Cerebro Power

Introduction

Well I just wrapped up my final days at work.  As I posted in detail before I gave my 2 weeks notice on January 23rd 2017.

My goal with this blog  is for others who want to follow can see the path from the start not just in a year or two when I’m already having great success and by then it does not seem easy to achieve from someones else perspective.

But I wanted to take a quick detour this week from the linear progression of preparing to quit, actually quitting and then building success with an online business.

I will start again with my next post on next steps (like my first month with no job).

I wanted to post today on a question I’ve been getting a lot already since starting this blog. In a previous post I talked about the 2 common methods to quit your job and pursue and Internet Lifestyle.

The Burn the Ships Method – You just quit and go all out to make it work in your business with nothing to fall back on if it does not succeed.

The Safety Net Method – You save up a certain amount of money to cover living expenses before quitting your job and ease out of it.

I talked about how I chose the Safety Net Method and decided to save over a years worth of living expenses before quitting.

A frequent question I got from people after that post is:

How the heck did you save enough money to cover living expenses for a year?

That is the question I am going to answer in this post. I am going to lay out my step by step strategy for saving a years worth of living expenses before leaving your job.

Preparing For Take Off

One of the beautiful things about the Safety Net Method is it allows you to validate your business. You can start your business while you are still working your day job and see if it can eventually make enough to sustain you if you quit.

You should keep all the money you make from your business completely separate from your personal accounts. Use the business funds only to pay off business expense and reinvest in your business.

You should try to save all the profit you make from your business in its own account. For the last few months I was making between $125k – $150k (annual) at my day job + another $6-$8k (monthly) from Internet business so the temptation was to increase my cost of living and spend more with that additional income.

Instead I resisted and pretty much ignored any profit from my side business. I just left it in my business account and only touched it when I had an expense related to business.

So by doing that for awhile I now already have about 1/2 of my savings for the year in my business account. I will start to pay myself a salary from this account to replace the income from my day job. This will put me in the Red each month as my ‘salary + business expense’ is higher that what the business makes right now.

I plan on getting the profit way up in the business that first part of the year now that I’ll be fully dedicated to it and hopefully can get it to cover all my business expense plus my personal income.

But besides this obvious method of starting a side business and waiting until you have a year living expense saved up from just that, I want to go a bit deeper with you on the issue of savings.

You see even if I did not have the money saved up from my business, I could still take a year off from my personal savings.

And that is because I have mastered my own personal finance method, that keeps me out of debt and pretty much worry free and also has money working for me earning interest each month.

My Background In Personal Finance

Before I ever heard of Internet Marketing or decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur I was determined to figure out my personal finances.

I did not grow up with much money and had no one to show me even the basics about it. Like many younger Americans the trap was first set when I turned 18 and started getting all these credit card offers in the mail.

Not quite understanding how that worked I got into credit card debt heavy and from there it was vicious, vicious cycle that lasted for many years.

Every time I paid off a credit card another emergency would come up and Id have to get right back into debt again. I could never save any money and was paying a huge penalty for the “privilege” of borrowing money on a credit card.

I thought the answer was to make more money but although my standard of living raised my debt and money issues just got bigger and bigger.

I started to devour personal finance books but I still couldn’t completely get out of debt and struggled with making and following a  budget.

Finally after many years I came up with my own system. Based off the Pareto Principle or the “80/20 Rule” I found a way to automate my wealth building plan stress free, with no budgeting or difficult self discipline to follow.

My 80/20 Rule to Personal Finance

This not directly related to Internet business and quitting your job but I believe this will help you tremendously in your financial life. And if you have your financial life in order its much easier to quit your job.

I believe so strongly in this plan that I will be writing a book on just this subject in the future but here I will give you the nutshell version.

After years of reading financial books and personal experimentation I came up with this system that has worked perfect for me and I truly believe can work for ANYONE struggling with credit card debt and savings, if they stick with it.

The end goal is:

To be out of credit card debt.

Have an emergency fund so you never need to use a credit card again.

Have 3-6 Months Full living expenses saved just in case.

Have interest bearing accounts you continue to build your wealth with for the rest of your life.

