Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

It’s good to see that Google now attempts to get rid of spyware and malware from it’s natural search results.

It’s just a pity that they’re happy to accept such malicious programs in their search engine as long as they’re getting a piece of the action.

Search for “find any password” - and check out the Adwords ads.

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I’ve often come to think of business people in terms of sports teams in the last few years.

Sales and marketing people are like the wings and forwards of a football team - they push to score the points.

Accountants and lawyers play defensive positions - their job is to minimize mistakes made by the forwards, and also to stop aggressive plays made by competitors.

Support staff massage the players, get them drinks, cart their gear around, and otherwise enable the players to focus on their main job - which is winning the game.

Ultimately the highest paid players on any sports team are those that score the points, after all, they make the wins happen.

Next comes the defensive players who don’t receive the same compensation as the point scorers, but are still important in preventing losses.

And lastly are the normal wage support staff. These people don’t play the game.

Think about that.

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This theory was something I discovered about 18 months ago.

I had just lost an enormous amount of money from a project that hadn’t worked out… and… I was trying to understand how I had allowed myself to lose so much money.

Because I didn’t lose it all in one day, in fact I lost a lot of money every day, for about 2 straight months. And by the time I eventually stopped the cash bleed, I was down, down BIG TIME. I just couldn’t understand how I had KNOWINGLY watched the money leave my bank account.

(I was fine by the way, I didn’t go bankrupt or anything like that, but I had to live fairly frugally for about 8 months until I rebuilt the bankroll I had lost).

It wasn’t until one afternoon when I was reading a book about the theory of Poker, that I began to understand what had happened to my decision making.

The guy who wrote the book was Mike Caro - a very successful gambler whose most famous work is called “Caros Book Of Poker Tells” - however, I think Caro’s most interesting work is his study of risk psychology.

One of the working theories that Mike Caro developed was the Theory of Maximum Negative Threshold (may not be his exact words but close enough). The theory is that a person has a Maximum Negative emotional threshold, and once that person passes the threshold, more negative experiences cannot make that person feel any worse. They are literally “Maxed out”… HOWEVER… that does not mean things cannot get any worse for them. It simply means they won’t FEEL any worse when more bad stuff happens.

A person affected by maximum negative threshold will stop trying to avoid further losses, because those losses do not bring them more pain than they are already in.

Business people who go through a nasty divorce and end up selling their business for $1 are a good example of people affected by maximum negative threshold. They compound a bad emotional experience by making decisions based on the feeling that life can’t get any worse. But it can.

Part of the challenge of being a good entrepreneur is learning how to deal with maximum negative threshold - because you WILL come into contact with it at some point. In those times, you will feel like what you do does not matter, but you must act like it DOES MATTER. There is a big difference between losing $1,000/day and $1,500/day even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. You must figure out how to lose least, even when that still means losing a lot.

These days I am always aware of negative threshold, and when I feel myself crossing over it, I take a moment to remind myself that my decisions DO still matter, and do my best to make the correct decision no matter what the circumstance I face.

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“Rape me, my friend. Rape me, again. Rape me. Rape me.” – Nirvana

I won’t lie to you.

98% of the people trying to make money on the internet… are… just like the guy above.

They have a chain around their neck, and a little red rubber ball in their mouth. And their only protections against the inevitable ass whipping they are heading for is a pair of pink Y-fronts.

And That Just Aint Gonna Fly

Not because I’m against that type of thing. But just because being a submissive little bitch doesn’t make you much money. Unless you’re getting paid to be someone’s slave.

Let’s assume though, that you’re just trying to scrape some money to together with a mini online business. You’re not even trying to get rich. But an extra $3,000 a month wouldn’t go astray.

And let’s also assume that all you’ve really done to this point is buy some e-books, maybe bought some Google traffic. Or even have put together some adsense pages.

Whatever. It’ doesn’t matter.

Because even if you’re more or less experienced than that, I’m going to break down the internet into the business it really is. And show you some new paradigms with which you can filter new information through.

