Are People REALLY Getting Money Via Internet Marketing?

If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you will notice that I've been exposing a lot of BS in the self-help, "how to make money" fields as of late. But I wanna take this time to relate a real life experience of my own.

All around the internet and on various online business forums, I've seen people ask a question similar to the one posed in the title. Of course most people would answer yes, but they'd reference what someone else is doing as proof. So I'm gonna tell you why I know there's money to be made in Internet Marketing (IM). By Internet Marketing, I'm referring to the practice of selling products (digital and/or physical) via the internet. Internet Marketing isn't an industry itself, just a platform to conduct business. Now let's  begin....

Around mid to late 2010,  I'd hit rock bottom financially after I'd mismanaged money I made in a different business. I had literally $2 in the bank, my car had just gotten repossessed and a lot more crazy things. Fortunately, the rent in my apartment was paid up for the remainder of my lease. I even began working odd jobs to earn money for my expenses. I'd been down before, but never to this degree. It really began to bother me, almost to the point of depression. At this time, I was blogging and this entire ordeal was so devastating that I shut my blog down. Why? Because I felt that I had no business blogging about business and money if I wasn't able to keep the money I'd made. Therefore, I closed my blog and began to work on making a comeback. On a side note: Some of my readers may remember when I abruptly shut my blog down in late 2010. This is the first time that I've revealed my reason.

During the time which I was plotting my comeback, I again began blogging about issues in which I felt strongly. I stayed away from talking about money. This time, blogging was more so to let loose...a way to express myself. During my stint as a blogger this go round, I'd developed a pretty loyal following in a short amount of time. I'd refer certain books and other products and people would go out and buy them. Then one day, I received an email from someone who'd read my content. This person advised me that I could make money off the products I referred. I didn't know anything about that. He was referring to the Amazon affiliate program. Needless to say, I took his advice and began to continue to refer people to products I liked. I didn't think of it as me being an affiliate, I just thought of it as...why not receive a referral fee since they're buying off of my recommendation?

After learning of the possibilities of making money online, I setup another self-hosted blog through the Wordpress platform and used my other free hosted blogs to link to my self-hosted site. I setup a steady stream of income through the Amazon affiliate program, a few Clickbank products, my own self-created products on matters in which I had experience and an affiliate network setup by a friend of mine. After a few short months, I was earning a little over $2,000 a month. Not a great deal of money, but its good for someone who started with $2 in the bank. The money I was making allowed me to buy another car w/ cash, get ahead on my expenses, amass a decent amount of savings and even buy a few luxuries. Most of all, it allowed me to save enough money to get started in my current business.

Although I was desperate when I started started blogging, I wasn't doing it to make money until I got a taste of the Amazon affiliate program. I didn't know anything about IM coming into this. All I'd heard about IM was that people were making millions overnight, and since I'd been involved in other businesses of my own, I knew better than to buy into that. I was just blogging as a way to vent and monetized my readers over time. I also saw my writings as me trying to help others through my own experience. Of course when the money did come, I had to first experiment with different methods of monetizing traffic until I found a system that worked. It wasn't a straight shot at all.

I said all of that to say this: There's money to be made. But what are you going to do? Are you going to be one of those people who read a get rich quick manual and get in the game based on what they told you? You know what I mean, one of those people who want it all at once. Or, are you going to be one of those people who put in the necessary work (both working on your business and constantly learning) and are fine w/ moderate growth? The way you answer that question makes a big difference as to whether you make money in any endeavor you undertake.

Thanks for reading!

Sean Tudor Carter

“We live in deeds, not years. In thoughts not breaths, in feelings, not in figures on a dial.”

Sean Tudor Carter is an experienced investor, entrepreneur, research and writer for the Young & Opulent Group, a company formed to serve the needs of up and coming entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars who wish to reach opulent goals and stay consciously afloat in these fast changing times. 