20% Wealth Building Accounts in Order

Make sure to fill these in order. Fill the Flex Fund fully then move onto the Emergency Fund etc….If you put 20% towards it every month these will fill quickly and you will eventually get to the fun part which is the investment accounts.

For some people it will take less than a year to get to step 3 and 4 for some much longer.

It does not matter how long it takes you.

Just keep putting away 20% and you will eventually get there!

Here is what my current Freedom Fund Ladder looks like:

1. Flex Fund $10,000 in a regular Savings Account. This is to ensure that I never go into credit card debt for any minor emergencies or vacations etc…
2. Emergency Fund $30,000 in Interest Savings Account. This is for longer emergencies lose your job etc. I have about 3 months full living costs here. I use a Capital ONE 360 Savings Account so I can get a bit of interest.
3. Freedom Fund $20,000 -? High as you can. This is for long term savings. It uses an Index fund so their is rapid growth. Should be used for non retirement long term investing. After you have filled the first 2 keep putting the 20% here every month. I have a Betterment account.
4. Just for Fun Fund $10,000 – $15,000 I put in a little bit of ‘play’ money for individual stocks. This should not be taken to serious as an investment. I use Scottrade.

Id also like to point out that there are other investments you can make that are potentially more lucrative and could give you faster and bigger returns. Like investing in your own business, another business or real estate.

PSA: Be on the lookout for this scam hibachi company called RockStar Hibachi!

This post is for people who struggle with credit card debt and saving enough money to never use them again.

I hope you like the guide and hit me up if you have any questions on it!

Introduction:

In my last post I talked about how the day of reckoning was coming soon. I was finally going to quit my 9 to 5 (more like 6:00 to 5:30 with commute).

January 23rd 2017 was the chosen day of offering my 2 weeks notice to my job and there would be no turning back after that.

Well I am happy to report that despite being very extremely nervous I did in fact successfully give my notice!

There were all kinds of thoughts going through my head as the time for meeting with my boss and letting him know approached.

I was getting nostalgic already and thinking about how this was the best job I’ve ever had and maybe I could never get another one quite like it if the Internet Marketing does not workout.

Proud to say those negative voices were pushed out and I did what needed to be done. In today’s post I am going to talk about some tactics I came up with that helped me get over this nervousness and follow through.

I am also going to lay out the plans for what comes next for me as I start my new path as an Internet Business owner.

Preparing For Quitting

So as I have mentioned a hundred times already I was very nervous leading up to giving my 2 weeks notice. Not only did I not want to disappoint my bosses but the fear of leaving once and for all was creeping in and trying to paralyze me into inaction.

Here are some methods I used that helped me deal with the fear.

Public Accountability

The first thing I did was hold myself publicly accountable. I made a post on Facebook publicly declaring my plans so that I would be forced to explain if I didn’t follow through when the time came.

At first I was going to post this message on my Facebook profile so all my family and friends could see. But after thinking about it I realized that cant be done because I have some friends on Facebook that I currently work with at my company.

Instead I decided to post on an SEO/Marketing group that I am a part of on Facebook.

Here are screenshots of what I posted.

Now originally the post was just intended to hold myself accountable. But it also had another added benefit from the encouragement I got from other group members as you can see by the likes and comments below.

This was awesome! Sometimes when you tell family and friends your quitting such a great job they do not really understand. Normally they try to be supportive anyway but you can sense they think it might be a little crazy for you to just up and quit a job that pays well and is very secure.

But by letting people know your plans that think like you and know what is possible with an Internet business, they are almost always encouraging because they have went through the same thing or plan on it soon.

So your takeaways from this is.

Hold yourself accountable by posting your plans somewhere publicly.

Try to find a group of like minded people so that you can get some encouragement from people who understand.

Acting Like Its Already Happened

One of the first things I did was to send a meeting request to my boss for Monday morning. This meeting was to let him know that I was moving on and to give him the official 2 weeks notice.

Here is my resignation letter which I wrote the week before the notice date:

So now I had a meeting set with my Boss (which he probably assumes is just a touch base) and I have already written my resignation letter.

This helped me tremendously because the wheels were put in motion and now I just needed to follow through.

