BUT there is a dirty little secret that not many people share…

You must pay your dues to reach success!

Of course there are some exceptions if you’re extremely lucky, but for 99% of people it will take some effort if you want to live a new and improved lifestyle.

One thing I’ve never shared with you is the amount of effort I put in my first few months before launching my first site, Elite Safelist. At the time I was in college, working a part time job, and trying to build my online business. This is literally what my schedule was like:

Mon-Fri

5:30 AM – Wake up (or at least try to!)

6 AM – Leave for School

7 AM – 7 PM – At School, In Class, Working, Driving  Home, Working On Biz Between All That Other Stuff!

8 PM – 2 AM – Working on my business

Weekends

All Day – Working on my business as much as humanly possible, with exceptions made for family, holidays, events, etc.

Yes, I was only sleeping a few hours a day at best – no exaggeration. Of course there were the occasional days where I had other stuff to do, but this was literally what I was doing on a daily basis. And there were many times I stayed up until 3 – 5 in the morning.

Today, I can say I live in a way that most people would probably be envious of. Most of my day belongs to me, while my business works for me.

But please do not misunderstand me, I am not asking you to put this much effort daily into your own business. I understand you probably have your own responsibilities and you don’t need to be crazy like I was to succeed. In fact what I did was borderline insane and quite unhealthy too! However, I would like you to realize that if you are not yet achieving the success you had imagined, the odds are you may not have paid your dues yet.

How many hours have you actually worked on your business so far?

And I’m not talking about looking at the computer deciding what to do, where to go, or searching online for another product to buy. But actually working, such as doing research, learning from experts, discovering new strategies/skills, building squeeze pages, getting traffic, brainstorming, etc etc.?

I probably put more effort in 3 months than the average person would do in 1-2 years.

BUT…

That is perfectly fine!

If it took you 1 year to be able to make a full time income online, would that be ok for you? Would you be happy even if it took you 2 years? Or even 5 years to get out of your job and actually get to spend time doing things you enjoy on a daily basis? A college education is roughly the same amount of time, and all that gets you is a j-o-b!

Success is not a race. I don’t care if you see success in 3 months or 5 years from now, but I want to see you succeed.

So understand that while you do have to pay your dues, and it is all worth the effort in the end. That’s the dirty little secret, but actually it’s not that bad if it means you can wake up with a smile on your face everyday!

• Whoa, tons of stuff happened this past few weeks! If you wanna know why I didn’t post much this past month, make sure to keep reading…

• One blog reader was kind enough to point out that my optin box in my header doesn’t have a submit button! I still need to fix that, haha. Thanks Online Biz!

• I was out of town for a week awhile ago. Remember to work hard and work smart. One of the things that an online business can do for you is allow you to travel (i.e. VACATIONS!!) and still make money.

• One of the biggest launches in traffic exchange history just happened. Tezak Traffic Power launched with something like 10,000+ members in 10 days! Incredible, and I gotta add it couldn’t have happened to a better guy. If you like traffic exchanges, this is a surefire winner. It’s got the same minds behind Traffic-Splash and a 10 year TE veteran in Tony Tezak.

• Mike Coursey just launched a cool new service called Splash Speaker. It lets you create splash pages that automatically create audio for you. Use the approved sites and it will even say stuff like a member’s name! It’s really cool. Sign up for free, but I recommend upgrading to get full access to these awesome features.

• Sunny Suggs continues her “All About” series with the arrival of All About My First List. This is a really cool site that helps walk you through how to build your own mailing list. Join here and you can get the first chapter for free, but as always the upgrade will get you a ton of really cool stuff.

