When It Rains, It Pours! Fighting Through It …

Hey all,

The last 14 days were pretty tough for me regarding my motivation and online business. Everything started with a WSO about Membership Sites that people didn’t really dig. I showed in detail, how anybody can set up a fully functioning membership site overnight, information that I wish I had when I wanted to start a membership site, let alone the fact that other marketers are charging up to $497 (!) for similar information.

Anyway, that just shows me again that it’s all about marketing. You can have the best product in the world and nobody will buy it if you don’t market it well or if you market it to the wrong people. On the other hand, there’s a lot of mediocre products out there and people happily pay top dollar for them because the vendor is marketing it very well.

Action: I’m going to re-launch the WSO with a different sales letter and I’ll try different price points until I find the one that works. Now that I have the content anyway, I can use it for all kinds of projects. Once I create a killer Clickbank product, I can use the content as a lead magnet, upsell or bonus.

Lesson: If something similar happens to you, don’t give up and don’t dump your product. I had several WSO’s that started slow and I was able to turn them around. Also make sure to re-use the content.

Videos Down

After the launch of the first WSO I decided to update my video software because of great new features in the new version. I was thinking that I should contact the vendor and let them do the update. Most of the time when I try to do something technical myself, something gets messed up.

Anyway, I followed the instructions and everything looked great within the interface. Later on, when I actually checked one of my blogs, I noticed that all my videos are down. I tried to fix the problem myself (big mistake) and the result was that I overwrote all my videos with the latest file that I uploaded.

So all my videos on my blogs weren’t working and within my video server I had only one vide. All other videos were overwritten and it didn’t matter which one I clicked on, it would always display only the last video that I uploaded.

It took the tech support 4 days (easter weekend) to fix the problem. Not because it was tricky or anything like that. The first assistant just didn’t understand what my problem was and once the support ticket got escalated to the support manager, it was fixed within 15 minutes.

Turns out that the problem was that I never updated the first version that I bought. Therefore, it still had an old bug and once I tried to upgrade from the oldest version to the brand new version, the bug took over so to speak.

Lesson: Next time when I have to make an update that involves more than just a click, I rather pay somebody to do it. The truth is that I can’t stand technical issues and my time is better spent doing other things. This will save me an awful lot of headache and time.

Do what you do best, hire others to do the rest!

The Truth About The IM Niche

Once I got that problem fixed, I launched another WSO about Productivity. Again, people didn’t really get it. I already know that this niche is all about numbers and crazy claims. People want to hear that they will be able to make thousands of dollars within minutes after consuming a product. This is what the Internet Marketing niche is hungry for, period.

I ignored all of this and I thought that I would create a product that can actually help struggling marketers with the biggest problem out there, which is that we all get distracted. We also suffer from information overload and can’t take action consistently.

So I created a product to solve these issues. Sure enough, people pretty much ignored it. It’s ironic, throw crazy numbers around you and people go bananas and buy like crazy. Create something really valuable without any hype at all, and chances are that you won’t sell anything.

There are many things that come into play of course, but from experience I can tell you that you’ll have a hard time selling in this niche if you don’t use a lot of hype and numbers. Second time that I ignored that and both times I had to learn it the hard way.

Lesson: The Internet Marketing crowd is hungry for crazy claims and hype, chasing the myth that there’s a magic method out there that will generate a lot of money without a lot of work. Sell them that dream and you’ll get rich. Ignore their hunger for hype and you’ll fight an uphill battle. The problem is, what do you do if you get tired of using hype but you want to sell great products that can actually help people?

Everything Is Down

After my last WSO launch I was motivated to make some great changes to this membership site. Launching the affiliate program, posting a sales video and other ideas were on the schedule. The day that I wanted to make all these changes I noticed that my site was down. I checked my other websites and they ALL were down.

This means that members couldn’t access the membership site and that customers couldn’t access there products after paying for them, let alone the sites that were making me passive income through affiliate marketing. I got a lot of emails and private messages from unhappy customers and all I could tell them was the truth. Fortunately most of them understood my situation.

If somebody tried to visit one of my sites, they would only see an error message regarding WordPress default widgets. I had no clue what that meant, so I contacted Hostgator. They have an awesome 24/7 live support and I was told that my sites probably got hacked.

They escalated the ticket to the security department for further investigations and I had to wait for an email from them. In the meantime I contacted a friend that knows a lot about PHP and he was able to get my membership site online again.

At the same time we had guests from Ecuador staying with us for 7 days and I had to take care of them most of the time because my girlfriend was working. Anyway, I saw my site online again and that was good enough for me.

Unfortunately the issue wasn’t solved yet, not at all. Once I got back home after a couple of hours, I tried to access one of my sites. I couldn’t. There was a new error message. I checked all my other sites and they all had this issue. So the problem wasn’t fixed. Yes the sites were online, but neither I nor my customers could access any of the content.

Yesterday, two days later, I finally heard back from the Hostgator security team and they fixed the issue. The problem (supposeldy) was that my passwords got compromised and this allowed hackers to modify the PHP code in different places like the default widgets and within the theme for example. The tech support fixed the problem for me and since yesterday my sites are up and running again.