I also came in to work during the weekend and cleared out all the personal stuff from my desk. This helped give that feeling of finality and also when I came in Monday I already felt a little more detached with just the bare minimum at my desk.

How Quitting Went

So the resignation itself went pretty well. I met with my direct boss and just let him know right away and handed him the letter.

We spoke for about a 1/2 hour and I had to convince him that I was not leaving for another company but going out on my own for at least a year.

He is a pretty cool guy and was nice about everything. Also one of the reasons I did not leave in the beginning of January was because I was the architect for a very complex project and I did not want to leave them hanging. So he appreciated that I finished that project first before turning in my notice.

Kind of a funny/awkward thing did happen though. After telling my direct supervisor about my notice he told me that he was going to let the head of our IT Department know (the top guy who manages about 300+ high level engineers).

Now even though he is my bosses, bosses, boss and the head of the whole department we actually talk often because he really likes me a lot and loves to give me shit.

He is from New England so of course an obnoxious Patriots fan (is there any other kind). I on the other hand, was raised in beautiful Seattle, WA and I’m a die hard fan of the NFL greatest team the Seahawks (#gohawks).

So in the spirit of teasing me as he likes to do he sends the email below to our entire group.

Nice timed shot at my Seahawks right? So I go down to grab a doughnut and he of course comes over and jokes around with me. At this point I realize my Supervisor probably has not said anything to him yet.

Well not 15 minutes later at my desk he gives me a call and asks me to come down to speak to him. I go to his office and he lets me know that he heard I was leaving.

I proceed to tell him the story about why Im leaving and he says, “Thank God. I thought it was because you took my Patriots email to seriously!” LOL

So pretty weird timing. He finds out Im quitting 5 minutes after sending an email to everyone calling me out in a joke.

Anyway he is an amazing boss. He asked if there was anything he could do to make me stay, more money, different position, remote work etc… I politely declined but you can see why quitting this job has been such a struggle for me.

At my previous job the person in his same position never even said Hello to me once in 2 years! This guy who is responsible for so many people would always go out of his way to see how Im doing, joke around and be encouraging.

But all good things must come to an end to make room for even better things.

This was by far the best job I have ever had. But at the end of the day its a job.

And where I’m going we don’t need no stinking jobs.

Whats Next?

So now I am out in the Ocean with out a boat and its time to swim! I am going to work especially hard the first few months with a real tight focus on what is already making me money.

Now that I have so much more time the first thing I’m going to do is try to optimize even more what is already working so far in my Internet business. Once I have those things maxed out than I will move on to other ways to make money.

Since I have had such limited time with my job I’ve only been able to get a few clients. My best client makes me consistently between $6,000 – $8,000 a month. This is a percentage deal I have. The more money I make them, the more money I get.

So my first order of business is to get this client bringing me in at least $10k every month. This should definitely be doable as I am almost there with the very limited time I have had to dedicate to this. Not only that but there is clear massive opportunities I have already seen to scale this.

Now that the bandwidth is actually there to implement these things it should take off pretty quickly.

After reaching closer to full potential with my few existing clients I will then start to work on getting a few more and figuring out how to scale my services and business.

Well now there one important chapter in this book that is closed. From my very first post I said that I wanted to share with you from the very start, my entire personal process of quitting my job and going out on my own to build an Internet Lifestyle business.

There are tons of great blogs out there on this type of stuff but I always found it annoying that they started writing after they were already having a ton of success. I wanted to see the struggles on the way up the ladder as they were happening and how they dealt with them at that time.

That is why I will continue writing on this blog.

My mission is to help other people who want to quit their job and have the time to live the life of their dreams .

I think its best if you can see from the very start step by step and realize that everyone has struggles to reach their ultimate goal.

The key is to define what you want, figure out the process to get there and don’t quit trying until you do.

I have a confession to make… I REALLY suck at sales.

It has just never really been my thing. I remember one of the first (and still worst) jobs I ever had was as a telemarketer.

I was about 19 at the time and this big fat guy who had the build of someone who sat at a desk 10 hours day on the phone eating snacks, got up to address all us newbies.

He was the top salesperson on the team and they called him the “Hammer”.

Well the Hammer made this impassioned speech about how you have to go for “the kill” and you are only a few sales away from being a top dog like him. He then gave us some techniques to use to close our calls.

