Internet Business Mastery: Business Development and Internet Marketing for the Web 2.0 Age

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Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at Internet Business Mastery.com, I’m Sterling…

Jay: And I’m Jay….

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business even if you’re just getting started today.

On this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we finish our two part series on selecting a profitable niche for your internet business, plus in the Quick Tip, another free and easy tool for rendering and preparing your audio content.

We’d like to remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart on creating your own profitable internet business by using our proven system, claim your risk free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to FreeAudioGift.com.

So Jay, what’s been going on lately?

Jay: Well, so as you know I signed up as I mentioned in the last episode, I signed up for a documentary class. And I’ve been going through the start of that class, but of course the first process is to choose your topic and do your research and all the initial logistics and thinking through what’s required. You don’t want to pick something that’s going to be too hard, something that it will be hard to get access for, you don’t want to do something on skiing if it’s in the summer. All these things you’ve got to think about.

Sterling: Very familiar process huh?

Jay: And the funny thing is is that I was sitting…so after the first class I walked over to Powell’s Book, which is a huge…picked up a whole city block or maybe the biggest bookstore in the nation. And I was just sitting in the café there to start brainstorming out, because the first assignment is to choose a topic and do preliminary research.

And so I was sitting there and I started out thinking, okay well what are things I’m interested in, what are things I’m passionate about, what are things I’d like to find out more about, what are things I’d like to communicate to the world? And I’m like man, this is like choosing a niche for your internet business!

Sterling: I was going to say, maybe you should take out the niche checklist that we have in the Academy and find your film documentary topic from it.

Jay: Well more or less, that’s what I was doing in my mind is I know this. I was going through that process, and I made a long list, and then I started going through the short list and asking myself okay, do I have access to this market? Do I have access to these people? And there’s an interesting kind of sports counter culture in the nation, especially here in Portland about roller derby.

And women who…anyway it’s a crazy sport. It’s a lot of fun to watch and I was thinking oh, that might…I’m sure there’s got to be an interesting story there. But then I started thinking about, well I don’t know anybody in the roller derby league. I mean I could figure it out, but I’m like okay, there’s going to be a lot more work there versus another idea that I had was kind of against all odds brand new dance company that started here in Portland that my friend dances for.

And like I already have access to that, I’ve been to their performances, their practices, I know some of the dancers, I’ve heard some of the stories. So it’s like obviously for my first film it’s going to be a lot easier to go with that versus something I know very little about and I don’t even have access with.

So it was the same kind of process trying to stack things in my favor, and I found myself putting pressure too. I’m like man, I want my first short film to be really good, and so I found myself putting all this pressure. Like, I’ve got to choose just the right one and I was like oh, wait a second. It was like wow, okay, this is a nice reminder of what it must feel like for all of our Academy members, beginning platinum members, and even people listening to the show going, “Oh, I just don’t know what my niche is going to be.”

It’s easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself; you want to get it right the first time. I’m like look, I can make a lot of other films; this is just my first one. This is just a ten-minute film, and I just wanted to do this to go through the process. I signed up for the class because I knew it would make me do it; I knew I’d be accountable. I knew that come December 11^th I think it is, they’re going to be showing…so it was like I had a deadline.

Sterling: Yeah, and you have the class of other people like-minded that you can bounce stuff off of.

Jay: That was exact….one of the first things the instructor said was, “I highly recommend that you make film-making a team sport and find somebody in this class to partner up with.” And I’m sitting there thinking of all the advantages in internet business with working with the partner or a mastermind, or a mentor and thinking yeah, that’s the same thing. You get too close to a project; it’s good to have somebody else there with their point of view.

And so it was just pretty crazy to think of all the parallels between creating this documentary film and starting an internet business. And I was like man; that would make a great episode. Like why documentary filmmaking is like starting an internet business? But it was a lot of fun going through that process, it was challenging to a degree. I definitely was remembering the toughness and the pressure that you can put on yourself when starting something new.

And for me I was like wow, this is brand new to me. I had never done this before, and having to kind of leap in and have a bit of faith that I would just figure something out and make something that’s meaningful and cool. And so it’s like that’s what it’s like to start your first internet business. It was interesting, because it’s been six years since I was in that position.

