Spend More Money To Make More Money
Today I want to cover an important component to expediting the growth of your online business, Reinvestment.
When you start from scratch and build a property or offer that starts making money it is very tempting to take the proceeds and buy something for yourself. I can’t say I would blame anyone for doing that. There are few things more satisfying that earning a dollar from nothing and it feels good to reap the benefits.
With that said, I would encourage all the grinders out there to limit personal spending to a minimum and reinvest as much of your profits as possible. Assuming you are making wise decisions reinvestment can help you grow your business and profits exponentially.
Why Reinvest?
A common response I often hear to reinvestment advice is, “WHY?”. It is a valid question. Profits are typically earned through hard work and will likely grow with the same hard work. I don’t dispute this at all.
The reason you should reinvest is to grow faster and profit more.
The pace of Internet marketing and technology trends grows faster than anything we have really seen historically. What is hot today is gone tomorrow. Competition is rabid and it is important to grow and stay ahead of the game as much as possible.
Reinvestment allows a one man operation to open up the time bottleneck and scale.
What To Reinvest In?
How To Get A Great Domain For Your Website
Anyone that knows me knows that I am a domain name honk. The domain market is where I got started and I’m very thankful for that. I consider a domain name to be the foundation of any website and I place a tremendous amount of importance in choosing the right one.
Value Play – Background Info
While many consider domain names to be over priced in the after market I still consider premium keyword names to be undervalued as a whole. I have personally bought numerous names for 5 figure sums and have sold into the 6 figure range (WT.com). All of these transactions represented value plays. A premium keyword domain name affords a website many luxuries that include, but are not limited to:
- Higher Search Engine Rankings
- Brand Visibility
- Visitor Confidence
- Highly Targeted Direct Navigation (Type-in) Traffic
- Higher PPC Advertising Click Through Rates (and lower costs)
In high cost, high spend niches I’ve had 5 figure domain purchases pay for themselves in under 3 months. I am not saying you have to back up the Brinks truck for a domain. Not at all. I just want to help you understand my perspective before digging into this article.
Types of Domains
When searching for a domain name I organize them to 4 basic categories.
How To Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M
In Early 2007, just about the same time I quit my day job, Andy Hagans wrote a post on his Tropical SEO blog titled: How to: Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M.
I think this post was perhaps the best article I’ve ever read about making money online. Even though I was already well on my way down the path Andy lays out in the post I really appreciated how his articulated the process so well. I have often referred back to this post and think it is really a MUST READ for anyone that is getting started with affiliate based marketing.
Andy has had a lot of success and no longer updates Tropical SEO. In fact, the site no longer resolves. I had emailed myself a copy of the post a while back and recently ran it by Andy to see if he was cool with me reposting it for you (he was).
Note: I’m not just talking the talk here. I can vouch from first hand experience that this is doable, plus some. I’ll get into that later. 
How to: Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M
Written By Andy Hagans – April 26th, 2007It takes strategy, tactics, balls, elbow grease, money, and smart planning. Mostly, though, it’s a matter of putting in a lot of time every day to “block and tackle” (a.k.a. “the boring details” or “content and links” or “the grind”).
Most people do not have the proper attitude, personality, or personal situation (kids to feed?) to grind it out for 3 or 4 years. You have to wake up, work the 8 to 5 job, come home, lift a few weights, eat dinner, then work 7 to midnight on the side project (which, if it yields any profits, are most likely reinvested).
What Time Are You Willing To Sacrifice For Success?
For this post I’m going to make an assumption you have started on the path to make an income online and currently have a full-time job (It’s OK if this description doesn’t fit you though).
I want to talk about the biggest sacrifice you will make on your journey to replace your day job income, TIME. In the end time is the most valuable thing we have and it is almost always the primary currency to make a lifestyle change.
As you have probably already figured out time is always the bottle neck (no, it’s not money). There are opportunity costs associated to everything so one of the first steps to making your dream a reality is defining what you are willing to sacrifice in terms of time. This is something you need to really think about and stick with. You need to allocate your time for your online venture and make it routine. If you don’t do this you will likely fail (no sugar coating here).
To help you, I’ll take you through the decision making process I had when I was working my full-time job.
Goal: To work at least two hours per day on my web sites
What Tools and Content Could You Use Right Now?
I’m in the process of creating some premium tools and guides for the DJF subscribers. I have a list started but I’m creating it for you so….. let me know what tools / software / content / guides you could use right now. The more specific you can be the better.
This is an open thread I’ll monitor on an ongoing basis so feel free to comment at any time.
6 Rules To Understand Before Starting An Online Business
If I were to make a list detailing why most online business attempts fail, it would start with unrealistic expectations.
Over the past 10 years I’ve had plenty of friends and family ask me to help them get started with a website or an online business. In the early days I would spend a few hours with them going over the ins and outs of creating and marketing a website. I always felt really good when we were done and confident they were going to just kill it. That never happened. Most fizzled out in less than a month. I eventually came to realize I was partially to blame. I had covered all the technical details to get started on the right foot but I had failed to address many of the challenges to pull off a profitable venture. The missing pieces were assumed with blind optimism and the rest is history.
Before I start covering the nuts and bolts I want to make sure my readers have realistic expectations. Here are 6 rules to understand before starting an online business.
- Building An Online Business Is A Lot Of Work - Dismiss any notion you might have about making money online being easy. This might have been the case in 1997 but it is not reality today. It is a GRIND, especially if you are working a day job at the same time. Results are directly related to your inputs and nothing is going to come easy. If you take nothing else away from this post it is important to understand that this is WORK. I personally love this work and I hope you do too but it is still work. A lot of it.
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