Exposing The Self-Help Industry

The foregoing article was originally written in October of 2012:

“Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Teach” – Unknown Author

I know that this article is going to ruffle some feathers but the points on which I'm about to hit just have to be made. I don't doubt that there will be opposition but one thing is for certain and that is: none of the opposition of the foregoing content will be successful people....just individuals who hope to achieve success through wishful thinking.

Here’s a basic rundown of how the self-help industry works: You have a guy who’s read all the various self-help books of the past and has attempted to run several businesses of his own that have been failures. After failing enough times, he figures that the only way to make money is to publish books/courses/audios/coaching/etc. which aims to teach people how to make money and be successful. That’s the gist of it. If I had to estimate, I’d say that 99% of self-help authors fall into that category. I remember seeing a guy (several guys actually), who was a nobody w/ no proven track record of success selling coaching for $5,000! When you research the guy, the only thing that comes up is his coaching services...nothing which indicates that he's run a successful business in the past.

There is that rare occasion where you’ll have someone who’s achieved success in business write a book about their journey to the top. You probably won’t find too many of these because those people are too busy actually making money to write books. But if you’d notice, these people’s work differ a whole lot from that of self-help authors who have never achieved any success. Take for example T. Harv Eker, author of “Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind.” Mr. Eker was a successful businessman before he decided to write about it. I’ve read Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind several times and to me, its one of the most pragmatic books on success. One thing the author emphasizes is hard work. In no way, shape or form does he make it seem easy to become successful. But on the flip side, the majority of self-help authors will make becoming successful sound like a walk in the park.

So now you may be wondering, “how do you know whether or not these authors have achieved success before writing about it?” One thing about me — if I’m looking to learn something from somebody, I am going to research that person to check their credentials. And that’s what exactly what I’ve done with a lot of the big names in self-help. I haven’t been able to find a history of success in business for 99% of them. Of course they tell you their stories of building companies and so forth, but in today’s digital age, I’d imagine that it would be easy to verify these claims. Yet, no one ever gives any verifiable information to back up their claims. Take someone like Charles F. Haanel, author of The Master Key System (TMKS), who was a successful businessmen BEFORE writing TMKS. I was able to verify that he did in fact build several successful companies. Mind you, Mr. Haanel built his companies in the late 1800′s. So if I was able to verify the legitimacy of claim made over 100 years ago before today's digital age, why is it so hard to verify the claims of these guys in today’s time?

I remember being part of a really popular Internet Marketing forum (not gonna mention their name). This forum is NOTORIOUS for allowing and even encouraging fraudsters to sell BS products to unsuspecting people. Many of the members portray themselves as being really successful businesspeople, but when you do a little digging, you find that they also fit my description of 99% of self-help gurus. When I browsed this forum, I noticed that almost all the products being sold which taught people how to make money in Internet Marketing, taught them to do so by creating their own product teaching people how to make money.

If you’re a sensible person, you may now be asking, “but how are they going to create a product teaching people how to make money if they haven’t made any money in Internet Marketing?” Here’s your answer: they hire “research teams” to research methods to make money who then ghostwrites an eBook for them (if they can’t afford these teams, they do the research and writing themselves), they then package and brand the product with their name and a phony story of how they came across this “revolutionary money making secret.” One of the most infamous tricks they’d use is a fake PaypPal and/or Clickbank screen shot which shows lots of money in their accounts as a result of using their methods. They create these fake screenshots by typing a javascript code into their browser, which then allows them to edit the numbers on the screen. After editing the numbers, they take the screenshot. I’ve seen this scenario play out with my own eyes hundreds of times on this forum. This method of creating BS products doesn’t only pertain to the forum in question, that’s how the overall “self-help/how to make money” industry works.

So now we’ve come to The Law of Attraction (The LoA for short). The LoA is something that self-help authors have referred to for quite some time now. During the early 1900′s, guys like Napoleon Hill, Charles F. Haanel, Wallace Wattles, Claude Bristol, William Walter Atkinson, and many others wrote about The LoA…from a pragmatic standpoint. The LoA is real BUT the way in which its taught today is false. Today, self-help authors teach you that The LoA is a short cut to success…a universal law to assist you in avoiding having to work. According to them, if you just think about it and believe, it’ll come to you. That is a load of bullshit. Yes, we do create our circumstances through our thoughts. And yes, we can create favorable opportunities through our thoughts. But what good is it going to do if you don’t take action? More on that later in my closing paragraph.

