in university. During that time, Iâd toiled over countless exams, research, assignments, and homework. I used to study long into the night with the dream of landing a good IT job or owning a business in that industry.
All my friends had gotten jobs right after they finished university. I seemed to be the only one who struggled and companies didnât want to hire. Finally, after 11 months of cover letters, rĂŠsumĂŠ rewrites, job applications, and interviews, I got lucky and landed a job as a software developer.
After two and a half years, I realized that a software programming job was not right for me. It was time to chase my dream and start my own web design business. I thought about the fact that as a result of 16 years of schooling, two years of employment and two years of running that business, I was driving an old, beat-up car with broken wipers, bald tires, and an overheating engine.
Not only was my car was struggling but my business was struggling, as well. I became frustrated with my business problems. I couldnât get any clients, generate any website traffic, or make any online sales. My website was even banned from search engines and I received negative feedback from one person commenting, âYour website looks like * * * * and youâre supposed to be a web design company!â
Finally, the scariest fact was that I only made $200 in two years of running my business! It was certainly not enough to fund my dreams and lifestyle. It was at that moment that I faced reality and realized that I was a failure.
I felt like a loser who had wasted his entire life working toward something that never succeeded. It was the feeling of preparing my whole life for something, being given a chance, and then missing my opportunity. I started to imagine how athletes feel when they spend their whole lives training, waking up early in the morning to practice over and over. Finally when itâs time to compete in the world, they miss their goal by a millisecond or a centimeter, and then itâs over. Thatâs how I felt, like it was over.
As I got closer to the traffic lights, cars were still crossing through the intersection and I didnât even bother to hit the brakes. I just let my car roll faster toward the swarm of cars so I could end it right there and start over again. I was hoping for a crash. There are dark moments in your life when you feel like giving up and forget everyone else around you. That night was my dark moment.
Then all of a sudden, it hit me like a car crash. Fortunately, it wasnât a car crash. It was an epiphany.
The Epiphany
The epiphany was that I was doing the wrong things in my business. I was reading the wrong books, and spending time on the wrong aspects of the business. Iâd been spending months writing a business plan, designing beautiful business cards and logos, and preparing my legal structure. Many people had given me advice about what to do to be successful, but I wasnât achieving any sort of success at all.
I also spent a lot of money on the wrong books, research, and advertising material, which generated zero income for me. Many of the books I bought talked about how to go from zero to millionaire in record time. But letâs be honest here, did I really believe I could do that?
I knew I had to make a decision about what I was going to do next because time was running out.
The Life-Changing Decision
It was then I realized Iâd made a lot of mistakes and needed to wipe the slate clean and start again, without purposely injuring myself or someone else. I decided to start another company the next morning. This time, I wasnât going to spend time or money on business plans, reports, invoices, or other tedious activities. This time, I was going to focus my efforts on generating sales and tweak my business later.
Thatâs it!
I didnât care if I didnât have a business plan or the right infrastructure or perfect clothes and shoes for client meetings. I didnât bother with stationery or fridge magnets anymore. None of those things bought me any business. Two hundred dollars in two years was a good indicator that what Iâd been doing wasnât working.
This time, I was going to get out there and actively find clients. That night, I hit the brakes and started my life over. My goal was to generate more business with my website.
Starting Over
A few months later, I made huge breakthroughs with my business and website. I attracted more clients than ever before, managed to find ways to attract massive traffic to my website, and even discovered how to convert that traffic into thousands of dollars in sales each month.
As a result, that income enabled me to buy my dream apartment next to a beautiful river, just minutes from the city. It also allowed me to travel the world and visit my dream destinations of Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, New York, Hawaii, and more. My ideas also led me to launch several other high-traffic websites that generated income while I slept.
I was also able to achieve another dream, which was to contribute thousands of dollars to charity instead of the smaller donations I used to give. I was only 26 years old and my dream had come true!
This book contains the techniques and strategies I used to turn my life around, from rolling my car down hill toward an accident to making thousands of dollars a month and flying around the world, visiting dream destinations.
It never ceases to amaze me how just a few minor tweaks to your website can massively increase your income online and dramatically change your life. The great news about this book is that Iâve written it in an easy-to-digest style so you can derive the same results that I did.
Itâs like riding a bike.
