3 Inside Secrets of Internet Success

By Yanik Silver

In a few short months, I was able to achieve the ultimate Internet “fantasy” of making a lot of money from a simple (almost primitive) website that ran virtually on autopilot. Starting from scratch, I banked over $51,351.94 in my first 6.5 months online, just working part-time out of the corner of my living room.

I was 31 years old, and already on track to pull in six figures a year.

How did I go from a standing start to banking mega profits?

I did it with what I consider to be three inner secrets to Internet success. It has nothing to do with search engines or pay-per-click ads or any of the tactical stuff. It’s all about stuff that goes on in your head.

Secret #1: Have “Cheerful Expectancy”

One of my main mentors was Earl Nightingale, who passed away several years ago. In his programs, he talks about having “cheerful expectancy.”

There’s a big difference between cheerful expectancy and hoping or wishing something is going to happen. When you have cheerful expectancy, you know it’s going to occur. And that doesn’t come from being a “Pollyanna” or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

It comes from having knowledge. And you get that knowledge by studying your field, whether it’s Internet marketing or neurology – by completely immersing yourself in it.

I learned from Earl Nightingale that if you want to be an expert on any subject, you have to spend at least an hour a day reading up on it. Knowledge gives you the confidence to have that positive expectancy. Your expectations determine your results.

Secret #2: Do One Proactive Thing Every Day

You don’t need to do 100 things a day to be successful as an Internet marketer. Just do one proactive thing. By laying one little brick at a time, you will eventually build a big wall.

Don’t tell yourself, “Oh, I need to do e-zine ads and free-for-alls and pay-per-click search engines – and I need to do all this other stuff too!”

Agh!

Don’t overwhelm yourself. Just relax.

Make a commitment to do one proactive thing a day, no matter what. Even if you’re dead tired and worked a 14-hour day – come home and mail one letter or send out one joint venture proposal. I’m telling you, these little actions will have an immense impact.

One of my apprentices – Peter W. from the UK – is a perfect example of how powerful this can be. Peter was an Internet newbie and he also had a full-time job, so he was slow to get started. However, he took my advice and managed to do one proactive thing every single day. Whether it was something small (like writing one auto-responder message) or big (like writing 50 headlines), Peter was moving ahead. And, not surprisingly, he completed his first online project before most of my other apprentices.

Secret #3: Make Quick Decisions

A lot of people have trouble making a decision. They don’t like to do it, because it cuts off their other options. Frankly, that’s the point. You want to cut off your other options so you’re forced to move forward. It can motivate you like nothing else.

And something magical seems to happen when you make a decision. I don’t understand it and I can’t explain it. But when you set your mind to do something, all of a sudden you meet people who can help you get to where you want to go. It’s like once a decision has been made, your mind gets tuned into it and all kinds of “freaky” coincidences start occurring.

Don’t be afraid of making the wrong decision – just make a decision. If you make a mistake, who cares? What you want to do is get all your mistakes out of the way, learn from them, and move on. Don’t be afraid of failure. Fail quickly. That will speed up the time it takes you to succeed.

(Michael Masterson calls this the Secret of Accelerated Failure.)

That’s a great thing about being an Internet marketer. You can test your idea and find out if it’s going to work right away – in days instead of months. Sometimes hours. If it doesn’t work, you say “Next!” If it does work, you keep on making it better.

As Michael Masterson says, “Ready, Fire, Aim!”

That’s what I did with our first product, InstantSalesLetters.com. I got it to the point where it was good enough to test. I quickly found out that, yes, there was a market for it, that I could sell it. And then I kept adding to it and making it better.

If you want to be a successful online marketer, that’s what you have to do.

Expect that it will eventually happen.
Do at least one thing every day to get your first product idea ready to test.
When you’re ready, don’t hesitate. Make the decision and get it out there. If it works, keep making it better. If it doesn’t work, fail quickly… and go on to your next idea.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

I subscribe to the e-zine “Early To Rise” and will occasionally post articles (with permission) from them. Here is one today that caught my attention, and I can attest to it’s value from my own life.

Leading a Low-Stress Life by Living Right

By Robert Ringer

The foundation for handling sadness and misfortune, and thus for leading a low-stress life, is what I like to refer to as “living right.” What I mean by that is consistently being conscious of, and vigilant about, trying to make good choices.

We all desire love, understanding, and recognition, but those things aren’t foundational to serenity. The antidote to stress can’t be found through alcohol, pills, sexual pleasure, fame, or wealth either. Millions have tried without conquering their stress, and all too many have lived unnecessarily short lives as a result.

The real key to conquering stress is self-examination – continual, honest self-examination.

