I have been looking for a long time now at starting an internet based business but I have always faced the inevitable hurdle of “what to sell”. I have learned enough to realise that to have a proper business these days you need to provide meaningful content to engage your viewer/reader/follower/potential customer.
Just putting those alternatives gives a quick summary of how I want to engage with people. I am certain that in order to grow it is important to have a system based on a process that will follow a system with a flow. Most call it a sales funnel, but I want to make it a bit more nuanced so rather than traffic–>capturepage–>salespage I want to follow a better route of
traffic–>capturepage—>value series of related content–> affiliate links–>sales–>revenue
So my chosen niche is beginning internet marketers supplying them with relevant services and tools.
This is by no means a new or original idea, but it follows the principle that has been successfully pursued by many who realised that instead of trying to strike it rich by “gold-mining” it is better in the long run to sell the “picks and shovels”!
IN the local paper- was it deliberate, a creative use of double meaning or editorial laziness?
I guess we will never know unless we can find the author of an ad looking to recruit prospective teachers in the pre school area.
We need kinder teachers.
Well I agree with the idea of kind teachers- and in the main I would say they are- even the ones who specialise in “tough love”. We can all do with a little more kindness in the world. In the light of recent rants by people in the media – Jeremy Clarkson comes to mind, but there are plenty of other examples- I would encourage more kindness and less bombast and the idea that given a media outlet (and we all have one thanks to technology), that we can just let rip any time we feel like it, I find obnoxious.
I have been around long enough to have seen plenty of scams and money-making schemes. It is amazing to me that people still fall for these schemes, but I do not consider myself so clever or superior that I cannot be taken in by the clever marketing. My only advantage is experience! I have been around long enough to have seen a lot of this stuff before and I KNOW it is not real.
Blaming people for falling for this stuff is not helpful – if you have lost money or wasted time and money pursuing dreams of easy wealth then I am sorry for you but I don’t condemn you.
Recently I came across yet another “Webinar” run by a young 19yo guy who has credibility as a YouTube creator. He did not fake his gold play button plaque that YouTube awarded him for his million subscribers. He himself is not fake ( even though he goes by Matt Par or Matt Parsons and probably other channel names).
No the “fake” part comes from his “teaching you how to make money from Youtube by never appearing on camera , blah-di-blah. Sure, he probably runs 9 or is it 10 channels and works 2 or 3 hours daily NOW.
He started as a 14 yo kid playing the YouTube game and was creative enough to find something that caught the imagination and attention of the world’s media with his “time traveller” B.S. Good luck to him. I have always maintained that you need to be DIFFERENT and have NOVEL IDEAS that set you apart to be noticed online. Young Mr Par has set himeslf aPARt by making huge numbers of videos- at least one a day for years- trying all sorts of things until he found something that worked. There is nothing stopping you doing the same, but let’s not kid ourselves and think that paying him $497 will make you the same success overnight. I do think Matt is sincere as a teacher in wanting to pass on to his students what he has learned. He offers more than most of the other “gurus” in this niche as far as I can tell. But this is his business. He is making money from the teaching as a side line to his successful channels and good luck to him. He has a talent and he is using his skills and resources. What concerns me is that you may be one who thinks it is going to be so easy to just pay your $1000 or $499 or whatever the current cost is, and replicate success! Are you prepared to spend 5 yrs or longer in growing channels as Matt teaches? Are you prepared to spend money and time to do this as a serious business?
If so, fine. But just BE AWARE that it is NEVER as EASY as they say it is! Unless you have a creative flair, dogged determination and an entrepreneurial gene, you are better off to work at your job. You have to LOVE internet business and WORK at it. Anything in life takes effort and without something that makes you part of a small talented group, you need to be aware of what it will take and not be so swept up in the hype that will see you spending money you don’t have on stuff you will never fully utilise.
One of his suggestions is that you find a static image on Pixabay. put a music track behind it and read a meditation you found lying around and loop it for 3 hours to make a “relaxation tape” you can upload and have available for the insomniacs.
Good luck to him! There are no hard feelings here directed towards a young kid who skipped school to learn how to make money in the (un)real world of YouTube. I just don’t want you to be taken in by his “YouTube Mastery Course” and expect that you will be able to recreate similar success without years of trial and error, and creativity.
The reason he can sell a course is simple: He has the runs on the board and he is leveraging that success to earn more. You CAN do the same, but I don’t believe that getting someone on Fiverr to come up with a meditation to flash over stock images and royalty free music is the way to millions of dollars! By all means make your original video content daily and see what happens. Learn the process. You could get lucky and find something that grabs the imagination like “the invisible time traveller”, but this course alone will not do it for you!
Check the latest YouTube guidelines if you don’t believe me. These old outdated models will not work! YT wants original, fresh content or they will simply not pay you or include you in their advertising platform. And why should they?
If YT/Google are allowing you to earn from views of stuff on your channel, they want something worth watching! Or maybe people absent mindedly stream content all day and dont really watch it or interact with mindless replays of snippets of celebrity news and the like! Personally I would not rely on that as a wealth making strategy.
