Building Steam

Sometimes you have to put one foot in front of the other. That's it. Just focus on that and things will happen. Choose only the amount of daily projects you can get done and do them every day. Ignore everything else. Don't let the latest greatest thing distract you from what you have chosen to do.

I have been wishy washy with many things in the past, but affiliate marketing taught me something by accident right after I started making money. The first paragraph sums it up. Of course it's not all I needed to know. I also needed to know when to step back, take a overview of the whole situation, and change my priorities.

I had built a site to market some affiliate products. When I was done with it, it was not making any money. So I moved on to another method. Up to this point, I had made less than $200 from affiliate marketing in total and less than $5000 from any type of internet business. I had jumped around from method to method. I learned a lot, but didn't make a lot.

Well, as I was off finding another way to make some money, the site I had built starting getting traffic. I had followed everything I had learned to get traffic to the site, step by step and added my own twists. I just figured the results would be instant. When nothing happened, I just thought I had wasted more time. I was wrong.

This site went on to make me close to $20,000 over the period of 5 months. It worked. My timing was just off.

Now I am more patient. No, I lie. Now I know how to tell myself to shut up and just do it. No matter what you are learning or new way to building traffic or making sales that you are trying, you have to give your work a chance to build some steam. I have found no better metaphor.

Days and days of beating your head against the wall. Then the boiler explodes.

It is much better to understand after the first time it has happened to you. You know to have patience, because you actually experienced it paying off. You know to follow your new method with the devotion of addict, at least until you have given it a fair shot. And a fair shot is about 3 times the amount of time you believe it is. You know that "I'll do that tomorrow" is a tiny hole that will grow in mass until it sucks every motivation out of you.

And post like this, I think, are like preaching to the choir. If you know this, you know this. If you don't, you won't really get the full effect until you experience it.