In that way, you will be empowered to create some attainable goals because you’ll have enough direction and understanding to do so. Instead of being stuck in procrastin-fuckin-ation land… or… always chasing after the latest opportunity.

In The Real World There Are Only TWO Types
Of Business Models On The Internet

And it’s critical you understand what they are… and… the differences between them.

It’s also important to understand that they both have vastly different STARTUP CAPITAL requirements.

One requires some minimal startup capital. And the other requires a lot.

In my opinion neither is superior, they are both different, but one may be more suited to you than the other. It just depends on your life, business, and financial circumstances. It also depends on your business and marketing skill set. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Ok. So the two types of business models on the internet are:

1. Creating traffic.
2. Selling a product.

That’s it. These are the only two business models on the internet.

Now some more sophisticated people may argue that they are already doing both: and that’s fine. But keep in mind that these are two vastly different activities.

The first business model of creating traffic is what I like to call a “traffic-centric” paradigm of the internet. It centers on getting a lot of website visitors, and then getting some money out of those visitors however you can. You can use affiliate programs, adsense, lead generation programs… basically whatever you can do to get as much money as you can from the visitors.

The second business model of selling a product is a “product-centric” view of the internet. It involves trying to get your website exposure, and ultimately get a lot of website visitors to a high conversion sales page. It’s very capital intensive because creating a great product, a great looking website, and getting a high conversion sales letter written is very expensive… and may require multiple tests before it’s even profitable.

In my humble opinion, the correct way to play the internet game is to start with business model number one… learn to get good at creating and monetizing traffic… and then bust out into model number two of creating a product to sell to traffic you already have.

In this way you minimize your downside enormously because you’re not risking a lot of cash up-front. And you also recognize that selling your own great product to a market place is the only way to generate maximum revenue for yourself in the long run. You could even sell that as a whole business for a large chunk of cash if you wanted after a few years.

But you have to get to that level first.

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My friend Woody from Woody Maxim.com just wrote a post about making $2k-$3k per month.

I think the post is a good one - accurate in strategy, if not in mindset.

Here’s how I see things:

The only people trying to make $3k per month are the people who are not particularly entrepreneurial - they are just small time people trying to make some money.

Which is fine as far as it goes.

But, to a large company like Google, these people are fish. As in, the fish who get shot in a barrel.

Here’s the dichotomy:

Whilst my company generates nice cash flow and profit from leads - it’s not my goal to make money.

HUH?

It’s true that several years ago, money was my goal. I wanted more of it, and fast.

These days, I want to be better at BUSINESS. I don’t focus on, nor do I THINK about money. The better my business skill set becomes, the more money I make. It’s an inevitable outcome of pursuing my goal: being the best entrepreneur in the world.

If you approached becoming a professional poker player with the goal of making $3k per month within a few months, you’d be broke in a few weeks. I guarantee it.

Not because Poker is harder than business, but simply because it’s a game which truly brings you into contact with the risk/reward reality you really operate in. And there’s no bottom to it, until you’re bankrupt.

People who focus on money, not skills, are the fish of life.

If I were to advise myself on how to think when I was starting out a few years ago, I would say:

“Figure out how you can afford to lose $300 per month on skills acquisition and learning. Get a second job maybe. But whatever you do, DON’T focus on making money and trying to be a full time entrepreneur… just focus on business skills, and forget about making money.”

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Is: Business profitability is reliant upon perception creation and exploitation.

You are either creating a perception, or, you are exploiting a perception… AT ALL TIMES PERIOD.

The reason why being a market category leader is so important is because of the enormous economies of scale you get from a COMMON MASS PERCEPTION of you and/or your company. Creating perception is DIFFICULT AND EXPENSIVE. And the less effective you are at creating value perception the better you had better be at exploiting it.

Do not underestimate the increadible importance of perception exploitation: it’s not as easy as you think. Many would-be’s think that if they could create enough value perception they will be able to exploit it easily, often they are wrong.

