I see it all the time…

One marketer will only get a handful of visitors to his site per day. The other will work really hard to get hundreds of visitors daily. Six months later, the first marketer will be earning a nice monthly income from his handful of daily visitors while the other marketer will still be struggling to get more “unique” visitors to his site while making very little money, if any. A great traffic-generation model linked to a poor profit-generation model leads to failure.

If you want to make money from your site, you have to understand these key points:

• The site that gets the most traffic does not necessarily make the most money
• The site that is able to turn traffic into subscribers and buyers usually does well
• The site that can turn traffic into repeat buyers always comes out a winner!

Getting traffic to your site is only the first step. Once it gets there, you need to have a powerful direct response sales message ready to take orders or add subscribers to your list. Otherwise, all your efforts will go to waste.

You see, while most marketers are only focused on finding new customers or getting more unique visitors to their site, the smart marketers are also consistently working on getting their existing customers/prospects to buy more often. And maybe even buy much higher ticket items.

Getting an existing customer to buy again is much easier to do than getting a stranger to buy from you for the very first time.

So, all the extra traffic you get to your site will not make any difference to your bottom line unless you work on turning these strangers into trusting, repeat buyers.

An Important Point About Profits…

Over the years, I’ve noticed that the individuals who make the most profits consistently are those who charge a monthly, recurring fee. This can either be in the form of a monthly access fee to a product-based membership site or it can be a service that requires a monthly payment (e.g. hosting service, Internet access, advertising service etc) - anything that creates a residual income source.

It also takes much less effort to make a profit using this system because, again, you’re selling to an existing customer who has already willingly paid for that product or service. Instead of having to sell to the customer every month, all you have to do is keep providing a good product and service. Compare that to always having to find new customers, or even selling new products!

If you can find a way to provide a product or service that charges a monthly fee - be it just a few bucks a month - you can really begin to maximize your profits from the traffic stream that comes your way.

A predictable monthly fee, even as small as 9 bucks per month, is a lot better than a “probable” sale of $27, 2 or 3 times per year. Start using bigger numbers and you’ll really see big differences.

Oh, by the way, this monthly access product or service does not necessarily have to be your own. You can also join a dependable affiliate program and just as easily earn a monthly residual income.

Today, I interviewed Alexander Kintis, founder of a new social networking site called Beating Addiction.

1. How did you first got into the internet?

A long time ago, I remember my mother had a computer that had a 14.4 baud modem and had access to Prodigy. I remember using it from time to time for various different things. A while after that, I remember using AOL – I believe it was around the time 2.0 was out.

2. What does your company do? And why did you shift your focus?

The company, Kinal Corp, was initially incorporated to provide professional web development services to various clients. The focus was shifted after I had a great idea of combining a social networking concept with an actual purpose. The idea of Beating Addiction was born and, fast forward in time, it can be found at www.BeatingAddiction.com

3. Tell us about your main project Beating Addiction. What is it all about?

Beating Addiction is a website where people can go to overcome an addiction to anything. Many people know and consider alcohol, gambling, and other commonly categorized addictions as “serious” however others like shopping, coffee, World of Warcraft, Facebook, cats, aren’t. I disagree. Anything can be addicting and there should be an outlet or center where people can go to and seek help and find information.

The site offers a complete social network – similar but not as in-depth and functional as Facebook or MySpace – where people can find more information on an addiction, find similar people who added that addiction to their profile, and speak to one another and get advice and information on what helped them beat or, at least, begin their road to recovery and curbing and stopping their addiction. They can become a supporter of one another – or colloquially known as “friends” –, they can join support groups, they can create journal entries, they can leave comments, etc. They can also find information on different facilities where they may go to seek professional help and care if they wish. Additionally, members can be as public or as private as they like.

4. What inspired to start this site?

In early 2005, I saw how powerful and loyal members were of social networks – such as a Facebook and Myspace – but there wasn’t any real purpose to it other than getting people together, networking, and being a “place for friends”. So I had the idea of a social network approach with a purpose and combined it with the addiction recovery idea and Beating Addiction was and is the end result.

5. What makes Beating Addiction different to other social networking sites?

It’s a lot more than just a social networking site and although it is 2009 now, when the site was initially released at the end of 2005 (and then left alone for about 2 years and then upgraded) the social network aspect of the site had an actual purpose to it unlike many of the other networks at the time.

6. Who is Beating Addiction for?

Anyone that is addicted to anything.

