Willie Crawford's Marketing Insights

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July 04, 2008

49 Years To Overnight Success

Today is "Independence Day" in the United States.
It has special significance for me because of the
fact that it commemorates America's independence as
a country, AND because it marks the 5th anniversary
of my own independence.

I started online in 1996, but I didn't go full-time
Internet... as in retire from the military until
June 2003. I retired at the end of June BECAUSE I
wanted July 4th to be a celebration of total
freedom.

Today, I do celebrate total freedom...

Freedom to work when I want to

Freedom to work where I want to

Freedom to work with whom I choose to... or more
accurately, freedom not to be trapped working with
people that I don't want to work with.

Today, I wanted to give you just a little more of
how I got there though.

I wrote my life's history in a book entitled "Git
Off The Porch." You'll find it at
http://GitOffThePorch.com

Let me give you the part that should matter to
you... the example that I set of how you can build
an online business and work for yourself from home.

In May of 1982, I graduated from North Carolina
State University. I was commissioned a Second
Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force on the same day.

At that time I had no real clue what I wanted to do
with my life. I just knew that I didn't want to spend
it working the tobacco fields that I'd spent EVERY
summer from when I was 7 - 18 working.

I had been selected to go to navigator training, where
I would be a crew member on military aircraft. What
aircraft I would end up flying would be determined by
"luck of the draw" and what standing (within the class)
I ended up in at the end of training.

I ended up in the middle of my class and was assigned
to C-130 transports. It was the perfect job for me.
Over the next 17 years, I traveled to "47" different
countries, and dabbled in 5 different languages. It was
a great experience and I have no regrets.

I've been through:

-- Wars... Grenada was my first one, although it was
the first real vacation that I had ever had. I spent
about a month in Barbados in support of that "war."

-- Tsunami's... one came through Hawaii while I was
there... actually killing people on Kauai

-- Earthquakes... they were a regular part of life in
both Japan and Alaska. You'd feel the house shake and
continue with what you were doing.

-- Volcanoes... I helped to evacuate U.S. personnel
from the Philippines after Mt. Pinatubo erupted...
destroying the bases there. We also routinely had to
fly around plumes of volcanic ash while in Alaska. It
can really harm aircraft paint and engines.

-- Dozens of Hurricanes and Typhoons

-- Wild fires

-- Floods

-- Coups

-- and things that I selectively forget :-)

In 1991, I was assigned to a headquarters job at
Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. That job eventually
gave me access to the early commercial internet. I
spent a lot of time mostly looking around, and
printing things out on the office print when no one
was looking :-)

In June 1995, we moved to Elmendorf Air Force Base
in Anchorage, Alaska.

While in Alaska, in-between salmon fishing, and
trekking through the frozen wilderness with my bow
(stalking moose), I built my first website... and
NEVER looked back. All but one moose appreciates
the fact that the Internet distracted me from being
the great hunter. We ate that moose!

My first website was "a banner farm"... selling
everything related to how to make money online
that I could sign up as an affiliate for :-)

It didn't make that many sales, and I learned that
you needed to FOCUS on ONE primary product. I
learned slowly, but things did steadily improve
and I did make money in those early days.

In October 1998, I packed my wife, my dog, and my
two teenage daughters into our 28-foot motor-home,
and we drove from Alaska to Florida.

The Air Force gave us 16 days to make the drive
and we used all 16 days. It was so cold driving
the frozen mountainous highways in Alaska and
Canada that our holding tanks froze :-)

At night, even the condensation from our breath
formed ice on the inside of the motor-home.

When we finally arrived at Eglin Air Force Base
in Florida, my job was to test computer software...
something that I was completely clueless about.

I was selected for the job because I was an
aircrew member who had headquarters experience,
and because I asked for the assignment.

I wanted my last assignment to be in Florida.

I actually spent 20 years in the Air Force and
EVERY assignment that I had was a first choice!
I learned the secret to getting what you want...
in or out of the military...

YOU ASK FOR IT!

I quickly learned my job of testing software
although most of it was supervising people
who had been doing it for a long time. They
did most of the testing, and I wrote/signed
off on the reports.

In 2000, I sat down and outlined a cookbook
which I then self-published. I used the
marketing know-how that I'd picked up from
reading countless ezines over the years to set
up a website that did a fairly good job of
selling the cookbook.

I also sold numerous affiliate products. I
was constantly looking for "internet marketing
products" that would sell well. They were
actually fairly hard to sell.

Today, in retrospect, I realize that my best
sellers have mostly been outside of the Internet
marketing niche. The reason is partly because
my competitors in that niche, who are most
successful, spent YEARS in direct sales before
coming online.

