How I Prepared Myself to Be a Full-Time Internet Marketer
June 9th, 2008 by MarkSince I quit my full-time job about a month ago, I’ve had quite a few people ask me how I prepared myself to make the transition to being self-employed and working from home.
I want to make two points about the personal finance aspect of making this move:
1. Debt creates stress that clogs your creativity and creates a need for income that your fledgling web business may not be able to realistically provide. So before you try to quit your job, work yourself into a solid internet income and use it to pay down your non-mortgage debts.
Not only will you experience a huge effective increase in your income (as that money is no longer going to your creditors), you will feel a big boost in your confidence and creativity because you won’t have the burden of debt weighing on your mind.
2. Get a sense for exactly how much money you need to reasonably earn to maintain your lifestyle. I don’t believe it’s realistic to say you’re going to change years of spending habits when you become self-employed. Look at how much you’re currently spending, try to trim the excess where possible, and then set your income goal equal to your current lifestyle. Trying to figure out entrepreneurship while simultaneously trying to adjust to a significantly reduced lifestyle will do nothing but frustrate and discourage you.
Now, about the work of being a full-time internet entrepreneur:
1. Find Your Best Method For Making Money Online
When you quit your job it’s not time to learn what will work. It’s time to scale up the effort you’ve already been investing in a system that is producing results. It doesn’t matter whether that’s SEO, BANS, consulting, or freelance work.
Any of those could give you the full-time income you need to stay job-free. But you need to have momentum and success behind you before you expect any of those methods to sustain you as a full-timer. An extension of this advice is that your chosen method has to be one that will reasonably scale up to a level that will pay you what you need to live.
Let’s say you right now you have an internet income of $200 per month, and it takes you 15 hours per month to maintain that income. If your monthly income requirement is $4000, you’ll have to increase your current income 20x. If you can’t introduce some new efficiencies into your business, you’ll need to invest 300 hours per month (or about 75 per week) to make that $4000 per month.
That’s probably not realistic. So make sure you can grow your income to the level you need without having to put in outrageous work-weeks. Hundred hour weeks aren’t bad if a few of them create a more passive income. But if you’re not seeing your income grow as your work hours decrease, you need to improve your money-making methods.
2. Develop the Discipline Necessary to Work At Home Full Time.
If you want to prepare to quit your job and work from home on the internet, you have to start thinking of your home as the place you work. You will have no boss other than yourself, so you have to require yourself to complete tasks.
For me the toughest part of entrepreneurship is imposing deadlines on myself. But if you can say “I will not let today pass without accomplishing x,y, and z” you are really setting yourself up to succeed. I’m working at this one every day, because I still often let myself push things off until ‘tomorrow’. The real danger of that is you can’t have today back. Once time is gone, that’s it. If you have real goals and no boss to force you to complete the necessary tasks, you have to develop the ability to complete the work - today.
3. Consume 90% Less Information
I’m going to confess something here, and I hope it doesn’t ruin our business. I don’t use an RSS feed reader. Why? Because I only read two or three blogs. I read everything Court says, I check in on SEOBook once or twice a week, and sometimes I pop over to Blogger Unleashed to see what Vic is up to. I read Grizz’s site whenever he posts, which isn’t often.
I don’t read many blogs because it’s not the way to get the highest ROI on my time. Since I have found my method for making money online, I spend my time working my method and I ignore 99% of what’s being said in the blogosphere.
There is good information out there; I’m just ignoring it because I can’t afford to be distracted. As my income settles in and becomes lower maintenance, I think I might start some BANS sites. Until then, I’m just going to do my thing.
I know many of you are on information overload, and I completely understand. That’s why I’m saying you have to work one method until it yields a result, then keep working it until you hit your goal, then start looking for additional methods. You should read only as much information as is necessary to hit that first income goal.
I really don’t believe subscribing to 50, or even 10 blogs in a reader is necessary. Find your mentor, do whatever she/he says, and ignore everybody else until you’ve reached that first goal. If your mentor is on this site - great. Spend 10 minutes a day reading this site and the rest of your work time building content and links so you can increase your income.
If your primary mentor is not on this site, I suppose you’d have to leave us for a few months until you hit your first income goal. See you when you get back. 
Also look at my friend Jason’s site on Ways to Make Money
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June 9th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Mark,
Out of curiosity, what is your preferred business model?
Best, Curt
June 9th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
This is so true. I often find myself trolling fourms and reading blogs instead of focusing on building my business. Like the previous poster, I am curious about business models. Do ecommerce and blogging have greater potential than affiliate marketing. It seems to me that the big IM gurus make most of their money by selling IM products to other internet marketers via their huge subscriber lists (which I don’t have).