Now starting a new internet business is more like riding a bike. I hope on and I just start going, right? So this is like okay, this is very interesting to kind of see that parallel and remember what these feelings are like. But in the end again, it was all about okay you know what? I did this just because I want to go through the process and I know I’m going to learn things and when I make my next film, it will be that much easier. I can always make more.

Sterling: Well, and you learned your first lesson. I saw even on Twitter people saying stuff, but the first lesson was that every single person you tell about this will have an opinion on what you should do. And you learned it the hard way, even I was pitching you stuff. There were people on Twitter, all over – everybody has an idea of what you should do.

Jay: And you know, there were some great ideas in there. Of course I came up with at least ten of my own and have narrowed it down now to two or three. And I’m pretty sure I’ve chosen the one that I’m going to do, and we’ll see.

Sterling: Well, and I think actually that one of them is secretly about you, because I know you like to dance.

Jay: It’s like my real life-long dream is to be a member of the dance company.

Sterling: There you go.

Jay: So anyway, just thought I’d share that little experience and what that was like. And in the end, it was all about stepping up to bat. And you know what? My first film doesn’t have to be a home run, it might just be getting me to first base and just go wow, cool. Okay, I did it! I did it once, I made lots of mistakes, but look – there it is, it’s edited, I learned a few things about the camera, I learned a few things about final cut, and next time I’ll do it better.

And that’s just the approach you have to take to do things like this in life. So, guess there’s the moral of the story.

Sterling: And it ties in perfectly…

Jay: That’s true!

Sterling: With internet business….

Jay: And with this episode since we’ll be talking more about niche selection, which we started last episode. So let’s go ahead and dive into it!

And now the featured segment….

Jay: Alright so last time we talked about our top factors for how to select a profitable niche. And we said yeah, there’s a lot of things, and we go over a lot of them in the Academy and we have a whole checklist. But really in the end, it comes down to about five key factors that are top criteria for choosing a niche.

So just as a quick review, those five are: number one – are you passionate about the niche? Number two – does the market have either an urgent pain or an irrational passion? Number three – is the market proactively searching for solutions? Number four – are you a member of the target market yourself or are you at least able to talk to your target market on a regular basis (preferably live)? Number five – does the market have income to buy your solution?

And if you can answer yes to each of those questions, then you owe it to yourself and your market to get out there and give it a try. So we’re going to go into a few other things now, and today’s episode – there’s a couple other really big questions that come up – hang ups that people have. And it’s understandable why some people get hung up – and I’ve done it myself – get hung up on these particular things.

Sterling: Well, we actually didn’t even really remember or realize this until we just were working with the platinum people and seeing wow, these are the two things that seem to be the biggest issue with people.

Jay: Yeah, and in the platinum group especially, we have a bunch of engineers – all very technical, ‘give me the numbers,’ ‘give me the calculations,’ ‘give me the specific things.’ And basically, one of the biggest hang ups is numbers. Okay, what are the numbers when it comes to competition and demand. And supply and demand are important considerations for a new business, but people get far too hung up on them.

And I think part of the problem is obviously…analysis postpones action. And so we’ve all heard the saying, ‘paralysis by analysis’ and so it’s like oh, if I always have a little more analysis to do, then I’m at least doing something. But I don’t have to quite act yet, because I’m still trying to think it over.

And also, the other thing is, when you go to start a new internet business, it’s easy to get into a position of you’re waiting for somebody to give you permission to move forward, somebody to give you permission to act and succeed and do well. It’s like okay, yeah, you’ve got the right niche. Now I knight you as ready to step up and whatever process…and I guess a lot of people choose like, “Oh, give me the numbers and calculations so that when I crunch the numbers and get something greater than 100, then I know that I can get started.”

And there’s some dangers in that. First of all, because there’s a lot of different variables, it’s hard to just give one number and say okay, well here’s the one thing to go after. And also you’ll notice that for us the primary criteria – the top five criteria – we didn’t say anything about numbers in there.

And there’s a couple of reasons for that, I mean just from personal experience. When we decided to start Internet Business Mastery…well let me even rewind before that. We decided to start a podcast together, we were just thinking okay, what are some things we could do it about? What are some things we are interested in, some things we’re passionate about?