Like everyone else I was all pumped up from the Hammers speech. But then I got on the phone and proceeded to do almost the complete opposite of what he told us. I wasn’t passionate. I wasn’t persistent. I wasn’t confident in the product or what I was saying.

Needless to say I had absolutely ZERO sales that day and the Hammers position as the top dog Sales telemarketer was safe. I quit that telemarketing job the next day and have never really liked direct selling since.

Now of course that does mean I do not appreciate the importance of sales. I actually think a good sales process is one of the most important part of having a successful business.

Because remember; at the end of the day, if you don’t have paying clients you don’t have a real business. And you cannot get clients without some form of selling.

So I personally hate sales but Im telling you its important to the success of your online business. How do I get around this for my business? Well for one I know that Im going to have to get better at it at some point. Right now with me still being at a full time job, getting more clients is not yet my primary focus.

But until I get better at sales let me show you how I got around my weakness in this area to get the clients I have now.

By the end of this post you are going to know the answer to this question.

How do you get a client if you suck at sales?

Here are 3 methods I have been using so far to get my clients.

1.) Leverage Your Personal Network

When you are first starting out with online lead generation it can be tough. You may not have much proof yet that you can actually bring results for people.

One thing you could do is to rank your own websites so you have that much coveted proof of results. What you could also do is to offer your services first to family and friends.

Of all your family and friends there has to be someone who has their own business right? Approach that person(s) and tell them you want to help drive more leads to their business.

This is an all around win. You get to practice at developing your skills with a real business while at the same time helping someone close to you do better in their business.

After you start driving them real results you can record the progress and use it as proof to sell others. You could also ask your family/friend to recommend you to other business owners.

What If No Family/Friend Owns Their Own Business?

What if you cannot find someone you know personally that owns their own business? Man you gotta get out more! You don’t have one person close to you who has their own gig going?

Well no worries, I guess you will be the first of your family and friends to have a successful business.

But if you dont have close friends or family to offer your services to you will have to go one more degree of separation. Ask everyone in your close network if they know someone that has a business and wants more customers.

This is not as a good as a direct connection to you of course but still way better than a complete cold connection who you have never met and knows nothing about you.

Having someone vouch for you can go a long way towards your chances of successfully signing that client so don’t underestimate it.

This first method of leveraging a personal network has worked wonders for me. When I was just starting out and gaining my online skills I approached a very close family member who had their own business.

I asked them if I they wanted me to see if I could bring them more leads. They are in a high end service business so each new client is worth a lot of money for their business.

So even though its a family member why would they trust their marketing to you? Well the key is to make them an a no brainer offer which we get into more with step 2.

2.) Make Them An Offer They Cant Refuse

If you want to start a lead generation company and plan on getting really good at it you will have a very valuable skill.

Every company wants to make more money.

For more money you need more clients and to get more clients you need more good leads.

That is where you come in. You are going to use your very valuable knowledge and skill to get their business good leads.

But here is the problem. How do they know if you can do what you say can. Can they trust you? Are you just wasting their time? When your first starting out it can be tough to prove yourself.

So this is what you offer them.

Its very simple. If my work makes you money, you pay me. If not, you don’t pay me. You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Now some Internet marketers are going to say this is crazy.  Your services are very valuable and you should be paid for them from the jump. You need to sell the person.

And I totally agree. But if you are really bad at selling there is no way you are going to convince a business owner who does not know you and has been pitched by SEO people hundreds of times before to pay you without results.

Besides, you should not want someone to pay you if you cannot deliver. You will just end up having a short term client and a burn in churn system that will rely on what you hate. Having to constantly sell to more clients.

Instead aim to prove to this client your skill. If you are getting real results after a few months they are going to be willing to pay for that good ROI. That is how you get a long term, recurring client.

Even if you have to spend some of your own money during this time it will be worth it for you to work with a real business and have real results to show future potential clients.

It really makes me crazy when people tell me they don’t want to invest any time or money in their online career.

Think about it. People spend 4 years and almost 6 figures for a college education. The purpose of college is to learn a skill so you can get paid. But even after all that learning and money spent on college, most folks start at the bottom when they start their careers.