They have better training than I do... and probably
better training than you do.

I can enter a niche outside of Internet marketing
and using what I've learned about online marketing,
I can quickly be the dominant marketer... or one
of them anyway.

I really, really push those that I coach now to
get into niches outside of Internet marketing.
It's just so much easier. However, MOST of the
people that I deal with choose Internet marketing
as their niche... and then they battle it out with
the-best-of-the-best... often struggling for years.

Today, it's so easy. You can take a template
website, customize it, stick it on a host, plug
in traffic using something that automatically
attracts the search engines such as a blog, and
be making money in DAY... literally.

Take a look at this site:
http://VirtualRealEstateNicheWebsitesCollection.com
and you'll see what I mean.

That site features sites that you can get that are
already put together complete with articles,
a method of generating traffic, a method of generating
sales... really everything.

I can take one of those sites, and make my first sale
in under a day :-)

Back to my story...

In the fall on 2002, Dr. Bob Silber was reading
some of the articles that I had written, and just
studying my online activity. He was impressed
enough that he invited me to speak at his seminar at
Hawks Cay (in the Florida Keys) that December.

That was the first seminar that I ever attended and
it completely changed how I did things. I learned
the power of networking and working with others in
my niche.

Prior to that seminar, I view EVERYONE as my
competition. I believed that if my customers spent
a dollar with you, then they couldn't spend it with
me. Jonathan Mizel educated me as to the FACTS
during his presentation at that first seminar.

Others listened to my presentation and educated me
as to the fact that while my cookbook was a great
product, and my story was inspiring, I was leaving
90% of the money on the table because I didn't have
a backend at that time.

At that seminar I met Marty Foley, Bob Silber,
Jonathan Mizel, John Reese, Fred Gleeck, Frank Garon,
Armand Morin, Lori Prokop, Ryan Deiss, Joel Holtzman,
Ramon Williamson, and a few others... MOST of whom I
still work closely with to this day.

Frank and I just co-hosted a seminar, Joel wrote
several pieces of software that I own the rights
to, Ramon was my coach for a while, Bob and I
created several products together, Marty and I
created several products together... you get the
picture.

That December was when I DECIDED that I was ready
to really ramp things up. Within a week of getting
back from that seminar, I made the decision to host
my own... and I did 4 months later.

I decided that I needed an Internet marketing
product that was in demand and offered residual
income, so I private labeled the 1ShoppingCart
System, setting up http://ProfitAutomation.com

Profit Automation is still going strong today and
does offer a residual income stream :-)

I hosted my seminar in April 2003, and around the
same time told my bosses that I wanted OUT of the
military by July 4th, 2003. Since I'd have 20
years, they couldn't really say no... although we
were ramping up things in Iraq... and they could
have used that as an excuse to keep me longer.

They put the paperwork through, I had a retirement
ceremony at the end of June, and that July 4th, I
celebrated my first REAL Independence Day.

When I retired from the Air Force, my online
business was doing well enough that I didn't feel
compelled to get another J-O-B. I just stepped
right into running my own online business
fulltime.

So now you know the rest of the story.

I did leave out the days that I'd work 12 - 18
hours at my military job, then work at the
computer in my house in Alaska until I fell
asleep at the keyboard. I'd often awake in the
middle of the night, with my hands still resting
on the keyboard, and the screen would be filled
with whatever letter my finger rested on :-)

Today, I do enjoy the lifestyle that I often
blog about, and share photos of. However, I've
been working at building this lifestyle since 1996,
and at 49 years of age, I am an overnight success
after 49 years.

If you're just starting out, the Internet
life-style is not a myth. However, if you dig
deeper, you'll see that most "overnight successes"
put in some very long "nights."

In closing, I really do want to encourage you to
look at niches outside of Internet marketing. Look
at niches that a LOT of regular people are
passionate about, and spending money on. Look at
some of the niches on this page:
http://VirtualRealEstateNicheWebsitesCollection.com

These are areas that people have problems in and
are actively looking for solutions in. They ARE
spending a lot of money for solutions in those
niches. When you offer those solutions, making
money online need not be a struggle.

By the way, the majority of people that I communicated
with during my early days online... bouncing ideas
off of via email in the middle of the night, simply
GAVE UP.

I was too stubborn to even consider giving up! For
a soldier, giving up is never an option :-)

Willie

Posted by Willie Crawford at July 4, 2008 09:30 AM

Comments

Posted by: Dr.Mani at July 4, 2008 10:19 AM

Posted by: George Kedourie at July 4, 2008 10:44 AM

Posted by: Peter R. Sherman at July 4, 2008 01:06 PM

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