Think of the first time you rode your bike. You probably hopped on the seat and fell off immediately. You tried it again and fell off. Eventually, you managed to balance sitting on the seat. When you tried to pedal, you may have fallen off again or slowly started moving.
Thatâs the purpose of my book.
There are many books out there that expect you ride in the Tour de France when you canât even balance on a bike. You have to learn how to crawl before you walk and eventually run.
Therefore, this book is not about getting you to make millions online; rather, itâs about helping you crawl first in making your first thousand dollars online by driving more traffic to your site, and then converting that traffic to sales.
Once youâve achieved your goal of generating that first thousand, all you have to do is duplicate what you did over and over until you hit your financial target.
If making that amount of money doesnât fuel your burning desire, then I suggest you to put this book down or give it to someone who may benefit from it.
However, if youâre interested in learning how to make more money with your website that will give you a second income, help you save for your next overseas holiday, put together a deposit on a new home or purchase that car youâve wanted (one that has window wipers that actually work), I invite you to keep reading.
Now, letâs start the journey and get you sitting on that bike.
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The Cash Website Triangle
What Iâm about to show you is a result of over 15 years of experimenting, testing, refining, spending money, and losing money. The result came from building over 100 websites from scratch. Iâve analyzed thousands of websites, which all seemed to follow a specific pattern.
All those late nights designing and building accumulated into something valuable that Iâm about to share with you.
If I could show you a diagram of what I believe is the foundation of all website success, it would show that no matter how far into the future you reach, this diagram, or formula, will function positively in a capitalist society.
What if there were one foundation, principle, or path that would guarantee online success? What would it be?
I answered that question by constructing my Cash Website Triangle diagram.
This diagram is the only guide you need for online success. Many websites use the principles explained in this chapter. Iâve seen other people making vast amounts of money with their websites using them. Their tools and methods all vary but the principals are the same. As technology advances, this diagram will still stand true.
I call this diagram the Cash Website Triangle Š.
How does this diagram work? I believe there are three factors that are necessary for a website to generate income. One canât exist without the others and they all depend on one another. Each side has pressure from the amount of quality being applied to it.
A triangle requires all three sides to be stable. If you were to remove one side, the triangle would collapse; therefore, each side depends on the others to maintain the structure.
The three sides are:
⢠Marketing
⢠Traffic
⢠Product/Service
In the next few sections, I give you an overview of each category but they wonât be complete because there is so much information to cover, which would easily fill another book. We get into pertinent details later in the process.
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The Marketing Side of the Triangle
Marketing is the way in which you present your information to the public so it can take action. For example, if you were marketing wheatgrass juice, you would want to make it attractive to a specific audience.
Your website could target health-conscious people by including content that touts the health attributes of your juice above all others. You may include data on nutritional content and the functions of those vitamins, minerals, and amino acids in preventing certain diseases, or you might provide quotes from medical health professionals on the benefits of drinking wheatgrass juice.
When you research your target market youâll want to investigate the reasons your target audience chooses certain brands of wheatgrass juice. Is it because of health, price, status, or convenience? Or does it taste more palatable?
What would happen if you matched targeted quality traffic (the right demographic on your site) and quality product (healthy, high-quality juice) with very poor marketing?
This is what would happen:
A health-conscious man wants to lose weight and his doctor advises him to increase his nutritional intake of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids through a sensible diet, daily vitamin supplements, and an exercise program. The man goes online to order a supplement and finds your juice, with all of the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids already in it.
He also finds that your product is grown organically in mineralrich soil and harvested with a fair trade process, indicating that it is a quality product. When he tries to move forward in searching your site he sees a generic message such as:
âWe are the premier wheatgrass distributors in the world. The quality of our product is guaranteed.â
Notice anything familiar? The nonspecific copy makes it sound like every other health supplement peddler out there.
dp n="27" folio="10" ?He clicks around some more and discovers snazzy photos of your delivery trucks and storage facility. He keeps searching because your site is cluttered and itâs hard for him to find what he needs. Not only can he not find that specific mineral information, but each page takes a long time to load, indicating poor design; not exactly the image of a top-notch company, and possibly a shoddy product, as well.
He loses patience looking for the mineral attributes and leaves to go search for another company that will provide him with âgetting healthy with vitamins and minerals.â
Youâve just lost a customer (and possibly more, had he referred his friends, as well). The copy âgetting healthy with vitamins and mineralsâ should have been on the front page of...