Anyone who has knowledge of any kind of addiction and they feel that they would like to contribute their knowledge and help others.

Facilities and professional individuals that wish to offer their professional services to members and visitors.

7. How do you plan on promoting it and getting the word out for people to start using it?

There are many different ways of which a few will require funding.

SEO. The site has information on all addictions and so anyone looking for information on those addictions and how to overcome them; for example, when searching a search engine, people will be linked to the addiction’s profile page.

Speaking to blog authors – such as yourself – about the website and having them do write-ups about it so their readership gets wind of the new site. Also to those that have a vision of how well the site and idea is and can become.

Adwords, celebrity endorsements, news coverage, press releases, and other routes.

8. What are your future plans for Beating Addiction?

That’s really tough to say because what I envision now may and will change with time due to various factors and variables.

9. Where do you envision Beating Addiction to be at in a couple of years?

I would say a big network/community of individuals that are contributing content and information and helping one another. Also facilities that are a part of the community and their services available for interested individuals. Again, it’s all really hard to say, wish, envision, and speculate because a couple of years is a lot of time.

Thank you very much Stanley for the interview questions. I hope to be able to speak to you again sometime soon and that you are successful on your journey of entrepreneurship. Your story of “making it” is a great one as well and I wish you continued success.

I was once asked, “How do you recover from setbacks? I’m sure you faced many obstacles when you were first starting out.” In fact, that was also the same question I asked to the internet millionaires in my book, eMillions: Behind-The-Scenes Stories of 14 Successful Internet Millionaires.

I’m definitely not one of the best person in the world at dealing with setbacks, but I do have a couple of advice based on my past experience.

There were many many many times during my internet marketing career where I just felt like giving up. I had doubts creeping into my mind, thinking this was all pointless and wasting my time. I simply couldn’t cope with the level of stress…

What do you do at this point?

I usually will just take a break and go to a quiet room or place and just chill. Relax. And reboot my brain. Think and get your mindset back on track.

You got to push yourself and persevere. You just have to come to understand that if you started this project then you got to finish it right to the end. You can’t just quit half way. Quitters are losers. You never ever quit.

If you’ve tried your best, but couldn’t succeed, then it’s okay. But if you didn’t try your best and failed as a result, then there’s a problem. It just shows you’re somebody who is not determined and persistent at things. It’s all about the mindset

Remember, do what you love because when you love what you do, you will never give up.

The first thing I need to get right is my mindset. You can have all the knowledge and information in the world, but if you don’t have the success mindset, all that will mean absolutely nothing and you will not accomplish much.

So what does it take to have a success mindset?

Different people will tell you different things. Some might say it’s focus, others might say it’s visualization. They are all right in different respects, but, the key to success really comes down to one thing:

Passion.

When you love what you’re doing, you’ll never give up. You’ll keep focused, you’ll push yourself and you’ll feel motivated. When you can align your passions with your goals, then the whole mindset thing will eventually catch up with you. That desire to accomplishing your goals kicks in.

It’s almost like your goals become your passion. And when your goals become part of your passion, then you can’t help but to achieve them.

I love internet marketing; I absolutely enjoy it. Yes, it’s a lot of hard work. I work 110% every single day. But to me, it’s just like fun. When I was working on my book eMillions, I breathed, lived and ate eMillions 24 hours a day… almost to the point of obsessiveness.

Look at people like Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet. They don’t do it for the money. They do it because of the passion they have for what they do. These people are billionaires yet they are still working. I’m pretty sure they’ll have enough money to live on if they choose to retire tomorrow.

Don’t know what you’re passionate about? Get a pen and write down a list. Think about:

• What are my hobbies?
• What gets you excited?
• What do you love to do in your spare-time?
• What are your talents?
• What were your childhood dreams?
• What do you daydream about doing?
• Is it something you would do even if you didn’t get paid?

Look around and see if your passion is just right under your nose. It might be “stored” in a photo album of your childhood, it might be from a book, it might be from a movie. Go up to your family members and friends and ask them what do they think you’re passionate about. Sometimes, we don’t see that passion ourselves and miss the forest for the trees.

Finding your passion is the right place to start, but it may also be the most difficult part of becoming an entrepreneur. Business can be fun. If you don’t have fun, if you don’t enjoy it, you’re never going to be successful.

Success waits for those who follow their passion.

