I’ve been on complete mute since my latest income report two weeks ago. Since I started working full-time on my sites in July of this year, things are moving quite fast… sometimes too fast. Since the beginning of September, I worked on two major projects. The first one was my first speech at the Canadian Financial Summit. The second one was an important promotion for my membership site. For the very first time, I had a webinar prepared to launch this promotion. I’ve done tons of presentations in my life as it was part of my previous job. However, talking to a red light on top of my computer screen was a lot more intimidating! The whole thing went well and I’ll share more about webinars in the upcoming articles. But today, I wanted to share with you a piece of my entrepreneur’s life. It’s a piece about hard work, frustration and patience. This is another lesson of life that I’ve learned.

I did the webinar on Wednesday September 20^th. The promotion kicked-off during the webinar where 103 people attended (a maximum of 200 participant registered, but only 103 made it on time). I didn’t generate the amount of sales I thought I would at first. In fact, the first thought that crossed my mind after my morning run on Thursday was: man I suck at this. I want to share what I wrote my team on Friday afternoon after the dust settled. Here we go:

First off, I have to tell you, I was a bit upset after the webinar. It went well, but well isn’t enough. I think I was good, but good isn’t enough. I’m used to being the alpha dog. This time, I was just as good as any other member of the pack. Still, no major bad lucks, I got 15 questions for a 25 minute talk after my presentation. This was very good. Still, 4-5 sales after the webinar weren’t incredible either.

I woke-up the next morning, seeing a few sales. I smiled at first and then realised there were all affiliates. Then, I went for my morning run. When I check my phone afterward: nothing (maybe I should have run more than 6 km?). Then, the morning passes and we get 4 sales by noon. FOUR. During that time, our affiliate sales were running fast. Then I was really upset.

I spent about 2 weeks working on the webinar between creating content, writing down emails for our newsletter and our affiliates, learning how Webinar Ninja works, creating the subscription page, doing 101 tests, building my webinar, modifying many things and practicing. During that time, I couldn’t work on writing for other sites or our own blogs.

Then, as yesterday went by, we started making more and more sales. As I’m writing this (Friday 3pm), we have 6 sales coming from the Financial Summit, 30 sales coming from other affiliates and 24 sales from us for a total of roughly $3,234 in sales.

Out of our 24 sales, 12 (so, half) are coming from people who attended the live webinar or the replay. I had a total of 103 attendees + 84 for the replay (187 total). That’s a 6.4% conversion rate. I wanted to have 10 sales coming out of the webinar in order to be “happy”. Well it finally happened; I just had to be more patient! (not my first or second quality, I admit!)

A few months ago, when I was on the beach and wrote my “game plan” for my return, I expected to make a big sale in September. The plan back then was to sell the 1 year at $50. I expected to make $4,000 out of the campaign (60 new DSR members from us and 50 affiliate sales (@$20 each)). Instead, we ran a different plan, but after the first email, I showed 55% of my sales objective (60 on 110) and 80% of my cash objective. I already know that tomorrow, while I’m picking up grapes (helping in a vineyard, what a perfect day!) I will reach my goals in term of $.

My takes from this campaign:

–    People love webinars, I need to find a way to streamline the process and do it once a month

–    Q&A’s are highly appreciated by attendees, and this is something I really enjoy doing

–    I need to write more articles that are selling softly DSR

–    DSR growth will pass by our blogs’ growth. More focus needs to be put on those two

–    Be patient, sales are not coming instantly!

Then the weekend passed, 2 more emails were scheduled before the campaign ends on Monday at midnight. By the end of this campaign, I’ve done a lot more than any of my expectations. In fact, the campaign brought in 228 sales total (affiliate + our sales). I thought I was going to make about $4,000 out of this promotion and I will end-up making over $14,000. September will be the best month I ever had in my online history. I just had to be more patient and let my plan works its way.

I’m Strong like a Wave

I’m Passionate like a Wildfire

I’m Fast like a Cyclone

But I gotta stay down to earth!

Starting your own business comes with a lot of dilemmas. Among them, I’d say the most challenging one is making the choice between making money now or tomorrow. If you are like me and decided to quit everything to build your own dream, this is probably because you were quite good at what you were doing in the first place. This talent comes with a counterpart; the temptation of reproducing what you were good at. After a few weeks, I start feeling the pressure of making money again. At first, I told myself; “oh, it’s along adventure, I have plenty of time in front of me”. But that the honeymoon fades away, the reality (like having to pay bills with my line of credit!) hits me harder. So far, I can’t complaint about the success I’m having with my online business. However, I’m already thinking about what I am currently doing vs what should I do.

Making Money Now

One thing I’m good at is writing. I could easily write over 4,000 words each day for 5-6 days in a row. For the record, as I am writing this line, it’s noon and I’ve already wrote my 4,000^th word of the day. The other thing I’m good at is financial analysis. I love the stock market and I enjoy sharing my passion for it with others. This is probably why I was also good in the financial industry as a private banker; my clients felt that passion and trusted me.

As per my original plan, my goal is to write 35 articles per month outside of my blogs. Most of them are paid articles where I can make anything between $50 and $100 per post. This is not an incredibly high ticker, but it helps me building my audience and testing my ideas at the same time. Therefore, if I write 30 articles in month, I should make around $1,600-$1,700. This would represent about 20% of my last month income. Between sponsored articles, my membership website and this side gig, I can almost break even each month.

But writing 1 paid article per day is a lot of work. Those kinds of articles are not always “fun” to write. I mean, they are when you write one or two a week, but when you have to pull out your brain and analyze a different company each day, this becomes more like a job than a business project. This is what happens when you focus on the “make money now” part of the business.

Making Money Later

While the short-term standings of my business looks good so far, I’m well aware I’m burning a lot of energy in making money now instead of making money later. The beauty of a business is how it grows and snowballs into something bigger and bigger. At one point, it just goes by itself and minimum efforts result into maximum outcomes.

But in order to reach this point, one must work to make money later. I also call this part my job; “working in the soft”. For example, when I worked a whole week on the new design and features of my membership websites; I didn’t generate any immediate sales. However, while I was making “nothing”, I also created a much better investment service:

This new design enables me to convert more visitors into members and I will be making a lot more money in the future. However, doing these kinds of upgrades requires time and energy and while you are at it, you are not making money now. Still… I’m convinced this is the way to go.

Finding a balance

I’m half-way in the month of August and I’m currently meeting my article writing pace objective so far. However, I intend to find a better balance and liberate more time this week to work on “making money later”. After some thought over the past weekend, I realized that working on larger projects motivates me to the highest point possible. Last night, I worked until 10pm, woke up this morning at 5am and ran my 10^th best 6K (out of 150 activities). All this because yesterday night, I was studying components for one of my bigger project. This morning, I’m all about writing stuff and working in the “NOW”. But in the next few days, I’ll concentrate my week on the “LATER” part. This way, I should be able to almost break-even for a few months in a row and then, I should break a lot more then “even” if you know what I mean ;-).