According to about a dozen emails I received this morning (added the hundreds of others I’ve gotten so far this week), I can be instantly making $90K/month – so what the hell am I doing working hard building my own internet business? 

Am I really doing it all wrong? 

Could this be true – it seems that there are many people who know better than I how to instantly start cashing $90,000 checks each month, maybe I better have my head examined – or perhaps I just have lost touch with how much of an opportunity the internet has really become?

Or maybe – I’m up to my eyeballs in bullshit so deep that I can’t continue ignoring it!

Hmmm…yes, it is the latter.  In fact, I’m not as affected by such hype as someone who is struggling with a minimum wage job – or even worse – has been “displaced” in the current worldwide job crunch – what must this crap look like to them? 

Look, I’ve built offline and online businesses over the last 15-years – there is NO model where you can immediately (or even in the very short-term) consistently make $90K/month – get over it!

REALISTIC INCOME GOALS FOR AN INTERNET BUSINESS

Let me begin by saying that there is no one-size-fits-all growth path for businesses – I’ve seen some grow very quickly while others take years to grow, and of course, many NEVER grow. 

Starting with a plan for $3-$5K/month is certainly a realistic point for someone just starting out, where there will be a learning curve and where there is some product development or supporting material (to launch a service) involved.

Further – allowing yourself a 3-month buffer to get things rolling is realistics too – it’s not like you begin making $3K/month on day 3 or 4.

There certainly are ways to accelerate revenue – ex. create products quickly that you can start selling within 1-2 weeks – but that still involves putting up a compelling website and generating traffic.

To me, the guarantee of $90K/month or whatever crazy claims are made has never been as important as interim targets that allow you to

1) Pay off some debts – take some of the heat off of your current living situation and give yourself some breathing room

2) Replace your employment income inside of 12-months (some will do it within 6-months, but 12 is a realistic objective)

3) Build a foundation where growth will continue so that you can leverage your what you have done in the beginning.  In other words, don’t go after the quick buck using a system that is unsustainable – just ask the Adsense arbitrage people about this one – gaming the search engines falls into this category.  I would argue building a business based entirely on selling someone else’s products is unsustainable too…but that’s another blog post.

4) That you build in more and more leverage into your model as you grow so that you can scale to much bigger income over time without YOU being the obstacle to growth.   This means setting up repetitive processes, outsource agreeements that make business sense, creating products that continue to pay you long after you have stopped putting effort into developing them.  This is the basis of the Information Product Publishing Model we teach in the Ultimate Information Marketer’s Success System. 

These are not only realistic internet business income goals, they are based on building a sound online business where you control your products, you build leverage into your business and continue to build growing profits as well as increasing equity so that you really can benefit from your work in the future.   

Find the best plan that works for you, put your head down, keep moving in a forward direction, quickly learn from setbacks and mistakes – readjust and you will get there.

What’s your take on growing an internet business – and the hype that seems to be so prevelant out there today?  Leave us a comment.