I know that most of you also use WordPress, so here are some tips that can help you not to get in the same situation.

Updates:

Do always updgrade to the newest version of WordPress as soon as it’s available. I didn’t do that. If you ignore the upgrades, you open the door for hackers to access your blog. I now use a plug in to automatically update my blogs, you can download it HERE!

Also make sure that you always update your plug-ins and that you delete the ones that you don’t use.

WP Security Scan:

This is a plug in that helps you to make your blog safer. It first scans your blog for security issues and it will then tell you what you should fix. It also automatically takes care of some other things that makes it harder for hackers to access your blog, like hiding the version you are using and other useful things.

You can download the plug in HERE!

Strong Passwords and a Different User Name:

Make sure that you use strong passwords and that you don’t use ‘admin’ as user name. Hello123 isn’t a strong password. You should use lower and upper cases, numbers and other characters. Something like kiEp(@m3:^Ph is considered a strong password.

Antivirus Program:

That’s a must. Get a good anti virus program in order to keep your computer clean. It doesn’t make any sense to use super strong passwords if you have spy ware on your computer that is recording all the passwords that you use just to send them to a hacker.

I personally have been using Bitdefender for 2 months now and I’m very happy with it. Supposedly it’s one of the best anti virus programs and at the same time it’s very inexpensive.

Lesson: Keep everything up to date. One of the easiest ways for hackers to access your site is if you don’t upgrade your tools to the newest version. WordPress, FTP software, Internet browser or whatever it is, make sure that you upgrade to the new versions once they are released.

Don’t get me wrong, if somebody wants to harm your site and they know what they’re doing, they will find a way. But implementing these strategies will make it harder for them and don’t forget that hackers are lazy too. They might rather choose sites that have obvious weaknesses caused by not being up to date or using weak passwords.

Down Again

Once Hostgator fixed the problem, I was happy and motivated to get going again. The post that you are reading right now, was supposed to go live last week. Just before posting I checked my members area again and noticed that my videos are down again!

Turns out that Hostgator fixed the problem with the hack, but their fix also influenced my videos. Now I had to contact the Video support again. Very frustrating. 48 hours later all my videos are online again.

Today is the first day that everything seems to be working fine. Hallelujah!

Conclusion

All this happened within 14 days and it was a very frustrating time because most of it was out of my control and it felt like the bad news wouldn’t stop. When it rains, it pours. Fortunately I’m aware of this and I knew that life is a constant up and down.

Things like this are testing your determination and character. You can either complain all day long and at some point give up, or you push through it, make the best out of it and understand that the better times are just around the corner.

I decided to go for the latter. I took care of my guests and I had the patience to wait for the support team to fix the problem. Yes I got very frustrated sitting on the computer not being able to do anything at all and and receiving all the emails and private messages from upset customers, but I stayed calm and told them the truth.

I then stayed away from the computer as much as I could because it would only frustrate me more. I’ve spent the time with my guests and made sure that they were having a good time, checking my emails just once in a while to see if I got news from the tech support.

As of right now, everything seems to be working and I’m motivated to get going again.

If you get into a similar situation, keep in mind that life is a constant up and down. If soemthing doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger and also keep in mind that you have to overcome obstacles on the road to success.

If success was easy to achieve, everybody would be successful.

What do you think?

Mario

p.s. I’ve made a post in the Warrior forum that got quite some attention, you can check it HERE!

Premium Content: {+++}

Dear [NBS-IMS] member,

I wasn’t able to get anything going within the last 14 days and I apologize for that. In order to make up for this, I’m going to deliver great content for you guys.

First of all, I signed up for a great teleconference service. Every week, I guess once a week, I’m going to post new premium content for members only. A lot of that information is going to be advanced marketing stuff.

The truth is that I’m changing my focus a little bit because the real money is in consulting small businesses. I had a lot of time to think in the last 2 weeks and I’m going to attack a new niche, basically from scratch. And I’m not talking about affiliate marketing, I’m talking about positioning myself as an Internet Marketing Consulting expert here in the Miami area and I’m going to let you exactly know what I’m doing to achieve that.

Also, I’m going to have teleconferences either once a week or bi-weekly. That allows you to get in touch with me directly and to submit your questions on the call. It’s either going to be me delivering content or I’ll interview an expert or successful [NBS-IMS] member.

The first call is going to be an open call, you guys can either choose a topic or just ask any question.

Tomorrow I’m going to let you know why I’m getting tired of the ‘make money’ niche and why I’m changing my focus. On Friday or Saturday we’ll have the first call, more information tomorrow.

I almost forgot, I’m also going to promote this blog/membership site and I’ll let you know how it’s going. I think this can be very helpful. As of now, I’m not getting any organic traffic as I’m not promoting this site (besides the Warrior forum). I’m going to monitor the increasing traffic and page rank and let you guys know what I’m doing to get traffic.

Thank you for being a loyal [NBS-IMS] member,

Mario