He wisely adds this disclaimer on his site:
“*Earnings and income representations made by Matt Par, MattPar.com, and their advertisers/sponsors are aspirational statements only of your earnings potential. These results are not typical and results will vary. The results on this page are OUR results and from years of testing. We can in NO way guarantee you will get similar results. Please understand my results are not typical, I’m not implying you’ll duplicate them (or do anything for that matter). I have the benefit of practicing YouTube since 2014, and have an established following as a result. The average person who buys any “how to” information gets little to no results. I’m using these references for example purposes only. Your results will vary and depend on many factors. ”
https://go.mattpar.com/tube-mastery-5
** Don’t confuse Mat Par or Parsons with Matt Parker a very successful Aussie maths teacher and YouTuber who provides educational and fun maths content. Now he is one I do follow!
With the presence of La Nina and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole ( see http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/iod/) once again we are experiencing heavy Spring rains in my part of Australia. These events are cyclic with the phases alternating between positive, negative and neutral every 3 – 5 years. Our last major flood event in this area was 2011 with another coming in 2016. It seem we should not be alarmed that once again we are experiencing raised river levels and flooding in many parts of the state the Victoria. It is sad to see homes sandbagged or water-logged and whole population centres isolated, but where adequate flood mitigation measures have not been put in place, we must accept that such events will re-occur. Alarmists will rattle the can and demand action on climate change. Now, while reducing global emissions is an essential goal and one that all governments should work for – sooner rather than later!- It would be reckless to put responsibility for these flood events solely at the feet of big industry or the community at large. We have all played a part in global warming and anyone with a modern lifestyle continues to contribute to global warming, be they green or any other political colour.
Local government should accept that they have a vital role to play in ensuring that sufficient resources be set aside for levees, and other infrastructure related to flood prevention – especially in the “dry” years rather than concentrating on sporting facilities, skate ramps, lights for tennis courts and the like. Sure these things are of benefit to a few in the community, but flood protected towns serve the greater good.
With the news that Medibank was subject to a hack attack does little to boost one’s confidence in the cyber health of our major service providers. We are encouraged to take care of our personal security on a daily basis so we install guardian software ( come of which is of dubious worth), VPN’s Ad blockers, antivirus, anti malware and so on. We change our passwords endlessly and try and leave a clean digital life without leaving too many breadcrumbs behind and what is the point when even our ISP is hacked and the supposed custodians of sensitive data are at the mercy of cyber crims. Maybe they are just enthusiastic amateurs in suburban bedrooms learning to hack – or maybe it is more organised? Maybe foreign agents who want to disrupt our society are to blame? Will we ever know?
Hopefully the Feds are busy hacking the hackers, but in security matters they are rarely more than a few months ahead of the criminals at best. Ever cynical, dare I suggest that this presents an ideal time for the ACSC to ask for more funds or Border Security to become even more power hungry in order to make us feel safer!
When I have done my best to keep my digital pathways clean and well swept I do not want to find that big business and services are letting the dog turds build up in their own patch.
Is it worth it?
But I really wanted to say more in general about Private Health. Yesterday I reviewed my policy in view of the rate increase next month. When I looked at what we paid for “Extras” cover against what we claimed, it was pretty obvious we were paying for nothing, While I can understand the desirability of Private Hospital Cover, I cannot see the need for “Extras”.
A few hundred dollars a year for your dental and optical will not provide sufficient rebates to offset the cost of the insurance. At $70 a month for the extras I can easily put that money in little fund to pay for my specs and dental clean. My meds are already cheap thanks to the PBS so I can’t claim anymore there and if I miss out on Physiotherapy so be it! Again with what I can save in premiums will go a long way to offset my medical costs. (But I am fairly healthy so I know others are not so lucky and maybe they can justify wanting such insurance.)
In my efforts to get the best deal on the hospital side I was able to use Health Insurance Comparison to find the best alternatives for me. Maybe I will go back to them for other things like house and contents?
This is by way of an experiment. I have had WP blogs before but this is the first time I have tried one hosted on a domain I did not own. Several questions arise, but the main one is whether anyone will ever see these posts? Will the ubiquitous G find me in this space? Who cares anyway?
Maybe I should looks at this as an opportunity to practise the discipline of journal writing ( I wont call it journalism!) Not so much world shattering writing, but more the recording of my thoughts on a daily/semi-regular basis that will give me a chance to express myself, keep a record of events that may be of interest to others in the future and to assist in the slow but sure mental deterioration that I am likely to experience at an accelerating rate in the coming days.
I had toyed with the idea of a video blog- doing short Youtube clips. But while I have some ego, I do not really see myself as a presenter of captivating content so I think the written medium will suffice. Besides, this is easier than bumbling my way through a video with the inevitable blips and hiccups that I would need to edit out. The lighting and settings would have to be just right before I was content and the sound quality… You get the picture! Without suitable recording equipment I would not be happy and at the moment I simply do not have any form of “studio” to work from.
If you stick with this blog you will come to learn that we are between houses just now, preparing to rebuild a 100 year old home after a disastrous fire. I intend to do a series of posts on the challenges that that presents- from insurance companies to builders and those in between. It has not been as simple as it should have been. But I digress! Today’s post is just about an intro and a chance to get into the mood.