Many self-help authors teach The LoA in a way that causes the reader to desire to fulfill only selfish purposes. In ancient times, when people wrote about these Universal Laws, they used these laws for the purpose of bettering themselves and society as a whole. But now, self-help “gurus” teach you to use The LoA in expectation of something for nothing (which doesn’t exist). That, by the way, is why the vast majority of people who read these books never achieve anything, because they’re focused only on themselves. Nothing good comes to the person who isn’t willing to put in the work. I remember seeing several of these guys advise readers to act only if their actions feel good. Again, more bullshit. From my experience, its the actions you don’t feel like taking but that you take anyways that makes the most difference. I have never known a successful person who acted only when it felt good. One part of being successful is having to do things you don’t want to do…period. Do you see how these people are misleading you?

Your best bet, in my opinion, would be to leave the self-help stuff alone. Chances are, you already know what you need to do in order to succeed, you just haven’t realized it. 99% of these guys haven’t made any money outside of pitching products on how to make money and be successful. I would never tell you not to read any books on the subject. The books you read should be by people that have actually done it themselves. Some people may say, “what’s wrong with them providing motivation to others, even though they haven’t done it themselves?” The problem is that they’re providing misleading information to their audience. How can you teach someone how to do something you haven’t done yourself? People listen to these guys, apply their teachings and never become successful. Only person who makes money is the author. With the economy being in such a state of uncertainty at the time, these guys are going to be targeting the unsuspecting even harder because they know that everyone is looking for a way to make more money, looking for security, etc. And here they are ready to play the role of savior.

In closing, all I have to say is this: there is no substitute for hard work and accurate thought. Anyone who tells you otherwise usually has something to sell you. The Law of Attraction and other universal laws are important, BUT, they don’t take the place of plain ole hard work. You can attract opportunity to you through your thoughts, but you should be constantly putting in work. And you better be ready to work like a motherfucker when that opportunity comes. If you have to work 20 hours a day, so be it. I’m sure anyone who’s great at something worked their ass off to acquire those skills. Majority of self-help authors take advantage of people’s nativity. Lets be for real. A lot of people would choose easy success over having to work hard if there was such a choice (if you don’t believe me, look at how many people play the lottery). And these people prey on that desire people have of receiving something for almost nothing.

Don’t be fooled, people. Keep working hard, keep being motivated, keep your mind on your goal and DO NOT get tempted by claims of easy riches.

Is Self-Help Actually Detrimental?

The foregoing article was originally written in October of 2012:

You've all heard phrases like "Law of Attraction, Goal Setting, Visualizations, Affirmations, Positive Thinking," and on and on and on. Anyone who's been reading my material for any great length of time, they'd tell you that at one point, I used to sing the praises of the self-help industry, but that has all changed. For the past year and some change, I've been pondering over the idea of self-help being complete bullshit pretty heavily. It took me a while, but I've finally been able to admit to myself that self-help is indeed more of a hindrance than a help. I'll outline why....

The first thing I'd like to point out is that a lot of people that are into self-help have a cult-like mentality. You're advised to recite chants, affirmations, incantations, perform rituals, meditations, etc. You're also advised not to listen to anyone who says anything that doesn't line up with your goals/beliefs. I'd wake up every morning and recite my affirmations, and do the same before going to sleep. After a while I asked myself, "Why does this feel like I'm part of some cult? Besides, what the hell does any of this have to do with being successful in business?" The apparent answer is that performing those tasks influences the subconscious mind, which leads to the desired outcome. However, that's not all the way true. Those tasks CAN influence the mind, but they usually don't. In fact, psychological studies have shown that reciting "positive" affirmations leads to lower self-esteem. That is because while the person is reciting the thing they wish to see realized, their subconscious mind knows that what they're saying isn't true. So we're back to square one. If you don't believe self-help is like a cult, try presenting a logical, reasonable argument to someone who's caught up in the hype and see what happens.

