Ok… since today is “technically” a ‘holiday’ ekeke, here’s a little something for ya to digest…

Do You Need Technical Knowledge?

It’s very common for people to think that they need to be technically “savvy” to do this, but that could be further from the truth!

In fact, I’m technophobic myself. (For those who know me well, they’ll know how ‘useless’ I can be at these stuff sometimes hahhaa.. eh sorryla I know I not so brainy like you ppl k but at least I’m ‘trying’ k

Ok anyway back to serious-ness…

Well, the reality is, in order to be successful in this, one just has to understand how things ‘work’, as in how to drive traffic to your sites and how to convert those virtual visitors into paying customers in the best possible ‘friction-free’ process.

(It does not matter what business model you’re operating right now: PPC, Adsense, blogs, shopping carts, physical products, reseller, ebay, affiliate mktg, bla, bla, bla, the SAME principal applies)

Really.

Think carefully, it has it’s truths in it

Of course, there’s much more detail that goes into how to do that but simply put, you have to understand marketing; not just any form or marketing, but ONLINE MARKETING that works.

(Ok-lah, bluff you la.. actually it’s a little more complicated than that-lah hahaha… but if you don’t already know, under the sub-heading of online marketing is fu^king a lot of stuff k, so again, ‘technically’ I’m still telling the truth *tsk tsk*)

As for all the technicalities that comes with it, what we’ll usually do is to hire good people; tell them exactly what we want, how we want them to be done and they are the ones that gets the job done, simply because they’re the best at what they do.

We don’t see the point in spending hours of our time learning and doing something which may turn out to be a low quality, third-rated, lousy-ass job anyway.

Similarly, if you’re just starting out, you don’t have to do everything yourself either, just find someone who knows this stuff; fresh graduates, freelancers or anyone you know who’s web-savvy, pay them a small fee and that’s it!

Understand that as a business owner, your primary job is to MARKET and SELL your products & services to whoever who wants it in any possible way you can, which makes you, first and foremost, a marketer and NOT anything else. I’ve found that to be the fastest way to grow online.

[Side Note]: This is only meant for beginners. When one goes to the next level, it’s a D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T mindset for operations and directions. We’ll leave that bit for another day.

Common Mistakes Businesses Make:

One just has to be extra creative to be successful online.

I’ll give you a simple example. It seems that practically anyone you and I know are using Facebook to keep in touch with friends, family, kau lui, kau chai, etc but entrepreneurs can actually take this a step further.

They can use it to strengthen their relationships with their customers, drive tons more traffic and bring in added profits to their bottom line. We’ve tested this several times and the results from this one simple strategy alone was amazing!

What I see in most businesses (big or small) is they have a standard website which gives information about their products and services, the company’s history, the contact information, the basic things and that’s it, their web presence is no different from an online brochure.

*shakes head*

What they don’t realize is how much $$ they are laying on the table just by doing that because they are so many other creative ways to leverage and to monetize their web presence; be it to gather leads, gather vital customer information, to sell, cross-sell, up-sell (or whatever sell they call it these days) their products right there on the web itself because there IS a way to do it!

No, seriously, you just have a think a *little* harder, that’s all

The bottom line is, businesses aren’t leveraging on the potential of the technologies we have on the internet today to fuse them into their operations with customized CRM (customer relationship management) systems, blogs, social networking sites, social book-marking sites, etc. there’s a whole lot of upside potential there but unfortunately they don’t see it.

*shakes head again*

Oh oh… my favorite show’s coming on… lazy to write d-lah.. I’ll see ya around k?

Tip: Here’s a little nugget my mentor taught me:

“If you keep working on your weakness, you’ll be at most, average… if you keep working on your strengths, you will become great”

“Greatness” and striving for only the BEST life has to offer you and not just blindly follow what everyone else is doing deserves an entire post by itself…

By not going through the stages in life following the herd mentality, not doing and following the “stuff” other people are doing… it’s something not everyone can do, it requires a certain mental agility, persistence and s-t-r-e-n-g-t-h to get through and I will be having my own say on that in the near future here… but my show’s on now, so later…

Jay…

Quick Note: With numerous so-called internet “gurus” popping up online, offline, in the media (wherever) these days, claiming to teach you their “secrets” of making it big online, proudly flashing away their “big” checks to entice and reel you in to their “pitches”… BEWARE.

Allow me to share with you a little on the “going-ons” within the internet marketing world. Like everything else, it’s filled with lies, lies and more lies. Of course I’m not saying that everyone is bad, this “community” has it’s own fair share of “good guys” as well, but what I’m trying to say is for you to be able to differentiate the good from the bad.

Case in point… check out this video on how the so-called gurus fake their clickbank earnings:

It explains it all. Fake your clickbank earnings like the big internet earners do. Do what you will with it.

What I just gave you is an industry “secret”. You can spread the word, or you can use it to con other people. You decide.