Google invented Pay Per Click advertising with its Adwords program: before that, search engine traffic wasn’t worth very much to the search engines who generated it. After Adwords, everything changed. Because Google was so good at figuring out how to exploit the perception that would-be-advertisers had of Google search engine users.

But it took many years of trial and error (and companies going bust) before some people figured it out.

Tomorrow: The first rule of business.

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I’ll never forget Tom Cruise losing his mind on the various talk shows last year (or was it the year before?)

The site of a major star going completely bonkers on national television was more than a little sad.

Anyway, when I look at people who’ve made no progress on their business in the last two years, I can’t help but feel they’re making similar mistakes to Cruise.

Because ultimately the problem Business Owners (and Cruise) make is paying attention to a rigid set of Dogma - that make no sense in the real world.

Things like “slow and steady wins the race” or “sustainable businesses are best developed in traditional market places” or “the leading edge of innovation is a bloody edge” etc. etc.

It’s all COMPLETE CRAP.

Sure: innovation is risky. Sure: fast cash flow can be gone tomorrow. Sure: traditional market places have steady demand.

But so what?

If you’re using the internet medium to generate leads: NOTHING IS STABLE. EVERYTHING IS CHANGING ALL THE TIME.

Like it or not, REALIZE it or not: you are ALREADY in a fast changing, risky business environment.

I know people who have lost $30,000 NET/month PPC business OVERNIGHT in steady, traditional market places. And these weren’t affiliate marketers either, I’m talking about people who developed and sold their own QUALITY products going down the drain SUDDENLY.

OUCH!

But they were deluding themselves.

They thought because they had a quality product, because they had excellent customer support, because they had exceptional marketing: they had a stable business.

They didn’t.

Because they failed to understand they were REALLY in the business of GENERATING CHEAP LEADS.

Instead of spending that $30,000/month funding their LIFESTYLE, they should have been thinking bigger.

They should have been testing magazine ad placements. They should have been investing in type-in-traffic domains. They should have been doing EVERYTHING THEY COULD TO DESTROY THEIR RELIANCE ON SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC FROM THEIR LEAD GEN ACTIVITIES.

SEO, PPC => These are the HEROINE of our business model.

Use them to help kick start your business, but do not for a second believe that because you generate leads with these activities that you have a business.

You don’t. You just have a CASH FLOW HIT.

And that, to me, has no equity in it, and therefore there is  no value in spending time on it, unless it’s part of a bigger plan.

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A good friend just sent me an article written about Brad Fallon’s trouble with Google.

It’s an interesting read; not because I didn’t already understand about proxy hacking; but because it highlights the true nature of the internet.

Google has been aware of proxy hacking for over a year; but yet it does nothing to address it.

Why is this?

Basically it’s because Google is a commercial company motivated by profit; it’s not a Government regulating agency.

Google only plays up perceptions of the regulating agency role when it suits Google’s ends of increasing profit.

If Brad Fallon had some Adsense on his site, Google may very well take a different amount of interest in his problems - because helping him would mean helping THEM.

As it stands right now: there is almost NO CONTROLS on the internet.

And this is the internet’s biggest advantage and disadvantage.

Because all the red tape which will no doubt exist in 20 years time will make the internet inaccessible for most companies - the flip side of that is that right now, you have to be smart enough to fend for yourself.

By not understanding that the internet is still very much in the wild west, you are misunderstanding the opportunities and dangers that lie in front of you.

The “Sheriff” of the market you live in is not motivated by law, justice, or any of the controls normal businesses operate in; the “Sheriff” is motivated by his own self gain - and will continue to be so motivated until GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS force him to abide by common law.

This is not just true of Google - it’s true of EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE WHICH HAS SOME KIND OF POWER ON THE INTERNET TODAY.

I protect my business by understanding that it’s better to rely on the self interest of others than it is to rely on their kindness and willingness to act on their sense of fair play - which may never come.

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