And internet business obviously was something we both were doing and wanted to do a podcast about. But when we went and ran the numbers, I mean obviously there’s a great demand for it, lots of people online looking for how to market, and how to start a business. And so that’s great, but the competition was also astronomical, I mean these are people who clearly know how to play the search engines and all these things.

And so you’re going up against people with millions of dollars and big budgets, and it can be very daunting. You think well, how are we going to make an impact? How do we have anything different to say? How can we actually make any noise in this market?

Sterling: Well and even how we decided to do that is a tip I’ll tell at the end.

Jay: So really if we had listened to the numbers and what the numbers were telling us, then we would have said oh, we have no business going into this. Like let’s pick something else. But sadly, we wouldn’t be here today, Internet Business Mastery wouldn’t exist, we wouldn’t have a business that makes six figures for both of us. We wouldn’t have a business that meets our fulfillment factors incredibly well, something we enjoy doing, something that impacts people’s lives, something that’s grown into a thriving community.

So if we listen to the numbers, all of that wouldn’t happen. Now likewise, about that same time, that’s when I was deciding to get into the podcasting niche, and decided I’m going to become the world’s foremost expert on podcasting for business. And there were no numbers; podcasting was so brand new. I went into the keyword tools and searched for ‘how to podcast,’ or ‘podcasting tutorial,’ there were no numbers because it hadn’t been around long enough for anybody to collect any data.

So the data was saying, well there’s no demand for this. But I knew that it was a growing new thing, and I just had a gut feel about where it was going and it’s significance. So again, imagine if I said no, I better not. And I was on the edge at one point, I remember taking a walk with my wife and I had a list of twenty things, and I could do this, this, and the other.

And it kept coming back to this podcasting thing, but I was just like I’m not sure because I want to be sure there’s going to be a market demand there. And she’s like, “Jay, I can tell this is the one you really want to do. I think you should just dive in and do it.” And I’m like, “You know what? You’re right, that’s why I keep bringing it up. Clearly I think that I know that myself, I just needed to hear somebody else say it too.” So if I hadn’t, again, Internet Business Mastery would exist, I wouldn’t have had the experience of writing a book. I’ve been asked to write a book – the experience of speaking at some of the biggest conferences about podcasting.

All things have been incredibly fulfilling, and also profitable for me. So that’s why we say, don’t listen to the numbers.

Sterling: Yeah, none of that would have happened had you looked solely at the numbers.

Jay: Absolutely.

Sterling: I just wanted to drive that point home.

Jay: Absolutely, so you have to be careful there. It’s just one criteria and as we pointed out last episode, it’s not even necessarily one of our top five criteria. This is the one that people want to make it all about; it’s all about the numbers. And it’s a convenient…and this is going to sound hard but it’s true in many cases – it’s a convenient excuse, to blame it on the numbers. It’s a convenient excuse for inaction.

So let’s talk a little bit about – well okay, what does it mean then? Let’s say you do start running numbers and the competition is just way too high.

Sterling: Yeah, this is the first one of those huge hang ups. I hear this all the time – ‘the competition’s just too high, so I guess I can’t do it.’

Jay: Yeah, ‘I went into Google and I searched and there’s 5 billion results. There’s just way too many people out there.’ In fact, let’s do this right now. I’m going to go to Google.com, and as you can imagine for internet business there’s going to be an insane number of results. So if we search for internet business, there are 469 million results.

Sterling: Yeah, and I remember it was tens of millions when we started. So it’s still just a ridiculous amount of competition page wise.

Jay: And guess who now appears on the first page of those results? Us! Imagine that! And so if you’ve got a good search volume, and we knew internet business had a good search volume. We knew that people were out there looking for internet marketing, internet business. We say just go for it! We’ve kind of already made the case with that with Internet Business Mastery, the competition was insanely high yet we just went for it. We decided okay, let’s find a way that we can make our own splash in this market.

Sterling: Well and that tip that I wanted to give was, when we were looking at this going oh my gosh, the competition was just insane, but we were so passionate about doing it and talking about it. We looked at the market and went, what are they missing? Like in terms of the podcast scene? So we listened to the podcasts that other people were producing at the time, and everybody wanted to be the guru on high. And some of them very rightly so, they were big guys, but they were talking like gurus. “I know everything, and I shall give you just a little bit of information from time to time.”