I’ve said it time and again, be extremely careful whom you take advice from because there’s a lot of exaggerated information circulating about building online businesses here that are hugely misconstrued, inaccurate, so before you decide to follow in their footsteps, MAKE SURE they walk their talk, get them to show you actual PROOF that they have walked down the same path as well, that’s the best way to be sure they know what they’re talking about.

So the next question you might be asking is: “so how do I separate the good from the bad?”

Simple.

NETWORK around. Get your ass out there and actively make a genuine effort to make more friends, get to know more people within the industry and ask them, who are the real deals, who are the fake-ies.

They’ll gladly tell you in an instant

Later,

Jay…

Since I have a little “extra” time today, I’d like to write something that I’ve been meaning to write and pen down for a quite while now but never really got to it, so I might as well do it now…

You know this year has been a real “eye opener”, it’s not in us to say whether it’s been a good or a bad one, as every single day, every little “thing” we go through, serves as “lessons” for us to learn, it then becomes OUR responsibility to either suck them in or blindly throw them out…

Funny thing, as I was nicely chatting away with some friends over lunch today… it suddenly “hit” me… I have no idea where it came from but it REALLY did smack me upside the head… hard.

What we do today, determines where we’ll be tommorow.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it instantly gave me that realization of how GROSSLY important it is for us to be doing the RIGHT things today, as in RIGHT NOW and not just let time “slip” by our fingers just like that.

According to Master Shifu Oogway (from the ever loveable Kungfu Panda):

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift, and that is why it’s called… the present”

Yeah sure, we may have heard this saying one way or another before but what excited me most is this:

“A lot of things that will make sure we get what we want in life is counter-intuitive and NOT obvious at all!”

A simple example could be… It can be so easily tempting for us to spend all the money we’ve made from our business right now to feed our emotional “wants”. It’s COUNTER-INTUITIVE to re-invest it back for future profits/profits.

It’s so easy for us to say “Aaah, I’ll do it later, but “it” eventually never gets done”

It’s so easy to say “Aahh, everyone’s out drinking n partying right now, I’ll follow them also-lah…”

It’s so easy to say “why am I slogging like a cow whilst everyone is happily out having a good time… forget this shit-lah”

The key to getting what we want — is always… counter-intuitive.

Yeah, so I admit, Eben Pagan was the one who first preached about this in his excellent Altitude Program months ago, but it’s only now when I actually took the liberty to reminisce on what I did in the past 8 months have I realized how true it is.

There were a number of things I did that I REALLY did not feel like doing, but I (knew) deep down that it HAD to be done and I pushed myself to do it again and again.

I got out of my comfort zone. I didn’t like it one bit, but again, I just knew it had to be done. And yeap, “results” wasn’t instant either, it took TIME, but now I’m slowly starting to see it bear fruit

(From this I’ve learnt the true value of patience, staying calm in the most “challenging” times and to keep pushing and pushing with baby steps

(In business sense):

It’s easy to let any distractions, problems or “frictions” in our daily lives to bring us or our spirits down, but it’s counter-intuitive to see that those “problems” have ALWAYS *little* opportunities for our own biz.

Now, what’s amazing about this quote is, think about it:

“A lot of things that will make sure we get what we want in life is counter-intuitive and NOT obvious at all!”

It can literally be applied to ANY aspect of our lives (relationships, finance, business, etc)

Put in simpler terms, it’s in the counter-intuitive “stuff” that will help us get what want, whatever “results” we want in life.

It’s the stuff that makes us “uncomfortable”, the stuff that we’re “too lazy” or “couldn’t be bothered to do” that’s ultimately the KEY to helping us reach our goals… faster.

Man oh man, I don’t know whether I’m doing a good job explaining this but it’s really a MASSIVE ah-ha moment for me… this.

Seriously, take a moment to think about what I’ve just wrote…

Damn, talking about Kungfu Panda makes me wanna watch it again hehe, I mean, who can resist man!! (my favorite lines from the movie):

Mr. Ping: [after Po told him he had dream about noodle] This is a sign, Po!
Po: Uh, a sign of what?
Mr. Ping: You are almost ready to be entrusted with the secret ingredient of my secret ingredient soup. And then you will fulfill your destiny and take over the restaurant just as I took it over from my father who took it over from his father who won it from a friend in a game of mahjong.

  — — — — — — — — —
Mr. Ping: The secret ingredient is … nothing!
Po: Huh?
Mr. Ping: You heard me. Nothing! There is no secret ingredient.
Po: Wait, wait … it’s just plain old noodle soup? You don’t add some kind of special sauce or something?
Mr. Ping: Don’t have to. To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.
Po: There is no secret ingredient …

— — — — — — — — —
Viper: Are you ready?
Po: I was born ready…
[Viper attacks, Po is flung and lands on his head]
Viper: I’m sorry, Brother! I thought you said you were ready.
Po: That was awesome! Let’s go again!

— — — — — — — — —
Po: There is no charge for awesomeness… or attractiveness.

— — — — — — — — —
Oogway: One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

— — — — — — — — —
Oogway: There are no accidents.

Ok, ok… gota get back to work now… I’ll see you around…