Speaking of which --- what about these spiritual/metaphysical principles that self-help books usually outline as the keys to success? You know...like Law of Attraction. Are those things the real deal? Yes, they are but not the way self-help gurus tell it. (Digression: I'll credit self-help with one thing. It opened a lot of doors for me. I've been on a mission to learn as much as I can since I discovered the self-help industry) After reading countless books which discussed the metaphysics behind success, I decided to research metaphysics for myself from a scientific (non self-help guru) perspective. My studies lead me Ancient Egyptian studies of astrology/astronomy, Hermetics, and other ancient bodies of knowledge. I'm not gonna get into all the details, but I will say that metaphysical laws, mind creations, etc., is all very real. However, the modus operandi presented by the gurus is highly fallacious. They actually border on pseudo-science.

I've met plenty of wealthy people and I can't recall not one of them ever telling me they achieved their success as a result of what they read in a self-help book. I remember a conversation I was having with a guy who's net worth was $500 Million. We chatted for about an hour. I asked him if he could tell me how he'd gotten to where he is now. He made no mention of reading any self-help books, so I asked him about some of the most well known ones. To my surprise, he had no clue what I was talking about. The state of mind I was in at that time, I couldn't comprehend how someone could do so well without studying self-help. I've talked to several millionaires who had read most of the well known self-help books but they didn't attribute the reading of those to their success. Mind you, some of these millionaires were people from the streets who'd never read a book in their life, yet they were really successful.

Personally, things didn't start working out for me until I put the self-help books away and started studying my craft specifically. I knew I wanted to be a successful Financier, so I began to read books on finance, economics, the financial markets, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, psychology, behavioral finance, market history, etc. I never felt sharper intellectually in my life. According to some self-help books I've read, me studying the field I wish to work in specifically violates the rules. According to them, I'm supposed to just think about what I want and eventually everything I need will come. Well, I tried that approach (as well as watching others apply it) for a short time and it didn't work, so I decided to be a go-getter instead.

When speaking about the self-help industry, there's one word I overlooked and that was the word INDUSTRY. Which means that its a business that is designed to sell. When I factored all of this in, it became apparent why myself and others like me would read a self-help book, listen to an audio, etc., feel a burst of motivation for a short period and end up right back where we were looking for another fix. By a fix, I mean looking for the next book that contains that "secret" we're seeking to get another short burst of motivation. The industry is setup to make money, not to help you make money. I used to get upset with people who'd tell me that but now I realize they were right. I've met people in their 50's and 60's who'd been reading self-help books since they were young adults, and they haven't gotten rich yet. I'm not sure whether to congratulate them for their persistence or encourage them to find a different route. The industry is set up for you to be dependent on the materials (the books, audios, coaching, seminars) which keeps you coming back for more of the same stuff. Think about this --- if that stuff worked, then why do we have so many different success books on the market? That's because it's 99.9% bullshit. The self-help industry is a hustle. Only people making money are the authors. You'd be hard-pressed to find a self-help guru who's made any money outside of teaching self-help.

Self-help isn't the key to becoming successful. The real key is self-mastery. There's a difference. Self-mastery is the highest form of discipline there is, usually based on pragmatic principles. It doesn't mean being perfect (as self-help implies). Self-help lays an unrealistic burden on the follower, practically suggesting that you have to be in full internal peace to attain success. That's not true. Self-mastery is simply being able to be disciplined enough to do what needs to be done. You don't have to be adept in spirituality to become a master of yourself. As long as you can bring yourself to do what needs to be done, you can become a master of yourself. There are lots of people (myself included at one point) who knew all the basic principles of self-help, all the spiritual magical thinking techniques, but yet we couldn't bring ourselves to take action and do what needed to be done. But we'd be left wondering how come the next guy who knows nothing about these magical thought processes is getting such great results. That's because that guy has practiced self-mastery. That guy is a self-starter. He does what needs to be done without procrastinating. So, you can think all the pretty thoughts you want (as self-help implies), but if you don't have the discipline to get up and do it, the result will be nothingness.