And we were like hey, why don’t we teach them what we’ve learned so far and just be regular guys? So we found the hole in the market in the way it was being presented, and that’s how we know that even though the competition was high, we went look, our passion’s super high and we know we can fill that hole. Now we didn’t know if it would work, I mean that’s the part that you have to have faith and jump in, but we thought well, nobody’s doing it like this – let’s try this. And now almost all of the guys that were there when we started are completely gone.

Jay: And you know, there are a lot of those guys who have tried to get in and use podcasting and just not been able to beat us, because we found our channel that worked well for us and for our audience, and a voice in that channel. And that’s another thing to remember, there’s a ton of opportunity in different channels, and different traffic, and sources out there, and in other ‘search engines’ so to speak.

I mean a lot of times and this is another reason why you can’t get too hung up on the numbers is, everyone says the holy grail is search engine traffic, and most specifically Google traffic, because that’s what people search in the most is Google. And so everyone wants to know okay, can I place well in Google because then I will be able to make a lot of money.

Well first of all, it’s silly to base a business idea on one particular traffic source, but you’ve got to remember – there’s a lot of things out there other than Google. I mean we get some Google traffic, but we get far more from iTunes. We made that one of our primary sources, nobody was there doing that thing. There’s YouTube, that’s a channel, that’s a search engine, that’s a place for content, that’s a place to attract leads and customers.

There’s Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking, there’s all these great new channels that Google is just one of many. And in some ways, YouTube is as big of a search engine as Google is now. So the point being is, there’s a way to find your own voice like we did, a way to set yourself apart. If nothing else, your personality and approach are going to be different than the next guy. And some people are just not going to like…I mean we have people come to us all the time and say, “I listened to guru John Doe and I just don’t like his style, but you I connect with. Because when I heard you guys, I knew through your story – like you’re the one I needed to learn from.”

Sterling: Well, and you know that some people listen to us and that guru John Doe and went, “I don’t like those guys, I like Guru John Doe.” Like you will find your audience by just being maybe a more extreme version of you, or however you want to create a persona. But that’s a huge thing to know, and I think that’s another part of that getting stuck, and questions. And just a couple of days ago I was talking with a friend who wants to start a new internet business where he’s the guru, or the expert. And again, people are always a little bit nervous, “Oh I hope people like me,” and I was like, “There’s a lot of people on this planet, internet business is a world-wide business. You will find your audience, and the numbers don’t have to be big for you to make an incredible living with it.”

Jay: Yeah, we were talking to one of our platinum people recently. We’re like okay, how many people are in the world? Like what, six or seven billion? Something like that? And it’s like okay, you’re planning on doing such and such, and you want to do a membership site and you’re going to charge this amount. And how much do you need to be able to live off of it? And they told us, and so okay, let’s run the numbers.

And in the end, they just needed to maintain a few hundred people, out of six billion in the world, they just needed to have a few hundred people who liked their stuff enough to sign up for their membership site. And guess what? There’s new people being born every day! If the competition is too high, there’s still a lot of ways around that. And just remember, you are you. You have your personality, you can find an approach that’s different from other people, you can find a channel that’s different from other people.

And just because you search in Google and you see 460 million results does not mean that you’re immediately going to be crushed. And here’s the thing, the approach that we teach is based on this whole content marketing. Put highly relevant content out that’s very valuable to your market, put your personality out there and become an expert and a voice, and build up a loyal community around you. And you know what?

A lot of people aren’t willing to do that form of business, so if you are – well guess what? You’re going to stand out, you’re going to get your audience, it’s just a matter of time.

Sterling: Well and honestly again, part of the approach that we’ve been teaching for a long time again with that giving out free content, it amuses me every day when I see the big gurus now – everybody’s been talking the last year or so about free content. And I just have to laugh, I’m like yeah, five and a half years ago when we started the podcast, the whole goal was to give a bunch of free content.