Inner conflict causes stress. By contrast, leading a concentric life (i.e., one in which what you do matches up closely with what you believe in and what you say) brings harmony into your world. Harmony is directly related to how often you follow through and do what you know is right. Likewise, harmony is related to how often you demonstrate the self-discipline to refrain from doing that which you know is wrong.

Here are some things to think about that will help you develop the mindset to overcome the stress in your life:

Don’t try to make the world bend to your will.

Trying to get everyone to do things your way goes beyond stress. It’s a frustrating, hopeless exercise that can drive a person mad. I know one wealthy individual, in particular, who long ago lost his ability to think rationally because of his frustration over not being able to force everyone around him to conform to his wishes.

One of the rules of being a good delegator is to tell people precisely what you want them to do, then let them do it their way. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that a good executive is someone who, when handed a letter that he knows he could have written better, signs it anyway.

This is an area where you have to be careful, even when dealing with your own children. While it’s the parents’ responsibility to teach and guide their children, wise parents learn early on that their children cannot and will not do everything exactly as their parents want them to. The reality is that your children are different human beings than you are, so it would be unnatural for them to mirror you 100 percent of the time.

Recognize that for every negative, there’s an offsetting positive.

I often refer to a principle that I call the Natural Law of Balance. In pointing out that the universe is in balance, I use such examples as electrons and protons, night and day, male and female, hot and cold, and life and death. The reality is that for every positive, there’s an offsetting negative, and for every negative, there’s an offsetting positive. Balance is the natural order of the universe.

The nice thing about it is that when you understand and believe in universal balance, you automatically look for the offsetting positive in every negative situation. Put another way, think of every negative occurrence as nothing more than an illusion hiding something of value to you. As Richard Bach so eloquently put it in his book Illusions,“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

Control anger and bitterness.

It’s worth repeating Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous words: “For every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness.” The late Jim Blanchard was a great teacher for me in this respect. Jim was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known. A paraplegic from the age of 18, he not only built a fortune while working from a wheelchair, he traveled the world extensively and did almost everything “normal” people do – and more.

Jim once told me about a guy who had shafted him out of a lot of money. I asked how he could be so calm about it, and I’ll never forget his response: “I’ve found that it’s disarming to just smile, be polite, and act as though nothing is wrong. Not only do you avoid making enemies by handling things in this manner, you also save yourself a ton of aggravation. All you need to do is avoid having business dealings with that person in the future. And to the extent you are cordial, he’ll probably even sing your praises to everyone – which means you win all the way around.”

I admit that Jim was special when it came to handling people, but his words help me to this day. Whenever I become angry, I give myself time to cool off before saying or doing something I might later regret. For example, if I impulsively write a quick letter in a heated state of mind, I let it sit for a day or two before mailing it. It’s amazing how much of the angry edge you can take off a letter by editing it a couple of days after you wrote it.

One last thing worth thinking about when it comes to achieving peace of mind. In his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra says that worrying about stress is more damaging than stress itself. Which brings me back to something I said in my last ETR article on this subject: It is not events that shape your world. It is your thought processes.

When you learn to control your thoughts, you establish the boundaries of negative influences upon your life. Remember, no matter how long a list of stress inhibitors you compile, your mental state will always be the most important factor when it comes to achieving peace of mind.

[Ed. Note: To learn how to survive and prosper during the turbulent years ahead, check out Robert Ringer's powerful audio series Succeeding in a World of Chaos.

And be sure to sign up for a FREE subscription to Robert Ringer's one-of-a-kind e-letter A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World. ]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

I started the diet again yesterday. Start weight: 213 lbs. This morning I was down to 210. We will see how it goes!

I need to remember to carry a camera.

This evening as I went for my walk, it was between rain showers. The mountains were decorated in misty fog and clouds, and the green as showed through seemed more brilliant than it possibly should with the grey skies and brooding rain clouds. The mountains where multicolored – green at the base where the grasses are coming to life and welcoming the change in seasons, grey and brown higher up where the rocks outnumber the meadows, darker browns and greens even higher where the pine trees battle with the snow for dominance, and snow on the crests, exagerated by the straight lines of the aspens that are still leafless seeming to be a light fur on the shoulders of the mountain.

Several deer alternated between freezing as they looked at me, and bounding a little further away as my dog and I maintained a steady pace long the path.

I really enjoy going for walks.

The diet has seemed to work. Even though I cheated terribly on it the last 3 days after discovering that my scale was off balance and I didn’t really weight 207, it was more like 211. I am still 10 lbs down. I will make the soup again tonight and start over tomorrow. If I can drop another 10 lbs this week, I will be below the magical 200lbs that I haven’t dropped below for quite a while.

As for the pullups, well . . .I hit my “five” on thursday (I think) and haven’t been able to pull it out since. I can do 4 every time I get on the bar though. I know I will be able to pull out more in the coming days.

And I certainly feel lighter, and better.