Conclusion: In the end, it all comes down to a few basic principles. The best book I ever read on self-mastery is The Law of Success. I hold that book in such high regards because the principles which it outlines are pragmatic. It took me a while to accept that book as being the absolute truth. But real world experiences always lines up with something discussed in the Law of Success. I believe that's because of how Andrew Carnegie set it up. But anyways --- succeeding is more so about hard work than looking for answers in a book, an audio or a seminar. If they had the "secrets," they wouldn't share them. The self-help industry will continue to create failures and rake in billions because of people's naivety. I know some of you are gonna read this and are gonna want to say a mean word or two to me. But before you do that, ask yourself this --- are you any better now than you were before you got into self-help? Better yet, have you achieved your goal(s)? I don't care how much you "believe" you WILL achieve your goals. If you haven't done it, then you don't have shit to say to me.

Thanks for reading!

Sean Tudor Carter

“We live in deeds, not years. In thoughts not breaths, in feelings, not in figures on a dial.”

Sean Tudor Carter is an experienced investor, entrepreneur, research and writer for the Young & Opulent Group, a company formed to serve the needs of up and coming entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars who wish to reach opulent goals and stay consciously afloat in these fast changing times. 

The Law of Success – 1925 Edition

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS BOOK, CONTACT ME AT MY NEW SITE: WWW.THEBESTINVESTMENT.NET
FYI: CONTACT ME ONLY IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO MAKE A  PURCHASE. NO EXCEPTIONS.

By now, I’m sure many of you have heard about the The Law of Success 1925 Edition by Napoleon Hill. For those that are unfamiliar with this edition, this is the one that was never released to the public. The mass market Law of Success, the one readily available in stores, was published in 1928. This is NOT the one from Orne Publishing (the one from the infomercial). This is a new and improved edition. For the record, I used to sell the Law of Success from Orne Publishing. Despite that, I’m gonna offer no bias statements. I’m simply gonna tell it like it is.

Here’s the story behind The Law of Success. In 1908, Napoleon Hill was given an assignment by a magazine for which he was then working. Hill's assignment was to compile a story on successful men of that period. His first interview was Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world at that time. During the interview, Mr. Carnegie was so impressed by Hill that he extended the amount of time which he'd originally granted Hill to conduct the interview and even allowed Hill to sleep at his home. After the second interview, Carnegie offered Hill the task of devoting 20 years to interviewing, living with and studying the richest people in the world, and compiling all of their “secrets” into a success philosophy. Carnegie went on to explain that Hill would have to pay his own way for that 20 years with no financial assistance from him. Carnegie's reasoning was that: If Hill is going to write a book on success, then he should be able to prove through real world experience those he's applied those principles successfully himself. Which, in my opinion, was a very wise point of view by Mr. Carnegie.

After accepting Mr. Carnegie’s assignment, Hill then spent the next 20+ years interviewing business magnates such as John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Marshall Field, Harvey Firestone, J.P. Morgan, W.M. Wrigley, Jr., John Wanamaker, and so on. In other words, Napoleon Hill interviewed the Billionaires of the early 1900′s. After gathering the knowledge from these powerful, successful men, Hill then created The Law of Success philosophy. In 1925, Mr. Hill made somewhere around 100 manuscripts (which came in 15 booklets, pictured above), and issued them to some of the people whom he interviewed for review. Here’s where the story gets tricky. It’s a well known fact that this version of The Law of Success never hit the market. There are two stories floating as to why this never came to be.