They still have years of working their way up and proving themselves to their company before they can expect any substantial pay.

So what is a few hundred dollars and (usually) less then one year investment into your Internet Marketing skills? Especially when you can start out as the boss (of your own company) instead of the bottom of some corporate ladder taking scraps while years and years pass by.

Just to illustrate this for you. I have worked in IT almost 15 years. I have now worked my way up to a level between $125,000 and $150,000 a year.

A lot of money for some people right? But my Internet Marketing business which I have been doing for only 2 years and work less then 5 hours a week on generates me between $8,000 to $10,000 a month.

So lets be conservative I average $8,000 a month over a year that’s already $96,000!

In fact if I averaged $2,500 per client. you know how many clients it would take for me to reach the max window of my IT career that I worked 15 years to build?

5.

Yes you read that right. Only 5 clients.

5 x $2,500 = $12,500 x 12 = $150,000

What makes more sense to you as an investment of time and money. 4 years of college and close to a hundred grand in debt. Then about 10 years of working your ass off to reach the upper pay in your field.

Or a couple of thousand dollars a year and 1 or 2 years of self training to start making that money in 3-5 years and be your own boss?

Now imagine I got just two more clients? That’s $210,000. It would take me at least another 5-8 years to make that in my IT career if it was even possible at all to get that high.

3.) Team up with a Good Sales Person

So if you don’t have any close friends or family with a business to help. And you are so  scared of sales you wont even do the offer they cant refuse. There is still another option.

That is you can team up with someone who excels in your weakness. Find someone who is a good salesperson and have them close your potential clients. You can either go into a partnership with them or even better just pay them per close.

I have an agreement like this with my friend Rey. He owns a very similar client lead generation site RapidCustomers.com But we dont see ourselves as competition, we help each other out.

Rey is an actor, so he has the looks and charm but he is also a damn good sales person. To subsidize his acting career he worked for a big Ads agency for a few years calling and closing every day from a list of warm leads.

He later struck out on his own with his client agency. The thing is as good at sales as he is, the technical part of SEO and paid advertising hes not a big fan of. That is where we help each other out. I will send him leads to close for me and give him a cut. He will send technical stuff my way to help him out when he needs it.

We both do what we are good at and its a win, win. Now if you find the right person you could form a partnership and they could handle the sales end while you do what you are good at. But for me I think its better to just cut each other in on individual deals and keep your own companies separate.

One of the great things about having an Online company is the low cost and uncomplicated startup. If you bring on a partner out of the gate you are going to make things more complicated. Its better to work with someone for awhile on individual deals and only after you know for sure your partnership works to consider sharing the same company.

So there you have it. Don’t let sucking at sales stop you from getting starting with your online business. For any business you own sales will be a key component to its success. You can use these strategies to get your sales jump started while you keep working on getting better at sales yourself.

I recently did an interview for a website called Online Fanatic. The owner of the website is a guy named Kenny, who is from Malaysia but came to the United States at 18.

I met him a few years ago at a Internet Conference put on by Mario Brown but we were both mostly there to see an SEO guru by the name of Alex Becker, who was a guest speaker.

Anyway Kenny and I hit if off and have remained friends ever since.

The thing about Kenny is that he is not only one of the people who is inspiring me to quit my job and pursue an Internet business full time, I think he could also inspire you if you are having similar thoughts.

I make a really good salary at my current job but Kenny was in a different position a few years back when he took the leap to a full time Online income.

He was working at Starbucks as a barista which is barely above minimum wage. He had also dropped out of college and felt directionless in his life. Living at home with out a good income and no obvious prospects things were looking bleak.

That is when he first started looking into making money online. He started learning about SEO and ranking web sites. Every day after his shift at Starbucks he would get on the Internet for hours to learn and experiment.

He slowly built his skills until he was able to consistently rank keywords that he could then monetize.

This lead to him making a bit of an income from his efforts. Once he got rolling this quickly grew to surpass his monthly earnings from Starbucks.

As soon as he had 3 consecutive months of more money made online then his full time day job as a barista he quit!