June 9th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Great advice,
I am also wondering what your preferred business model is Mark?
I can totally relate to those feeds, they are such a distraction, you can wind up spending hours on those feeds, so now I only read a couple of blogs religiously, Court’s and SEOBook. I also check out Shoemoney at times.
Some of the “guru blogs” are okay but they are not “hands on” like Court’s where you actually learn money making tools, instead you can get caught up reading stuff that may have value but not to the immediate task of earning.
Thanks Mark
June 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
For the above questioners, it appears that Mark is…
“…an internet entrepreneur in his own right - he and his family own and operate a successful e-commerce store and are currently developing a personal finance and wealth creation blog at The Butler Project.”
(Click on “Mark” under the post title above for the full introduction from which this was excerpted and a link to The Butler Project.)
You are SO right about this, Mark. Keeping up with everything “new and shiny” online is a timesink that must be either (a) avoided entirely; or (b) relegated to its proper category: entertainment. I recently heard a successful IM-info marketer say the products he and his compatriots sell are “addictive like crack” for a certain segment of the population, and I suspect this is spot-on. (I also suspect his compatriots wish he’d been a little less forthright about the assessment.) And, like learning to manage any other addiction, it all comes down to making different choices. Good on you for your good choices!
June 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Great post Mark. I agree about being debt free. I got on Dave Ramsey’s plan at http://www.daveramsey.com and my stress levels have dropped dramatically as I have reduced and nearly eliminated my debt. It has definitely put me closer to going full-time online.
My question to you is - What does BANS stand for?
Thanks,
Matt
June 9th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
BANS stands for Build A Niche Store, a program that allows you to easily set up eBay affiliate sites.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Down to that few blogs you read huh? That’s almost anti-social. You are absolutely correct about read 90% less though. I wrote a post the other week 6 tips to optimize our RSS Reading Habits and one of the biggest take-aways was it’s ok to miss things. This is so true because it’s either already been said or will be said again and you can pick it up one of those times. You still need to keep up with what’s cutting edge in the industry, but spending all your time reading and not working definitely doesn’t help you AT all.
All in all great advice! Hopefully one day I can get away from the full time day job myself and work it on my own terms…
June 9th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Excellent post! I am spending so much time reading other blogs that I never really get any work done. This post could not come at a better time. Ok I am off to get some work done : )
June 10th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Same here. I too spend a lot of time browsing though blogs and forums that time just flies by. And then I have to figure out how to get some actual work done.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Nice post and timely as I’m about to take the leap myself. I’ve been operating a used bookstore (a real one) for the past three years. Expenses keep increasing as do the number of weird people dropping by the shop. I’ve grown a bit tired of all the nonsense. So moving my shop to online only. That should help the cash flow as I ramp up my BANS/Blogs/Article writing. The upside is that if I do 75 hours a week I’ll be lessening my workload!
Bruce
June 9th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
LOL! I identify with a Nikki Becker here, this is too often my problem, I am so interested in so many different things that i get distracted all too often by stuff that is extraneous to my work, so this was a timely post for me as well.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:38 am
I’d also add, don’t be afraid to try new things…but don’t be so sold on them you don’t know when it’s NOT working for you!
For example, I’m lousy at face to face sales or phone sales or any sales. Any IM opportunity that requires sales just does not mesh with my character…so I know not to even consider them now.
Sing your own song - everyone has their own best methods that work for them. Mine is site building, blogging and writing ebooks; this has been true now for many years.
Enjoy, Barbara
June 12th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Very true. At present I am concentrating mainly on Grizzly’s blog and this blog. Though I don’t waste my time checking stats and mails hundred times a day now, I need a lot of discipline. It would be very useful if you write a little bit more on discipline.
June 14th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I also quit from my job and start to be full time blogger. My earning a month is only around 10-20$. A little bit crazy. I wonder is there any other way than blogging?
June 16th, 2008 at 7:13 am
excellent post. thanks Mark.
September 6th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
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October 14th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Good entry. I’m still ramping up my part-time business so I’m jealous that you are to the point of going full-time. I think doing this part-time must be harder than when you go full-time because you have to juggle 2 jobs.
But I think I’m going to focus more like you suggest. I have plenty of knowledge and lots of ideas. I just have to focus and stay on task.
Thanks and wish me luck!
October 26th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Wish I knew about blogger about 4 years ago. I feel like I’m so late to the game and now have to play catch-up!
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
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