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Should You Consider Hiring a Coach For Success in Your Online Business?

If you asked me a few years ago “Should I hire a coach?” …I would have probably said NO!

But then… If you asked me today… I would say absolutely YES!

So, why the big shift in thinking?

Well, years ago I thought coaching was something that would cost me $10,000, or more, and so I could only realistically consider it when I was making enough money that I wouldn’t miss the $10,000.

That thinking was flawed… Let me tell you why.

I’ve been “internet marketing” for over 9 years. The first year I did the usual beginner thing… Paid $497 to go to a seminar, only to be sold to. I bought a $997 home study course that showed me how to set up my first static website and make money from it.

That website was a satellite TV site. It was created on the 11th May 2006. Surprisingly, it still makes a few dollars every other day from the Adsense ads, even though it hasn’t been touched in years.

At the time I was a self-employed electrician and trying to do this internet marketing stuff on the weekends and after hours.

The home study course creator had said he was generating over $4,000 a month from his satellite TV site. So, even if I made half the amount he was making, I could work 3 days as an electrician and the other 3 days on my website.

I was desperate to find another way to make money. I had been a self-employed electrician for over 10 years and was tired of selling my time for dollars. I was spending more time quoting jobs (these were free quotes), only to have the client accept a cheaper quote.

Internet marketing looked like the perfect answer

I spent months tweaking my satellite TV site, trying different banner ads, trying different product ads and every few weeks I would get a $100 commission. It was my first taste of success and it looked like this could actually work for me.

But, I was getting nowhere near the $4,000 a month profit that the home study creator said he was getting.

I had even modified my site to look exactly like his, promoted the same products and was making less than $100 a week.

My results were dismal

I was spending hour after hour on this website. It took about 12 months to realize that maybe the product creator wasn’t actually making $4,000 a month…

So, I moved on. I bought other courses, I subscribed to all the “Gurus” newsletters, I joined membership sites and became a prolific reader and learner.

Over 3 years I had created a portfolio of 63 different websites in different niches.

My thinking was that if I could get to 100 websites and they each generated just 1 sale per day of $27 that would give me an income of $985,500.00 per year.

Sounds easy right… It’s just 1 sale per day… How hard can that be?

I had websites on koi fish, bad breath, parrots, infertility, freshwater aquariums, beekeeping, wart removal, guinea pigs, model trains, growing grapes, catering and many, many more.

They were complete with keyword rich domains, built on the WordPress platform with all the traffic attracting plugins, professional graphics and great content…

I eventually outsourced the creation of the websites, because I realized that there is no money in creating websites, it was all in the promotion of those websites.

So, I chose article marketing because that’s what the supplier of these niche packs had said to do. I outsourced the article marketing and would tweak the articles before submitting them to the directories.

My days were completely consumed with submitting an article a day for 63 sites… It was tough going and boring. I had no interest in almost all of these niches… But, I persisted!

After nearly 6 months of doing this, I stopped

It was crazy and it wasn’t working!

I was submitting these articles which were getting ranked in the search engines… But, I was getting a dribble of traffic and the traffic that was getting to the site wasn’t buying.

I was getting frustrated… I had invested years of my time for next to no return and spent thousands of dollars on training.

Then someone suggested Google Adwords and pay per click advertising. If you’ve tried PPC then you will know what a disaster and waste of money that was.

So, here I was applying everything I was taught with poor results. The “Gurus” were saying to take action and it will happen… Yea, right!

I’m not sure where I read the article about coaching, but it had a profound effect on me… It spoke about everyone in business needing a coach, or at the very least an accountability coach.

Internet marketing can get very lonely and here I was pounding on the keyboard, creating and promoting websites with no-one that I could talk to and discuss my strategy with.

Sure, there were the forums and chat rooms, but I had to trawl through conversation after conversation of people moaning and groaning about the last product launch or a wayward guru, or the latest Google update.

I needed help

I needed to find someone that had already achieved what I wanted with my online business and would get on Skype with me (or the phone) and coach me to the level they had achieved.

I found that person from Loral Langemeier’s Live Out Loud program.