That was over 3 years ago and Kenny has never looked back. Yes he still works very hard but now its on his terms. No more servicing surly customers at Starbucks for low pay. Now he determines when he works, when he does not and he is his own boss.

Like I said earlier Im really inspired by Kenny. No he is not a millionaire but he has control of his time and works on his terms.

Its one thing to read peoples stories online but when you know someone personally who has made this work its pretty awesome! He is much braver then me as I have still not quit my job.

I now have almost a years worth of life expenses saved up and that is why I’ve finally worked up the courage to give this a go.

Anyway now that you know a little bit about Kenny you will understand why I was flattered that he asked me to answer a few questions for his audience.

Among other things we discussed:

The hardest thing about starting a side online business for people with a day job.

How hard is it to get started online?

3 actionable steps for making money with Google Adwords

The difficulties in scaling in an online business

Tip on time management with juggling a day job AND an online business

Some recommend books for people who want to quit their day for an online lifestyle.

I hope you like the interview. You can find it here.

I encourage you to go out and meet and network with people who either have the same goal as you or even better, are where you want to be in 2-3 years.

People who working regular 9-5 jobs will often try to discourage people like us from our online goals. But there is no sense in listening to people who have not achieved what you want. You want to listen to the people who have.

Also its great to have someone to hold you accountable. I have told Kenny (and publicly to everyone on this blog) that I am quitting my job in January of 2017. Excuse after excuse has kept me from making the leap but with the growing success of my online business and the amount of money I have saved there is no more excuses.

Kenny constantly reminds me of that and lets me know that I will be getting shamed if I come up with another excuse and don’t follow through on my January 2017 plan.

In the very near future I will be interviewing Kenny here on this blog as well. I went into it a little bit but he has a very interesting story that will help inspire anyone looking for the courage to quit their day job.

Until then, once again here is the link to his interview of me.

I know, I know. These type of headlines always sound like hype.

But its true so there it is.

Of course there are people making $70,000 or $700,000 online every month instead of my $7,000 so everything is relative.

But this article is for people in a position similar to mine. You are just learning how to make money online and still working a full time job that you hope to transition off of eventually.

For you guys how nice would it be to have an extra $7,000 a month?

Well in this article I am going to tell you how I reached this level, how I plan to scale higher and some tips on how you can do the same.

What I Made

I made over $7,000 dollars last month with just one client (my best client) with my side Internet business!

The past few months have been really good with this particular client and have steadily come in between $6,000 to close to $8,000.

That is up from my previous high average of $4,000 – $5,000. The crazy thing is that is without adding a new clients and I actually have worked a little less then normal during the past few months because of increasing demands from my day job and some family issues that came up.

Below is the invoice they paid me for September 2016 for work done in August 2016. Again this is for my one main client.

So not going to lie having an extra $7,000 to $8,000 hit my bank account each month feels pretty damn good!

Right now in preparation for quitting my full time job in 4-5 months I basically put it all in my business account and only pay for my business costs out of that account.

My plan is to save everything in my business so when I quit my full time job I can pay myself a salary with the side business and subsidize the gap in income I will have with what I have saved.

For awhile anyway I expect Ill be making much less at my side business then I do with my full time job.

So if I make lets say, $6,000 one month from my Internet business but I’m used to making $8,000 a month from my full time job Ill take the extra $2,000 out of the business savings.

Assuming I slowly start to make more in my Internet business when I start full time the savings I have now should last at least a year.

Ill have a full post on my plans for financial transition in the future.

Whats your Plan?

So enough about me! Lets talk about you!

How would you like an extra $7,000 a month from a side business that you work on for about 4-6 hours a week?

Well, I am going to show you how I did it. One really big thing I want to point out!!

I did not just start learning this stuff a few months ago and now I make $7,000.

I had been struggling to try to learn Online marketing on my own and eventually reached this point.

Once I quit my day job and can do this full time I expect to quickly double and triple this.

But if you don’t already have a lot of experience with Internet Marketing don’t let that discourage you.

I am hoping with this post you can cut out a lot of the mistakes I made and go straight away to what works.

So for you hopefully it won’t take years to start making good money but instead months.

Different Ways to Make Money Online

First, let’s take a quick look at some of the ways to make money online.

