APD-Marketing Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the MARCH 2008,  yes you read that right, the March edition of the APD
newsletter.

I remember writing, back in the July 2007 edition about time slipping away, I quoted that famous Pink Floyd song “Time” (funnily enough)…”and then one day you find, ten years gave gone behind you, no-one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun” and all that.

Well…it’s a subject I am going to return to this month albeit with a slightly different slant.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s March, a quarter of this year has nearly gone already. It’s nearly
Easter and the clocks “go” in a few weeks, yes, the light nights will be back – let’s hope the
weather obliges as well!

The speed at which time now flies by never ceases to amaze me, OK, I know I’m beginning to
sound “old” here! But, as I move towards my big 5-0, I am convinced beyond all doubt that time is going more quickly. Perhaps it’s just that each second that passes is a (rapidly) decreasing percentage of the time I have left, I don’t know, but it’s flying by!

It only seems like Christmas was a couple of weeks ago!

If you have children you will know and relate to how quickly each school year passes. Sadly, my youngest is going to be leaving school in June – ouch!

It will be Easter in 3 weeks and then it will be time for your summer holiday and the kids will be
another year older – and so it goes!

So, what’s the point to this little ramble?

Well last weekend I was at a post football match “lads night out” (yes, OK, I know the term “lad”
can only be very loosely applied) but you know the thing, a few beers after football and a curry – a great institution isn’t it? Anyway, one of my friends was whittering on about his grandiose
retirement plans.

He was babbling on about how he had a world cruise planned and he was going to buy a top of
the range sports car and retire to that big house in the country…when he was 60. He’s 48 now.

I didn’t mean to take the wind out of his sails quite so violently, but when I pointed out that he may not live to 60 (a bit morbid but true, we really don’t know what might happen tomorrow) he was stunned. I then suggested that if he had things he wanted to do then why put them off if he could do them now? He just didn’t have an answer and sat there in a stunned silence!

Now I’m going to tell you a “home truth”, and it’s one that is probably going to make you feel
uncomfortable – sorry about that.

Most people put off doing the things that they really want to do and actually get on and do those
things that they feel they should to do. So, you get around to doing little things like your tax return (because you get told off by Big Brother if you don’t) but do you ever get around to the bigger ones? You know the dreams, the things that you really, deeply love to do? The things that you really WANT to do. Like…starting your own business.

Now don’t’ feel bad because this “intertia” has been programmed into you by society through peer pressure. You know this is true. What happens when someone asks you “what do you do?”

You immediately trot out the “oh, I’m an accountant” line. Most people do, like the compliant little sheep they are. This is what we are programmed to do.

Something like starting your own business is actually something you don’t have to do. In fact,
after three false starts, I very nearly didn’t start mine for that very reason. And…it’s outside of the norm. It’s different. How can you possibly earn as much as an accountant if you work 20 hours a week from home?

I sat for years (yes really) thinking about it and talking about it but never doing it, meanwhile I
made my employers very rich in return for a pittance of a salary. I reckon I used to earn about
15% of the GP I made for my employer. Is that fair for my damn hard work? Now…it’s 100%
mine, all mine! That is a lot fairer if you ask me!

So the message is simple, if you are going to start your own business do it now, today, don’t
waste any more time, it slips away at an alarming rate! All too soon you will turn round and those 10, 15 or 20 years will have gone behind you and you will be exactly where you were!

If you’re not prepared to do what it takes, then decide that you are not interested in that plan and stop deluding yourself and wasting your time. You will save yourself an awful lot of stress, I know.

If you keep kidding yourself you will come to regret your own lack of progress ever more and
even more. You will come to resent yourself. So, if you would feel much happier and better about yourself in a day job, make that quality decision and get on with it. Alternatively make that quality decision and give it everything you have got.

You may feel I am being overly harsh on you here, however, I believe it is best to be straight and to the point. If it’s not for you, fair enough, take a different direction. There is nothing wrong with that.

We all need to bit of motivation and pointing in the right direction occasionally, so having beaten you about a bit, I am going to offer you an “olive branch”!

My brother-in-law was over from Canada a couple of weekends back and he brought with him a
copy of a book that you have to read. If you want to make your own business really work, and
more importantly, have the time to enjoy it (which is really what we all want), you simply must
read this book.

The book is called “The 4 hour workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. It’s been flying off the shelves in
North America and is released in the UK on 3rd April.

Basically, the book’s philosophy boils down to this…

If you manage your time, your goals, and your priorities effectively, it’s relatively easy for you to generate a comfortable, full-time income working just 4 hours per week. Indeed, Tim clearly demonstrates how he earns between $50-60k per month working just 4 hours a week.

Goodbye trying to fit your social life around your 9-to-5 job, and hello freedom and prosperity! Welcome to the world of “The New Rich”.

Seriously though surely this is what you want…or you wouldn’t’ be here – right?

No wonder this book’s become an instant best-seller.

However, since its release, Tim has come under some fire from prominent “business people” who are whinging that designing your ‘ideal lifestyle’ of minimal work and maximum play is not that simple… that it takes YEARS of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears to make that happen.

You see back to what society thinks should happen and the pressure to conform!

But I beg to differ!I’ve known many people who have started their own money-making
Internet businesses from scratch.  And I can tell you for sure that the success people like us have achieved did NOT come as a result of how much time we’ve spent working on our businesses, but what we’ve DONE with the time we’ve spent. Yes, there is a learning curve, and there is an investment, but…

Someone with clear, precise goals and a step-by-step action plan will accomplish far more in just one hour than someone who is bogged down with information overload and paralysis of analysis will accomplish in an entire (long) day.

So, my recommendation to you is get “the 4 hour workweek” and be amazed at what you can do
to change your life. It does brush over some areas like the use of Adwords, but the basic message is clear.

The bottom line is that this book should be a bible for all aspiring Internet marketers and lifestyle designers. And, using it you too can design your own life.

No affiliate links, just a recommendation to get the book as soon as you can. I devoured it in one day, it’s scintillating!

One more thing before I wrap up this month. I’ve been watching Andrew Fox and his Affiliate X
Factor pre launch carefully this last week and a half. This is a really fine example of pre-launch
marketing. He’s also giving away some really interesting insider tricks pre launch (the product
goes live 20th March). As it happens, I’m testing one of the techniques over the weekend!

If you haven’t already been following this and you’d like to catch up then click on the following
link…  (Edit 2009, sorry link is now gone as pre sale is finished, you can still get the pre-sale info in the Affiliate X Factor product itself)  it’s an object lesson in the art of the pre-sell and worth it just to see how Andrew goes about things.

OK, that’s it for this month, I’ll be back in April with more great information.

Until then, any questions drop me a mail.

As always…to *YOUR* success.

Cheers now…and have fun!

Derek

Internet Marketing from APD

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