Now, when I look back at that year I am astounded with what I achieved. I still smile when I think of that very first coaching call…

I proudly told Coach John how I had 63 sites, was making less than a $1,000 a month, but if I just could make a sale a day from each I would have a $1m a year income…

There was silence… That’s when I realized I had got it all wrong

At Live Out Loud they talk about cash machines. A cash machine is a process that makes you money.

Each cash machine has a sales funnel. So, in the case of a website your sales funnel may be that you offer a free report, then a low ticket item like a $27 ebook. The low ticket item is then followed up with a $297 product and then a high ticket item for $997.

The sales funnel is like getting married, as Loral Langemeier puts it. You don’t meet someone and go straight for the kiss!

The sales funnel allows you to build a trusting relationship with the prospect.

As that trust is built, you offer the products in your sales funnel as a friend wanting to help out.

Trust is incredibly important online.

In my first coaching call, John explained that if I couldn’t get 1 of these cash machines making money, then I would never get 63 of them making money…

I had to choose the low hanging fruit. I had to choose 1 website from the 63 that I would focus on…

That was a tough decision because my model train ebook was selling a copy a week at the time, but I didn’t know if the market was big enough to warrant my full focus.

The koi, parrot and freshwater aquarium ebooks were also selling but less frequently.

I did some research on model trains and quickly decided that this would be my first cash machine. It’s a niche similar to golf where people just can’t get enough and spend a huge amount of money. Plus, I still had my model train set from 35 years ago, had always kept up to date with the hobby, had friends with amazing model railroads and being an electrician helped with the electrics.

Fast forward 12 months and just this one website generated $102,245.54 of income

So, if you had to ask me today “Do you think I need a coach?” I would say absolutely YES!

In fact, I believe it is a necessity. Before you buy another how-to product, before you spend another cent on advertising, before you try another strategy… Hire a coach!

For about 3 years I spent in excess of $30,000 in internet marketing training from the biggest names in the game. My result was an average income of $1,000 per month.

In 2010 I spent $5,000 on a coach with extra accountability calls with other coaches. My result was an income of $102,245.54 in 12 months.

So, how did the coaching help me to achieve this result?

There were many different aspects of the coaching that helped tremendously, but the 3 biggest factors where strategy, accountability and clearing the clutter.

I had accumulated a huge amount of knowledge about how to attract traffic to my site but had never created a strategy that suited me.

Everyone’s strategy will be different because some people prefer writing while others have the patience to work out PPC.

We are all different and need a strategy that suits us

I went from tweaking and submitting articles for 8 hours a day to using 1 simple Facebook traffic strategy, which takes less than 20 minutes a day, and get optin rates of over 50%.

I changed my prospect strategy and refined each point of contact with them to increase my average sale value from $17.00 to $98.00 per customer. This was huge!

Sure, there were some long days and late nights because I had tasks I had to get done before the next accountability call. But, this kept the momentum and I knew I was going in the right direction.

Coaching has made a huge difference to my success

Sometimes you just need that “person in the know” to help you decide which path to take, by discussing the options.

That opinion or advice from an outsider to your business, the one that is not based on the emotions you have at the time, can be invaluable.

Sometimes you just need someone to crack the whip and get you moving.

You will be amazed what you can achieve with the right guidance and a gentle shove in the direction you want to go.

You don’t need to pay $10,000

If you are looking for a one-on-one coach there are many different possibilities that cater for your budget and time availability.

I currently coach up to 10 people per month. This is 1 on 1 coaching for 30 to 120 minutes every week, you choose what you need. It is designed to fast track your results by reviewing what you have done in the last week, analyzing the results, making decisions based on the results and then creating a list of to-do’s for the next week.

There are a few different levels of coaching to suit your budget and coaching time required. Payments are made with Paypal and cancelling your subscription is as easy as logging into your Paypal account and cancelling the subscription.

If you want a profitable internet marketing business there is nothing better than 1 on 1 coaching. Try it, you have nothing to lose, but everything to gain…

PLEASE NOTE: We reserve the right to increase these prices at any time. As a paying client, you will be exempt from any future price increases. If you cancel, the new prices will apply. Coaching time not used in one month cannot be accumulated into the next month and there are no refunds.

Prices don’t fit your budget? Then at the very least, you should watch this FREE Webinar!

Questions, Comments, Feedback?

Got a question, want to make a comment or provide some feedback? You can do that in the comments area below or by contacting me here…
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