Nowadays there are hundreds of ways to generate income online but some of the most popular are Affiliate Marketing, Product Selling (Amazon or Shopify store), or taking on clients for lead generation.

Lead generation can be SEO, Local SEO or paid marketing like Adwords and Facebook.

Now anyone who has made money in any of these areas is going to swear by it (and rightly so, since it works for them) but we are going to talk in this article just about Clients Leads or Lead Generation.

That is what I’m most familiar with and that is what has been putting that extra loot in my account the past 2 years.

Why I do Client Leads

–Fast way to make money
There are many, many reasons I am a fan of Lead Generation for Clients.

One of the biggest reasons is the speed at which you can get in the game and start making money.

All you have to do to get started with lead generation is to convince just one business owner to let you send them leads and pay you for them.

(Don’t worry I will go into detail later in this post on how to make an irresistible offer for your potential clients).

–Viable skills to learn for now and future
Another reason why I like lead generation for Internet business is that its a solid and viable business to be in for now AND the future.

The Internet changes daily and the way to successfully market online does as well.

But once you have mastered the basic principals of online marketing you can adapt along with the changes.

At the end of the day, every business is looking for new clients.

If you have the skill to bring them, new clients, you and your services are going to be in high demand.

–You can make money while learning
With Lead generation, it’s possible to make money while you are still learning.

Now, how many business opportunities are going to pay you while you are still learning?

When you first start out I recommend you only charge your customers on a performance basis.

In other words, they are only paying you when you bring them results (ie they have nothing to lose).

Now some experienced marketers are going to say that is crazy. You should up your sales skills and demand payment for all of your work.

But in my opinion, unless you are some type of Internet marketing savant you are not going to get great results in your first few months of learning.

So why provide bad service and make a client unhappy?

So you could either take 3-6 months pour yourself into training and rank your own websites.

You would then have the skills and proof to get a client.

Or you could use this method of agreeing to only get paid for what you bring and rank a live client site while learning and getting paid when you perform.

Here is a picture of what my 2016 income earnings from my ONE main client look like.

You can see steady growth each month for 2016. There was only a big drop off in the month of May but that was due to my client not being able to close his leads for 1/2 that month because of personal issues.

This is the method I have been doing for almost 2 years. 2015 was much less money and let me tell you my very first month I studied and worked so hard and my grand total for all my work was only $87 dollars!

But you know what? I was not discouraged!

I figured if I could make $87 dollars after just one month of learning a new skill the upside could be huge.

NOTE: I wish I still had the picture of this first check to show you. (I took a picture of it at the time but lost it on my old phone)

When I saw that first small check I knew this was possible I just had to get better at it!

How well could I do when I was actually sending the client dozens of new leads a month, instead of just one that first month that they closed for one of their low-end services?

Now that same client I made my first $87 dollars with 2 years ago is the one I am citing here for the $7,128 made last month.

(I only have a few clients with this one making the majority of my income. That is why I am using them in my example).

I actually made more in total with my few other clients then I show here. I have not been able to maximize the others or get new clients because of the demands of my current full-time job and that is why the whole goal is to quit the full-time gig soon so I can grow my business.

The Trick to Getting Your First Client

The trick is…..Find Someone With a Business Who Needs Leads!

Ok so you have little to no experience getting leads online so how in the hell do you get your first client?
The first thing to know is that despite your lack of experience you are going to have a pretty attractive pitch.

What if you owned a business and someone told you they were going to send you new customers and you did not even have to pay unless the leads they send became paying customers?

Pretty much sounds like a no lose proposition right?

Well it is but you would be surprised how many people reject this offer because it sounds to good to be true.

How to find Clients (family,friends)

So what your going to do is start with your personal network. I don’t care who you are or what you do, you have to know someone who owns their own business. A friend, a cousin, an uncle, a neighbor, whoever.

Anyone who has a business wants more customers. And for that they need new leads.
If no one comes to mind right away ask family and friends if they know anyone, look on your social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook for friends who own businesses.

Now for your first client if you are still learning marketing you probably cant be to picky. But I highly recommend you try to find people who have high end services.

Think Doctors (plastic surgeons), Lawyers or emergency plumbers etc).