Story #1: This story has been made popular by Kevin Trudeau. The story goes: the super wealthy men who Napoleon Hill studied and interviewed, who were all supposedly members of a secret society called "The Brotherhood," read the manuscripts and concluded that they didn't want this book released because they didn’t want their secrets revealed to the masses. So, the group got together (lead by Henry Ford) and had the book squashed and edited down to what we know as the 1928 edition and then watered down even more to Think & Grow Rich. This story doesn't make sense, in my opinion, but I’m including it because a lot of people have heard this version of events. I say that because --- if the interviewees didn't want their secrets revealed to the masses, why reveal their secrets to Hill in the first place? Secondly, why would Henry Ford spearhead a censorship of Hill's work when he contributed to the creation of it's content more than anyone? According to Trudeau, the only reason those men freely shared their secrets with Hill is because they were under the impression that Hill was an apprentice of Andrew Carnegie and had no idea that Hill was actually writing a book.

Story #2: Napoleon Hill edited The Law of Success to remove religious references and to keep a promise to Andre Carnegie. If you were to read the 1925 Edition, you’d see that he explains how the Law of Success philosophy (including Universal Laws) are related to biblical teachings. He even goes on to mention Jesus’ name a few times. Mr. Carnegie had originally asked Hill not to include any form of religion, due to the fact that it might offend some people. So it’s been said that Mr. Hill went back and removed most religious references before publishing the mass market edition in 1928. Hill also held out til 1928 in order to keep his promise to Mr. Carnegie — that of spending 20 years (1908-1928) working on the Law of Success philosophy. To be honest, I think this story holds more weight because I noticed the difference in both books.

To put it in plain and simple language my overall opinion on The Law of Success is this: If you want to achieve success in any undertaking, this is the most important book you’ll ever read in your life.
The difference between this (the 1925 Edition) and the 1928 Edition is slight, but great. There’s no night and day difference between the two editions, to be honest. But the slight differences do matter a lot. In my opinion, the 1928 Edition is a great book, but it loses much of it’s value because there seems to be a lot of filler content. It’s kind of easy to miss the most important parts of the book because of all the stuff in between. Whereas, in the 1925 Edition, Mr. Hill just gets straight to the point. Every single sentence contains meaningful content. That by itself makes the 1925 Edition the better book. Here’s another change that was made: Lesson five in the 1925 Edition is a lesson on ACTION, but that lesson wasn’t included in the 1928 Edition. The Mastermind introduction, which was in the 1928 Edition wasn’t in the 1925 edition. Instead, the concept of the Mastermind alliance was talked about in virtually every chapter to illustrate how that concept tied into every lesson.

Those are the main differences. After reading this book and understanding it, you’ll understand why people are rich and why people are poor. You’ll be able to analyze someone whose wealthy and tie everything that they say and do to a principle taught in The Law of Success. It really amazes me how differently I view the world after understanding this philosophy. If you’re looking for a blueprint or a roadmap (not a shortcut) to success, this is it. The knowledge contained in this book isn’t something Napoleon Hill just conjured up and put into a book. These are the words of the richest people who ever lived. These people gave Mr. Hill intimate details and access to how they created their fortunes. Napoleon Hill was quoted as saying, about the principles he was taught by the people he interviewed, “When these techniques were applied, the money came so fast and in such large quantities that it frightened me.”

Here’s another interesting note. There’s a section in this book which explains techniques that the government around the world use to control the minds of their citizens. Even today, those same techniques are still being used. So, as you can see, this book isn’t just about making money, it’s about opening your eyes to the truth.

One last thing. If you’ve ordered the 1925 Law of Success by Orne Publishing, then you’ll definitely love this one even more. The one by Orne Publishing was edited (which I didn’t know at the time). It omitted the names of some people that Napoleon Hill referred to and omitted other key elements. This book is also made of a higher quality material than the Orne book. So, not only are you getting Napoleon Hill’s words in their original form, you’re getting a book made with high quality material. Included with your order also will be an essay written by Napoleon Hill in 1915 which was also never released to the public. I’ll throw that in as a bonus.

If you live outside of the U.S., please contact me before ordering. This is not an affiliate program, so you’ll be buying directly from me. If you want a new and improved copy of The Law of Success 1925 Edition, click below to order your copy.