• … And here’s a big one. Clickbank Pirate is LIVE! I was lucky enough to check things out from the inside and all I can say is WOW. Basically, Cindy Battye and Soren Jordansen have created a true plug-n-play system that will help you make commissions from Clickbank for LIFE! They’ll handle ALL the work, EVERYTHING! All you’ve gotta do is show it to people (and they reveal how to do that too). Check out their video and get two free, eye-opening reports that reveal a ton of secrets about making money online.Oh and here’s my official update. I started using Clickbank Pirate August 5th just by putting some banners ads out there linking to their professionally made squeeze pages (as in, I put in no real effort on my part). As I write this, it’s 7th and I’ve gotten my first clickbank sale thanks to Clickbank Pirate! That’s right, 2 days, barely any promotion (not even an email sent out folks!), and I got my first sale. Can I say Clickbank Pirate is awesome now?

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Main Article – Get YOUR Voice Heard!

Ok, so no real article today. Instead…

I want YOU to tell ME what you want to hear about!

Bottom line, I really write this blog for you. I want to see you succeed, and part of doing that is discovering what you need help with.

Not sure if you noticed, but I haven’t been posting to my blog as much. I noticed that on some posts, I get some good activity, while others…not so much.

Sorry but that just won’t do!

Personally, I’d like to keep this thing updated around once a week and let you know what’s going on in the world.

It’s pretty simple though: less comments, less updates.

So if you really wanna hear what I have to say about Internet Marketing, leave a comment or sent out a tweet for me!

If not, well then I guess you don’t have to do anything! haha

I installed this shiny new thing called skribit, which allows you to easily suggest and vote on topics for me to blog about.

You’ll find a blue tab on the left side of my blog, just click that, and you can make suggestions or vote on stuff for me to blog on!

So let me know what you want to hear more about! It’s really easy to do with skribit

I know a lot of you out there read this blog, so lets get more active and leave some comments. This is a great chance for you to get to know other readers, and also a chance for me to get to know some more of you better as well.

Basically, this is your chance to get YOUR voice heard!

Action steps:

1) Something you’re dying to know? Click on that suggestion box hovering on the left side and let me know. See some other suggestions you like? You can vote for those too!

2) Leave some relevant comments and share you thoughts when you read a new blog post. You can meet new people, get your website link out there (this is a “DO follow” blog by the way, for you SEO pros ), and help keep this place active. Gives me a lot more incentive to post updates when I know I’m helping you.

3) Nothing you want to say at all?! Haha it’s ok I understand, then at least do me a favor and send me out a tweet for me.  That’d be awesome too!

I’ll be the first to admit that back in the day, I would get kind of annoyed seeing my inbox flood in with info about this hot new product / course / website / whatever and how it was going to change my life and make me rich.

But then one day I realized that in order to learn the finer points of making money online, I needed to understand what powerful marketing lessons these emails actually hold inside!

You can learn how the successful Internet Marketers get you to open their emails. What subject lines enticed you to actually open and start reading?

Just by reading these emails, you’ll start to discover what types of products people tend to create and promote.

For example, have you noticed that all of the gurus have been creating continuity programs lately? That is a strong indication that these types of payment plans are very profitable.

You can also look at the body of the email. What do they talk about that makes you consider buying these new products?

You’ll notice that a lot of marketers tell stories. They talk about how a regular person just like you and me became successful using their program, even though the odds were against them. That’s just one example among many other styles and techniques!

So what I started doing was paying more attention to the emails I receive from other marketers. Especially the ones that are doing well.

If you pay attention, you’ll be shocked at the secrets that you can uncover just by reading a few emails every single day.

Later I found out that I wasn’t the only one that reads emails to improve my business. While attending some online seminars, I learned that many of the most successful marketers I know also analyze these emails to build their own businesses!

I know it might sound unconventional and maybe even a little bit troublesome, but getting emails that sell to you is a good thing. It’s like getting powerful marketing lessons from the gurus for free.

So the next time you get that email promoting the next greatest program, don’t throw it away! Read it, look at it, and absorb the secrets that you can find inside. It can make a huge difference in the amount of success you achieve on the Internet.

Here’s a fast start plan:

Step 1) When you get emails from other Internet Marketers, be excited and treat it as if it were a $1000 study course.

Step 2) Read the emails you get from successful Internet Marketers, especially the ones that sell.

Step 3) When you find something you like, take note of what made you read or buy the product they recommended.

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