You want clients where just one new customer is worth thousands of dollars to them. That way at the start when your leads are just trickling in at a few per month, its still worth it to them and you.

For example if you get a plastic surgeon as a client just one extra patient a month for them is potentially worth $10,000 to $15,000 to even $30,000.

Now compare that to someone who sells T-shirts or something where a new customer is only worth between $10-$20 to the owner.

So of course the surgeon is going to be a more lucrative customer for you even if you only got them a few extra leads a month.

How to convince them (performance pay)

So you have little to no experience and no existing customers. How do you pitch this? Once you find that friend, family member or acquaintance that owns a high end service its time to do a bit of research.

Before approaching them you want to see where there site is currently at. Most people who own a local business have terrible SEO and Internet Marketing and just by doing some very simple steps you can improve their results drastically.

But if they are already spending money on professional Internet marketing and getting good results they probably are not going to want to switch over to you despite your relationship.

Also you wouldn’t want them to if you cannot deliver the same or better results as the professionals they currently use as it may ruin your relationship.

What you want to do is find people who anything you can is going to be a benefit to them because they dont have good results now.

You can follow some of the steps in this post to see if professional marketing has been done to your potentila new clients site already. http://neilpatel.com/2015/09/01/the-simple-but-effective-guide-to-keyword-competition-analysis/

If they do not seem to have a strong presence on the Web and you know they are missing even some of the basics then you are in business!

How to approach

This of course is all going to depend on the relationship yo already have with the person. In general you do not want to make a big deal out of it.

Approach them causally and let them know that you do Internet Marketing now and think you could help send them new leads.

Do not go into technical details just tell them you think you can send them new leads online and would they be interested if you could? If they say Yes, tell them it will take at least a month or two of work to start seeing results.

Ask them how much each new client is worth to them.

Then ask them if it would be fair to pay you x amount per lead (I usually do 10% for high end leads so a $10,000 client for them gets me a $1,000).

Now if they are willing to spend money on paid advertising that would be best because you can start getting them leads quickly.

If they don’t want to invest much money in paid adverstising then you will need to do SEO. I typically recommend creating your own site all together instead of using their site.

This is more work at the start but will potentially save many headaches in the future.
First off. You can make sure the site is 100% clean and done right. If they had any bad SEO done in the past you wont have to worry about it.
Second. You own the site.

If you spend months or even years building up someone else site they still own it. When your business relationship ends the income generating asset you worked so hard on ends as well.

On the other hand if your relationship ends (disagreement, they decided to retire etc) you wont be left holding nothing.

All you have to do is find another person in the same business, in the same area, make a similar deal and start sending the leads to them.

Expanding your Online Business

You Never Forget Your First
When you are first starting out your most important client is your first. I am still with my first client from 2 years ago and its the one I have been using as an example in this blog post.

From $87 dollars the first month to almost $8,000 now.

Do not worry about making a ton of money at the start. As you learn more about this world you will see people on the Internet making $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month and even over a $100,000 a month.

Trust me NO T ONE of them STARTED there.

Don’t worry about making a bunch of money with your first few clients.

Instead focus on getting really good at what you do and providing the best value possible.

When you make people good money they naturally become your best advocates.

I have been doing this for over 2 years and I am just now getting to the point where I am looking to quit my job.

I know guys that knew next to nothing about SEO or Online Marketing and were able to quit their jobs in less then 6 months.

So we all come from different places and will advance differently.

It took me awhile because my job and family takes so much time and I’m super financially conservative (I have saved almost $100 thousand dollars in anticipation of covering my income lost with the job) but the point is this is not going to happen overnight.

After you start having success with that first client go get another one. Now that you have proof of results it should be easier to get another client.

After you start making money, reinvest it into the business with software tools and virtual assistants to help with the workload.

Once you are making close to the income from your day job and focus full time on your business.

With that extra time you should be able to increase your clients and the positive results you bring them.

Then keep repeating these steps until you scale to the level you want to be at.

–Reinvest profits in your business
–Keep learning more
–Spend on getting new clients
–Hire help as you grow

I hope you enjoyed this article on how I made/make money on part time Internet business. Get started now. Commit to learning and never quit. You will get to where you want to be.