Cashflow 101 And Internet Marketing

This post is a continuation from my previous post on Cashflow and Internet marketing.

Let’s take a look at Internet marketing and how it relates to your long term and short term goals.

When you are working on your Internet marketing business, you must always remember to build your strategy around 2 plans - short term and long term.

A short term plan is important for overcoming the learning period while putting cash on the table while a long term plan is something that will keep on paying you money long after you have left your keyboard.

I would consider the fact that Internet marketing is one of the most low-cost, risk free business that requires very little capital to start up and it is flexible enough for anyone to work on it at any time - perfect for those who want to stay at home.

However, there are still many out there who burn their money in Internet marketing because they fail to grasp the concept of planning a long term and short term strategy. Take for example - someone decides to dabble in Google AdWords, they tinker around with their sites or their Ad campaigns in the first 3 months of their business but they don’t see any results. the cost of their domain names and hosting slowly creeps up on them and after a while they give up because cash is being drained.

This is my strategy on how I plan to build my Internet marketing business if I were to start from scratch:

Short term income could be anything from ghostwriting to copywriting, graphics design to transcription and many others that will give you immediate cash because you are providing a service.

Long term income is where you build a huge list or a lot of websites.

A typical marketer might not see any results from his marketing efforts as he is trying to overcome the learning curve and develop stability. He would also be spending that time building up his sites, his credibility, his page rank and even a cash reserve!

After 6 months as the income from the long term income starts to build, there will come a time (let’s assume the 12 month period) where his long term or residual income will match his short term income (the services he provides for others).

Then he will make a decision whether to reduce his commitments to his clients.

After 2 years, he will spend 99% of his time on his long term income and he won’t need to do any more short term work.

Lessons to learn:

• Long term income takes awhile to build up - don’t rush! Focus on collecting a lot of money through your short term income before you start investing in other things (like software, AdWords and outsourcing to a team of content creators)
• If you are desperate for money, it is okay to let go of your long term goals for the next 3 months. If you don’t have any cash on the table, any long term strategy will NOT WORK.
• Building your name takes time and effort - don’t rush a long term project. For example, you must never ever screw up a product launch!
• Your time is limited - if you don’t build residual income after 6 months in your business you will get tired one day.
• Your 9-5 job could be your short term income so don’t quit your job too soon.
• CASH IS KING - tomorrow’s money will never pay for today’s hunger.