Success Comes From Striving To Be The Best

…at least as far as authority site building goes.

Being the best pays really, really well in many markets. Take your pick from among the places you’ve listed in your bookmarks. I’ll wager there are some millionaires, and billionaires, behind some of the sites you’ve marked as favorites and visit often.

I can also tell you that whatever those sites are about and whatever markets they are in, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people who want to be where they are and haven’t come close.

Success is all around you every time you logon… 

There are millionaire bloggers. There are millionaire service and special interest site owners from dating to gossip to untold numbers of entertainment sites. There are millionaire consultants, coaches, wine connoisseurs, travel experts, information sales people, writers, authors, speakers, and show offs.

There are millionaire jokesters. Millionaire marketers. Millionaire self-help gurus.  Million and billionaire software programmers.

There are artists, poets, musicians, and shopping cart owners of every kind selling things you’d never dream would produce millions in sales.

The one thing - the only thing - that sets the thousands upon thousands of success stories on the web apart from everyone else is that they are all considered the best source of whatever they provide. They might not even BE the best.  It’s kind of subjective, you know. But enough people think that they are, and that means that they do very, very well with their web businesses.

What It Takes To Be Among The Best

1. You absolutely must have a unique “voice” on the web. It can be through your unique products or services or your actual voice, whether written or audio/video.
2. You HAVE to stand out in your niche as much as the people you follow stood out to make you bookmark their sites.
3. Seth Godin said it best.  The word “remarkable” took on new meaning when he wrote “Purple Cow.”  You absolutely have to find a way to bring remarkable service, content and products to your niche that just blows everything else away, or at least blows away enough of the competition that you are right up there with the best of the best in your niche and making the money you want to make with your business.
4. Sometimes you don’t have to be the best.  Just better than the vast majority of your competition.  If you find yourself running from a bear in the wild,  you don’t have to outrun the bear.  You just have to outrun the person running next to you!
5. Pull heart strings, tell great stories, engage people, be real, be honest, go the extra mile, do things no one else will do to win visitors and business.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to stand out and be remarkable by simply keeping your word, supporting your customers, and providing superior customer experience!
6. Be ultra creative and open your mind beyond the status quo of whatever is hot in your market at the moment.  Lead, do not follow.  Set trends, don’t wait to capitalize on them after someone else sets them.
7. Be the first.  Do something no one has ever done.  Give away what people sell and sell what people are giving away.
8. Find out what everyone else is doing in your market and then run to meet the needs of everyone in the market that your competitors have not satisfied.  You’ll be surprised how many people are still waiting for something remarkable to happen!
9. Learn to give and give freely.  Let go of everything you think is supposed to be done only a certain way and change the whole game that’s being played in your market.  Break rules and break the bank.
10. If everyone is selling something in your market, learn how to give it away and make twice as much money with the following you attract.  (This is being done with great success in a lot of places!)
11. Work harder and longer than everyone else is willing to work.  Picture what your ultimate goal is and then picture what you wouldn’t do to achieve it.  And then stop complaining about how much work it is and get to work!

By now you know, especially if you’ve seen Highlander, that there can be only one “best.”  But reading between the lines you also know that you are not required to be the actual best to win big.

I would nominate countless other bloggers as “the best” before me. But my blog and what it’s brought me thus far suits me just fine while I continue to work toward becoming the best in my market.  And I know that long before I ever become the best I will be able to retire without a care in the world.

Here’s to never having to be the best to have one hell of a life!

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Tags: authority site building, be the best, being the best, remarkable, seth godin, success

The Simple Truth About Online Business

Many people think they want to make a killing or at least a decent living by owning a profitable online business.

People want lots of things they will never actually work to acquire.  That’s human nature.

A very small percentage of the people who build sites on the web make any kind of money at all.  That’s also got a lot to do with human nature.

It is not because internet marketing (web publishing) is a scam and people like me are only pretending to be successful.  Granted, most people are pretenders to the throne, but not all of us.

Truth is, success (period) is hard won.  Online or offline, the rules are exactly the same.

There are evident traits of successful web publishers.  Bloggers, direct marketing experts, shopping site owners, affiliate marketers, and niche content providers are collectively making the equivalent of the gross national product of medium-sized countries.

What’s the difference between them, the relative few, and everyone else?

1.  Passion:  An unwavering dedication to “make it” without distraction and without slowing down until “it” has been achieved.

2.  Work Ethic:  Nothing can stop these people.  They will work any number of hours per week, blast through learning curves and leap amazing technical hurdles until they have realized their goals for their online business.

3.  No Free Lunch:  Although entrepreneurs are, by definition, “dreamy” and undaunted by big thinking, they are not so stupid and unrealistic that they believe anything is going to fall into their lap.  They ignore the emails and ads for “opportunities” most people get sucked into.

4.  Caring:  Professional web publishers give a damn about what they do and how it is perceived by the markets they serve.  They cannot get into a business just for the money and sustain themselves emotionally and physically for the money alone.  And they cannot screw good people out of money just to become rich for the sake of wealth.

5.  Giving:  The best and most successful business models online are the ones that give before asking for anything in return.  Free information is proven to build trust and set apart the greedy from the honest.  Online business owners who are trusted are, not coincidentally, successful beyond measure in their niche.

The Simple Truth is that…

…statistically you, dear reader, are destined to fail at your online business.  I say statistically because I can’t know if you personally are one in a hundred that are going to work hard enough, give enough, care enough, be sensible enough, and be passionate enough to do what it takes to succeed.

The odds aren’t in your favor, but if you are realistic you knew that already.

The final truth about online business is that the people who succeed find ways to cut the learning curve down as much as possible.

You can’t come online and simply buy a “make money” product, service, or scheme and start depositing large checks every month.

Does that mean the opportunities the web provides everyone are not real?  Ask the guys who started Google, Myspace, Skype, Ebay, YouTube, Content Desk, Flickr, De.lic.ious, Napster, Yahoo and any number of other sites in your bookmark files right now.

None of the people who started the successful ventures above are overly remarkable human beings on average.  They just worked hard, thought big, and saw their dreams through to the other side no matter what got in their way.

Can you do it too?  Absolutely.  If you have it in your genetic makeup to succeed no matter what.  Yes.

Does everyone have the characteristics of successful people?  Absolutely not.

Most people will enjoy a lifetime of working for others no matter how bad they “want” to be independent and successful online.

That’s just life.  It’s human nature.  It’s the Simple Truth about online business success.

Find out who you are and what you are made of before jumping into the game unprepared for what might come.  If failure is not an option, yet you don’t have what it takes to work like a dog in the beginning, don’t jump in at all.

At the very least you could find someone to work for who owns a successful online business someday.  Online jobs blow away offline jobs anyday.

If all this advice does nothing but inspire you to be one of the few who make it, then my job is done for the day.

Stick around, read, learn, and get on the path leading to your destiny as a successful online business owner!

Tags: Blog Marketing, internet marketing, motivation, success, web publishing

What’s Holding You Back?

When you think the world is against you and the planets are aligned in a way to fight your every step forward in your business…

When you think you have to struggle too hard for success because of outside factors or inside factors, watch this video and remember that there is always a way around your problems!

Tags: motivation, success