…or will it?

It’s a common myth in internet marketing that you can put up a site on Monday and be a millionaire by Tuesday. And although there are the unscrupulous few that still promote this philosophy to unsuspecting newcomers, there are many who promote something much more insidious… the “one good launch” theory. (That’s my name for it.)

The “one good launch” theory goes something like this…

Create a product, or buy the resale rights to one; throw up a site quickly; and then watch the money roll in. In no time you’ll have thousands of dollars flowing into your paypal or clickbank accounts. Yeah right.

Fire sales are a good example of this, and you see them used all the time to raise money for many different reasons. But what the new person — the average guy or gal that’s looking for a way to get out of debt, or maybe replace a lost income — doesn’t see is all the networking and buzz building that goes on behind the scenes before the sale even launches. It’s misleading to let someone new to internet marketing believe that they can make several thousand dollars in a short time just by putting up a sales page and waiting for the money to flow their way.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that I bought into this theory for quite awhile. For the last year when we were talking about how to finance our move east, I could be heard to say “just one good launch will get us there.”

And for awhile I believed it. I plotted and planned my way to six-figure days, none of which got much further than the registering of a domain name. It wasn’t until my son finally got fed up at hearing it and asked me when the one big launch would happen that I had to admit that I didn’t really have a clue. And his second question really made me stop and think…

“Even if you do pull of this one good launch and make enough to get us there, then what?”

Then what, indeed. It’s all well and good to do a one-shot launch and reap the proceeds of a good one. But you need a steady flow of income in you’re going to make a success of internet marketing as a lifestyle. Especially when a cross-country move means losing the reliable income you already have.

As a result of that conversation, I decided that for us maybe one good launch is not the best route to take. Instead I would focus on a series of mini launches in different niches that can bring in streams of sales every week. So instead of my first goal being a lump sum of $100,000 to buy a house with cash, I revised my plan to first create a weekly income of $700. While not a huge amount by many internet marketers’ standards, it is enough to get us moved and rent a house until we’re ready to buy. It’s also a little more realistic, and I believe it can be achieved by using the plan set out in Willie Crawford’s Really Fast Money. (That’s an affiliate link, btw.)

(I’m getting sidetracked here, so I’ll save the rest of this process for another post.)

Back to the “one good launch” theory…

The more I think about it, the more I believe that this should be a middle step in the process. At least that’s how it’s shaping up for me. I know that it can work because I’ve seen it done enough times to know that it’s doable. But I also know that it’s very rare for an absolute newcomer to be able to pull it off without some insider help. They just don’t have the contacts and network needed to create the buzz and get the word out.

At the end of the day, the choice is yours, and that’s the beauty of internet marketing. You create the plan that works for you. As long as you take action on it, it doesn’t really matter whether you choose a one-product big launch, or a series of smaller ones — you will achieve your goals.

Which style works better for you? Leave your thoughts and comments below.

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One of the hardest things I find is to just get a project started. I have collected so much PLR stuff and other things with resale rights over the last year that I get totally overwhelmed just looking at my hard drive.

Sure I’ve heard all the experts say that it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. Because you’re certainly not going to get any traffic to a site that’s sitting in bits and pieces on your hard drive.

The other thing the experts all say is that you just have to do something. Pick a starting point and get something — anything — out there to drive traffic to. And then tweak it as you go along.

So bearing all that in mind, I have formulated a plan to get us moved out to Nova Scotia by the end of this year. And believe me, this time I am taking action on my plan! (In case you hadn’t guessed… I’ve been here before and gotten sidetracked every single time.)

Right now the main obstacle to moving is regular income. We need to replace orexceed the income that is coming in now from other sources besides Ritchie Media. I’ve found it kinda hard to actually slow down to a plan that focuses on making me a reasonably regular income over a period of time.

Like so many others out there I fall into the trap of what I call the “one good launch”syndrome. And I’ve been at this off and on for over 10 years now, so I should definitely know better! I’ll talk more about that another day so that I don’t get sidetracked here.

Back to the plan…

Over the last few months I’ve been involved in a few internet marketing challenges. The first one I did was the Bum Marketing Challenge, and then in July I did the 1000 in 24 challenge, and finally for the month of August I was involved in doing the Thirty Day Challenge.

The mechanics of my plan to create a steady stream of income is basically a result of everything I’ve learned from doing all these challenges. I will be using all this new found knowledge about creating content, creating info products, and driving traffic to jumpstart my successful new life.

This blog is the central headquarters for my Moving East plan. You’re welcome to watch over my shoulder. Enjoy the view!

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Which comes first… the open door or the closed door?

I told myself I would try and keep my philosophizing to a bare minimum on this blog but it’s always been my belief that the first post on any blog has to be special. You can’t just jump right in and dump the marketing stuff on people as soon as they walk in the door. At least, I can’t do that (which is probably why after ten years of playing this game, I’m not the super-successful marketer I should be).

And speaking of doors…

It came to me the other day that the old saying “when one door closes, another one opens” is not always the way it happens. Sometimes the new door opens first, and all that’s left for us to do is close the old one on the way out. After all, logically speaking, you have to have a door already for opportunity to knock on it, right? (That’s probably a good thing for me to learn because I’ve always been one of those “burn the bridge, the boat will show” type of people.) And of course this presupposes that: a) you’re alert enough at the time to recognize the new door; and b) you’re willing to take the action needed to make sure it stays open long enough for you to get through it.

Why am I telling you this here?

Well, that’s pretty much how this site came into being. And the timing of it was just so cosmic that I had to write about it. Lucky you, eh?

Last week I spent three days reviving an old site to use as a base for my Moving East plan. (More on that later.) I gathered up all the plugins I needed, installed wordpress, configured everything, wrote the first post, and then…

During those three days I also had to renew the main company domain and a couple of others that we’ve had for awhile. While I was doing that the registrar was nice enough to inform me (love those upsells) that ritchiemedia.com was available. Thinking about branding and that we really should have the .com version of the company name, I decided to register that one while I could still get it, and worry about what to do with it later. At that point I was firmly focused on making sure my new plan was firmly in place and moving forward (or eastward, as the case may be).

Did you see that door open?

Back to the old site… Finally, I was ready to post my first post. On a whim I decided to check the old domain in Google to see just how many pages were still hanging around that would need to be redirected to the new blog. Thinking there might be a page or two from an abandoned blog, what I found absolutely shocked me.

The domain had pretty much been unused for about two years, but there were about 100 listings warning people that my domain was a spam domain. It seems that a pack of spammers have been using my domain name to send out their offers. By me letting it sit idle for so long, I guess they thought it was fair game to appropriate the name and use it as their “from” name. I’d never gotten any spam complaints from anyone, so never even considered that this would be done to me.

Once I saw that, it didn’t take me long to realize that if I tried to start a mailing list from that domain, my deliverability rates would pretty much suck. So I decided that if I was making a fresh start on my life, then I should have a fresh domain to go with it.

Instead of trying to revive an old domain, I would take the opportunity to close a door that should have been closed a long time ago, and step through the new door that had opened during the process. Had the new domain name not appeared when it did, and had I not taken the opportunity to register it at that moment, I have no doubt that I would still be trying to restart an essentially dead domain.

It feels really great to have a fresh, clean site to work with. And it’s a wonderful new beginning to my new life!

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