Few weeks ago, I approached Jason Pereira of TheUniversityKid.com. He’s one of the most successful young bloggers out there, so since we are both teenage entrepreneurs, there is no reason not to get to know him. Plus, he was in Hong Kong so we got to hang out

Little did I know that an internet marketer from Dubai turns out to be friends with several of my mates in the same year from my school (I’ve been following his blog for 8 months now and only found out a few days ago) Who knows? There are probably dozens more people out there who I know indirectly and then turns out to be my cousin’s best friend

What a small world we live in. It feels like everybody is connected in a giant spider web - the six degrees of separation. That’s the beauty of the internet.

This is the follow up post to why being a young entrepreneur rocks. This time, I’ll go over 5 reasons why being a young entrepreneur sucks:

1. You are faced with legal issues & age restrictions. You can’t get a bank account, you can’t get a Paypal account, you need to pay tax etc - many of those issues teenagers haven’t faced in their lives. You must ask your parents for permission for so many of those things which can become an obstacle.
2. You can’t network with other entrepreneurs. It’s difficult flying half way across the world by yourself and attend events with a bunch of adults. Most of the networking usually happen at a bar and you must be over 21 (in United States) to enter.
3. You have less credibility. Your customers, prospects and partners will not pay you with the same amount of respect simply because you are a teenager. You come across as less trust worthy and can potentially loose a lot of business as a result.
4. You sacrifice your social life. Honestly, teenagers should do what teenagers do - play. By running your own business, you are sacrificing your life as a teenager and missing out on a lot of the stuff. You have to balance your life with your business (which is why I’ve been doing so little with my business recently. The only thing I’m doing nowadays is blogging and twittering; I’ve pretty much stopped working on affiliate marketing, list building, information marketing, joint ventures etc side of things so that I can actually focus on school and enjoy life)
5. You have less experience. Not only in business but also in life. You are more likely to make mistakes and poor decisions. You are less mature in the way you do things and may get involved in immature arguments. The lack of experience can potentially lead to the entire downfall of your business (which is why you need to get a mentor. Don’t think you know everything cause you dont’)

In this post, I’ll go through why being a young entrepreneur rules -

1. You have nothing to loose. There really isn’t any risk. You don’t have a family, you don’t have to pay any rent, you don’t have to worry about putting food on the table… so what if you fail? Now is the time to make all the mistakes and prepare yourself for the real world.
2. You get attention from the press. It’s just so easy to get attention and create buzz. That’s how got me on the frontpage of newspapers such as AppleDaily. Which headline grabs your attention more - “4-Year-Old Blogger” or “30-Year-Old Blogger” (okay, obviously this was an extreme example, but you get what I mean) Use your age to your advantage to get people talking about you!
3. You have enthusiasm. Young people have the energy to keep things going. You’ve got the passion which drives you forward and feel like it’s just another hobby of yours rather than hard work.
4. You get extra pocket money. That’s the beauty of running your own business. Your friends have to work hard part-time to earn their pocket money, while you just simply have money rolling into your bank account while you’re sleeping!
5. You can always fall back on your parents. In the end, if everything fails, you’ve always got your parents behind your back. You’ve got nothing to loose so get started!

Follow up post: 5 Reasons Why Being A Young Entrepreneur Sucks

Steve Jobs is taking a six month leave from Apple so that he could focus on his health… what will happen to life after Jobs for Apple?

Source from TechCrunch

P.S. Get well soon Steve

I was on the plane to Korea for the ski trip during Christmas when I began writing a blog post about the fall of Cuil (aka the “Google Killer”) and how it was a complete disaster. As soon as we got off the plane, a RSS feed came in from TechCrunch that also covered the same topic about the fail of Cuil.

We had to wait one hour for the bus to arrive, so there was plenty of time for me to finish off the post (it was very short) and read the TechCrunch post. It was pretty relevant so I just decided to link to that post.

Little did I know how much traffic it brought me…

I was completely shocked and wasn’t expecting any traffic at all. Just goes to show the power of trackbacks. How an “accident” brought me 184 unique visitors of free traffic It’s not a lot, but keep in mind this was just from ONE trackback. What if you did 10, 20, 50? (obviously, I would recommend you to do so relevantly and not just spam/abuse)

If you have been following me on Twitter, you probably know I went to Korea (that’s South for those of you asking) for skiing with my family during Christmas and New Year.

We barely took any photos since we spent most of the time skiing (and injuring my arm after a nasty fall - ouch). But many of you requested it so here they are:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three - I look like superman LOL (it was extremly cold and windy up there)

That’s it