And now people are finally on board, okay free content, that’s the way to go! But there are so many people in so many niches that have no idea though still that that is a way to draw an incredibly large community of people. And so again, even if the competition’s high, I see new markets all the time when I’m talking to people about their business. And all I have to do is look, and are they giving away free content?

Are they doing any of the stuff that we teach? And almost every time – there was only one time that somebody was actually doing a little bit of it – they weren’t doing it right, they weren’t doing a lot of it. It was just a little bit, so I mean even if that competition’s high, there are definitely ways to dominate in the market. So don’t let that hang you up.

Jay: Lots of opportunity out there. Okay, so let’s say you go and run the numbers and the searches, and the keyword tools are just really low. It just doesn’t look like many people are searching for it. Well, first of all you have to remember, it’s like a lot of the keyword search tools aren’t perfect. They each have their own method, and none of them are surefire methods of having like actual solid numbers.

Sometimes they’re a best estimate, they have different formulas they use, different numbers that they have access to. And in the end the best test of a market is going to just be getting out there and seeing what the market tells you – putting some content out there. And that’s what I did with my podcasting, I said okay I’m going for it, and I decided I’m going to make a podcasting tutorial site and I put it online.

And I said I’m going to give this a few months, and I’m going to see if the traffic comes, I’ll see if the opt in’s come, I’ll see if people start showing interest and buying something. And that’s what I did, and guess what? It worked, people were hungry for the kind of information that I was putting out there. And the way I was putting it out, because I could see sure there was a lot of other free information out there about podcasting here and there, but it was all totally geeked out or incomplete. And none of it were like video step-by-step look over my shoulder, I found an approach to teach it in a way that nobody else was doing that.

So there’s an example of where the search was really low, and I just had to let the market prove it out. And that’s not to say that…you take the whole picture in. But there’s a lot of other possibilities. Now you might have to spend some money to get some leads, search is only one place to get your traffic. I mean we’ve already said Google’s only one place. Sure, it’s the holy grail for some people, but it’s only one place.

There’s a lot of other ways to get traffic, a lot of other ways to spend money. I mean iTunes, there’s no numbers. We just had to basically say, let’s try this and see if through iTunes we can attract enough people to make a good income stream out of it.

Sterling: Yeah all we thought at the time was competition, who’s the competition? Is there competition already in there? That was it.

Jay: And you might have to go offline with your marketing, that’s the other thing to remember. Yeah, we talked about internet business, internet marketing, internet marketing. But just because you deliver your product through the internet, or drive people to your site doesn’t mean you can’t go…classified ads still work, direct mail can still work.

There’s still things out there that work offline, and connecting offline with online is actually a great way to find people as well. Now in the end, yes it might mean that you need to move to another niche. And that’s okay, because you probably have a list of twenty, or at the very least. And you go through those, and you make your short list, and you might have to tweak the niche a little bit, or step over to another one, or broaden it out a bit, or whatever the case may be.

So yes, there are cases where if the searches are too low you might have to step onto another idea, but keep some of the things we just said in mind, because we don’t want you to give up on a niche too early, and we certainly don’t want you just to like not do anything, and not take action because you’re sitting there dwelling on the numbers. Because in the end it’s in taking action and seeing what happens that you will really know.

Sterling: Yeah I guess I would say with your podcasting one, the word ‘podcasting’ hadn’t been around long, so you went more with your gut feeling, but if a word has been around for a really long time – like let’s say ‘macrame,’ you really had a passion for macramé. It always makes me laugh, that word. But when you do the searches that are super low, like the last month ten people searched for that, then I would stay away.

That’s the one time I would really look at the numbers. If there was just nobody searching and it’s not some new key phrase or key word like podcasting, it’s been around forever, then I might look to the next thing on my short list.

Jay: Well and you’ve got to think, it’s like okay, is there a reason for this? Maybe this market just doesn’t search in Google. I mean that happens, there are are markets where there’s not much volume in Google, but in MSN for whatever reason…just as an example, maybe more women in that age bracket like using MSN. I mean there are markets like that.

I mean they’re a little more few and far between, you’ve got to remember – is there a reason why the search numbers I’m looking at here are really low? So that’s something to consider.

Alright, so keyword research tools, they’re great metrics. They give you some relative comparisons to compare different ideas on your list, or to refine your niche, but don’t get totally hung up on the numbers as well. So the Google Adwords keyword tool is one great place to go because they supposedly give you some pretty accurate numbers as far as when it comes to Google. So that is one place we like to go.

And Wordtracker.com is another one. Now even if you…let’s say you dive into an idea then. So you’re listening to what we’re saying, and you’re going okay yeah, maybe the competition was a little high, but I decided…kind of like I’m not sure, I just don’t want to get squashed out with this competitive market. Whatever your hang up might be, you’ve got to really be honest with yourself and ask yourself, okay am I just using this as a convenient excuse?

And one thing I like to do when there’s clearly inaction – and there’s a good chance if there’s anxiety or fear – is to ask myself well really, what’s the worst that can happen? So let’s say you dove in like I did with my podcasting niche, and you decide I’m going to put up a blog, I’m going to start creating some content. Maybe I’ll do a podcast, I’m going to give this a few months, I’m going to see what happens. What do you really have to lose? And here’s the truth of the matter, especially if you’re using our system and what we teach you in the Academy, you can get up and going for less than $30 a month, maybe $25-$30 a month at most – to get your email list management, the blog’s free, hosting is less than $10 a month.

So even if you spend six months trying out a niche, you can definitely do that with only spending maybe a couple hundred dollars. I mean sure you can spend more if you want to go after paid traffic and some things like that, but at the very least you can definitely get a site going and test a market out for a couple hundred dollars. So that’s not a whole lot of money that you’re having to put on that risk.

Now I know for a lot of people, it’s like oh, I’m really anxious to get this going, I’m putting all my hopes and dreams on having this work. I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting time, and you know none of us want to waste time. But sometimes you make decisions and you just see where things go, and you tweak based on what happens and what you learn. And we gave the analogy last time, and we give this a lot about you’ve got to just start going to bat.

You step into the stadium, you step up to the plate and you go to bat as many times as you can, because even if you go to the end of say a six month test, let’s say you take six months to test out a new thing on a niche. Let’s say there’s just not enough sales, not enough action to really keep you excited and keep you going, and let’s say you have to abandon it, even if you have to abandon it. It will still have been worth the time and the money that you spent going through that process.

It will still have been worth a couple hundred dollars and the six months of a few hours a week, or several hours a week, whatever you put into it. It will still have been absolutely 100% worth it, because you will have learned a lot. Thinking back again to what I said at the beginning of the episode about making my first little short film documentary. It’s like you know what? I just need to get through the process, because I know each time I’m going to get faster at it, I’m going to get better at it, I’m going to learn some new things.

And now after a few years to the point that if I started a niche tomorrow and that was all I was working on, we’re talking a matter of a month I could prove a market out. And really some of them, you might be able to do in a few days. In fact, we have some colleagues that do, in a matter of a few days they get something up and going, and bam they’re on to the next thing, and they’ll see.

So the key to internet marketing is taking action, it’s going to bat often enough until either you get enough doubles to make money, or you start knocking them out of the park, whichever the case might be. So that’s definitely something very important to keep in mind.

Sterling: Well and the other thing to realize about us personally is neither one of us still have all the businesses we started. Things failed, things just did okay, and we later decided that it wasn’t worth the time we were putting into it. I mean really, really what you need to understand about internet business is that you need to fail fast and fail forward, just keep going. If it doesn’t work, do the next one.

And let’s see if I can get this right, I remember something that Anthony Robbins, I heard him say quite a long time ago. And it was something like, how long would you give a baby to learn how to walk before you stop them and don’t let them learn anymore? And go oh, you tried ten times, sorry you don’t get to try to talk anymore. I mean it was an interesting thing, you’ve got to really think long term with this. If you get the first one up and it makes you a $1,000 a month and that happened to be your goal, awesome.

If the first one you get up makes you $350 a month, and that’s it, then you just learned something! You now know that level. And if it didn’t do anything, believe me, there’s been things I’ve tried that just didn’t work out and I learned huge lessons from them every single time. I’m like oh, now I know why that didn’t work! And you just have to not choose to quit, you just keep learning, keep doing more, and sooner or later you will have the goal that you are looking for.

Jay: And I’ve even pursued things where I ended up losing several thousand dollars and then I kept going. And here’s the good news, you’ve got the Internet Business Mastery community, and you’ve got our podcast, and you’ve got the Academy so you don’t have to lose several thousand dollars, it’s only a couple hundred bucks over several months that you’re putting up to test our a business idea. But that’s just to say, like I have gone after something to the tune of several thousand dollars, and then to scrap it and move on.

And you know for some people it’s way worse than that, that’s why we love internet business, it’s because we don’t have to put up millions and billions and wait two years to see if we can get in the black like some businesses. I mean it comes down to this – internet business, there’s some specifics you can learn, and some things you can do to stack everything in your favor as much as possible. But in the end, it’s not an exact science either.

We teach you proven techniques, we teach you things that have worked for us, we teach you the things that we wish we had known when we’ve gotten started so hopefully you can learn from our mistakes and make things happen in months rather than years. So you stack it in your favor as much as possible, but here’s the real magic, it doesn’t come down to real numbers and like okay, I just scored 100 or greater on this little quiz for choosing a niche, so now I know I’ll succeed.

Sadly it just doesn’t work that way, the real magic in internet business is this – it’s how fast and cheaply you can get started, and take action and implement. So at some point you just have to take the leap, if you know this is something you want to do, you just get started.

Sterling: Yeah first you basically have to believe you can, and ignore people telling you that you can’t, or that it doesn’t work. It does work for those who choose to master it; we’re proof. We really are regular guys that made it work. But then, you have to find the system to believe in, and then take action right away. Don’t do what we did and learn it all the hard and slow way, the next part of the real magic is you’ve got to get a system and follow it.

And actually that’s why we created the Academy, to help beginners skip steps of all the wasted time that we went through. And honestly, we really just scratched the surface with finding a niche. We have a checklist in the Academy that helps make the best decisions possible, and then an entire course on figuring out. But it’s not that hard to do, and these two main fears – hopefully we gave you enough information to at least dispel those to know that you can actually go find out how to do this right.

And we know that it works, because it worked for us and from the successes that we’ve seen within the Academy.

Jay: Absolutely, totally. So guess what this means? This means it is now time to take action! Here’s what we want you to do, if you haven’t done this already, we want you to make a list. Sit down, find thirty minutes, get a notepad and a pen or sit at your computer, whatever works for you, and make a list of twenty niche ideas. Just start thinking about, what am I passionate about? What are my interests? Just kind of like free thinking; don’t edit yourself. Just start writing them out and come up with at least twenty.

Maybe you’ll come up with fifty, maybe you’ll come up with a hundred. Then kind of take the lessons we’ve talked about in this episode and the last episode – those top give criteria and keeping in mind the money stuff, and just kind of start thinking through and narrow down to the short list of two to three ideas. This is what I did recently with my film documentary thing.

I sat down with a notebook and I listed as many ideas out as I could, and then I just started thinking of pros and cons of each and kind of running some of the – so I could stack in my favor – the enjoyment and success that I would get out of this experience of making my first film. But I know that I’m going to get done with it and say oh man, that could have been better, but that’s okay. I’m just going to go through the process.

So after you’ve done that and narrowed it down to two or three ideas, maybe you’ve talked to some people that are in their markets and get a feel. Maybe do a little bit more research, but in the end you just choose one. So step two is choose one and do it. Step up to bat.

Sterling: Alright, and we actually have a couple of questions for you, and you can go to InternetBusinessMastery.com, find this episode and answer them in the comments. And the first question is, what fear is holding you back from choosing your niche? And then another question is, what has helped you get through the niche selecting process? We’d love to hear what you think and we generally comment back as well if somebody needs some help.

We’ll mention it in there and comment on what people say, so definitely take advantage of that and go to Internet Business Mastery and comment.

Jay: Alright, we have a very exciting breakthrough to share on the show. This time again, this comes from our platinum group. We just wanted to congratulate Dan, who actually just quit from his job this week. He went to his boss and said you know what? It’s time to retire, and he decided that he wanted to put everything full time into his internet business now, that it was time.

And he wrote a great little post here that I want to share, this is in the platinum site forum. This is what he said about quitting his job, he said, “It was a hard decision because I’ve been working with these folks for many years, and didn’t want to let them down. They were sad but understood. My reason for leaving was retirement, that is something everyone can understand and it’s also true. Just because someone retires doesn’t mean they stop doing things, I’m just doing things for myself now plus I am 105, so it’s time I finally slowed down.

It was an easy decision because I’m so fired up and confident with my new venture. I have no doubt that it will work out. If I try something and it doesn’t work, then I’m going to keep changing it up until it does work. I evaluate the worst case scenario and decided that it would be perfectly acceptable, it is well worth the risk for the ultimate reward. My day job is just slowing me down, I want to put all that energy into accelerating the success of my venture. So is it scary? Not really, I don’t have time to think about that. Security in a job is an illusion anyway, there’s no such thing as security. The comet hurling toward the earth doesn’t care about your job security, live for now.”

Sterling: Well and he obviously got the mindset that we were talking about just a little bit earlier, that you just got to keep doing it until it’s done.

Jay: So yeah, I guess that’s a very appropriate for the discussion we just had in today’s episode. But a big congratulations, and thanks for sharing that because that’s again, that’s the speak of a successful person right there.

Sterling: Oh, just fired his boss, how awesome is that? Let’s take a moment here and remember how awesome that felt, right?

Jay: I got all fired up just reading it; I’m like yeah!

Sterling: Yeah, love those stories!

Jay: It was like, I’ve got to share that on the next episode. So there you go, there’s the breakthrough for this episode.

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip….

Jay: Alright, in line with last episode’s Quick Tip, what we talked about – Audacity as well as Aviary Myna, the in browser audio editor – we wanted to in this Quick Tip mention another important audio creation tool that we use. And this one as well is free, in fact you may already have it installed on your computer. It’s very important obviously to change your audio into an mp3, so it’s easy for people to download. If you put up a huge wav file or something large like that, it’s going to be a hassle for people, so you’ve got to render your audio to a smaller file like mp3.

And then something that a lot of people forget is to tag their audio files. The music files have artists and album, and track number, and those kinds of things. And sometimes we think oh, this isn’t a music file, so I don’t need to use those other little what are called the id3 tags. But the truth of the matter is, you absolutely should do that, because otherwise it’s just sending somebody…somebody downloads an audio file and it just says webinar recording 1, or something like that.

Then they forget where it came from and later they’re like, what was this audio? And they throw it away or else they can’t find it in their media player because it doesn’t have the artist. So this is all about having user friendly media that not only brands you, but it’s easy for your audience to use and also can remind them where it came from.

So the tool that we use to do all of this, to render to mp3 and to tag is iTunes. iTunes can do all of that for you, so that’s our Quick Tip recommendation for this episode – is to go to iTunes.com, download the free software, and make sure that you tag your audio content whether it’s a podcast or other before putting it up to your site.

Sterling: Yeah, and you can look at this particular episode in iTunes and you’ll see the description, and we even have our logo embedded into the mp3, the artist, what the episode is about, all that stuff. You want it always in your audio, and you want it to always be in the same format when you do it. So the artist always says the same thing, the business name – however you want to do it, your name. It’s always the same so people can search for it, I mean it just makes it look really good, and really professional.

Jay: That’s a good point, you want to be consistent so that if there’s used to your audio files always showing up in a certain album on their mp3 player, then you don’t want to be switching that around all the time. All of a sudden they’ll lose track, it won’t be well organized when they’re on their computer or their player, so that’s a great point. I guess the other thing I can throw out there is that the way you do that with the tags is you drag your file into iTunes, you right click on it and select Get Info.

And that’s where you can do that with one of our files and you’ll see the tags and stuff in there, and that’s how you can do it with one of your files too.

Sterling: And let us know, go back to Internet Business Mastery in the comments section and let us know what you think about the new one – Myna. Now if you’d like dozens of others resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy along with video tutorials showing you exactly how we use them. To get a thirty day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit FreeAudioGift.com.

That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business.

You’ve been listening to the Iconiclass of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay! Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever, the free builders of designing your ultimate internet lifestyle! Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter! And you’ll get instant access to the life changing audio presentations, pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com! Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!