Neuroscientists believe that our five senses are taken in over 11 million pieces of information every second and our conscious mind is only processing about 40 of that 11 million.

Your unconscious mind processes all the incoming and data from your environment and instantly decides whether it is good or bad.

It also tells your conscious mind what to pay attention to.

Your unconscious mind is both smarter and faster than your conscious mind.

There was an experiment done where participants were given a game to play. They had to click on the X.

The game followed a complicated mathematical formula. The more the participants played the game the quicker they became. This was because their subconscious mind was learning the mathematical formula.

This was evident from the fact that their times were improving.

However, when the participants were asked if they knew the mathematical formula, they all said that one didn’t exist.

This proved that the subconscious brain understood the formula and was telling the conscious brain where to click and what to do to help it perform better. The conscious mind did not know nor was it aware of the mathematical formula.

How do we know the subconscious mind knew the formula?

Because when the formula was changed scores dropped back to where they were when the participants first started playing the game.

With that in mind, do you understand why you need to build your website for the subconscious mind?

You can walk up to someone and ask them why they bought this or that and chances are they can tell you. But they don’t have a clue about all the little things that affected the final decision. They were guided by their subconscious and can only attempt to explain their reasoning with the conscious mind.

There are a lot of reasons why you purchased that product that you do not even know about!

John Bargh ran a series of experiments where groups of people had to unscramble a list of words.

• Group one: unscrambled rood, angry words.
  
• Group two: unscrambled words that were neither angry nor calm.
  
• Group three: unscrambled words that were happy, calm, pleasant and easy-going or laid back.
  

The second part – once they finished unscrambling the words, they had to go down the hall and find the instructor. When they walked into the instructor’s office the instructor was talking with someone else.

Now…the “someone else” was part of the experiment. The idea was to see what action having to wait would have on some that unscrambled rude words, compared to the reaction of someone that unscrambled nice or neutral words.

• What they found out is that 20% of the people that unscrambled the happy calm words interrupted the instructor within 10 minutes.
  
• While 40% of the people that unscrambled the neither, rude or happy words interrupted the instructor within 10 minutes.
  
• But a whopping 60% interrupted the instructor from the rude word group.
  

When they asked the group of people if unscrambling the words had any impact at all on how long they were willing to wait before interrupting the instructor, all said no.

We are not aware of how much influence our subconscious mind has on the decisions we make or how it affects our moods and feelings.

Not building your website for her would be foolish!

Putting a website online requires taking risk and making sacrifices. When you hit the first pothole (and it will happen) just keep in mind that you are creating a business. By pivoting and changing directions with the same business, we are able to put all our time and efforts into that business and make it eventually work.

But you have to be willing to sacrifice to live like few can.

• Making your website work is a formula, not an ingredient.
  
• Building an online business is a process. Process cannot be outsourced, because process dawns wisdom, personal growth, strength, and events.
  

People who make money with their websites don’t do so by stumbling around online. Both making money and losing money are a direct effect of the roadmap you follow.

Websites exist not just to sale stuff, or make money, or even serve customers. They exist as a tool that can be used to build your business. This can be done scientifically by running test that allow you to test each element of your website, against itself.

The idea is to make changes and then measure how customers respond to those changes. Building a business requires focusing on the boring stuff. We are going to focus on progress, milestones, and how to prioritize work. The old business models do not work online.

Why Do So Many Websites Fail to Make Money?

Because the old business models no longer work. The internet does not care about a good business plan, a solid strategy, or your market research.

Most people create websites for a reason. There can be a lot of different reasons but most websites are created for a reason.

The local grocery store wants to create an e-commerce website that will allow their customers to purchase products online.

The local attorney wants an information website that would allow potential clients who’ve gotten DUIs to contact him.

Your neighbor wants a website to start a home business and your roofer is having a website built right now in hopes it will help him stay in business.

There are a lot of reasons to create a website but to be successful you have to know what action you want your website visitors to take while they are on the site. The only way to figure this out is to take a leap of faith. However, we only want to take one or two leaps of faiths at one time.

“A leap of faith”, is a live or die leap, which takes a question about our business and turns it into a business plan. We then use our website to go through and determine the answer to our leap of faith.

What we need to know before taking our leap;

• How are we going to quickly determine if we’re on the right path?
  
• How are we going to react to the information as we get it?
  

Some of the information will be reaffirming and validating what you already know. But keep in mind that this is a rolling never ending process. Once you’ve answered the first set of questions, you should end up with another set of questions; always the questions that go to the heart of your business. You answer those questions with real data from the marketplace, from real customers, with real products and experiences and then you move on.

This is how you build a business plan. Scientific answers to critical questions about your business and the amount of revenue it needs to generate. We answer gross margin questions, operating expense questions, and when it is all done we have created a business plan.

Not… formed by assumptions before your business starts, but informed decisions based on empirical information from real customers within the marketplace, as well as responses and reactions from competitors in the marketplace. When we finish you will have something useful that you can use not only to make money but run your whole business.

Christmas time can be hectic time of the year. It can get to the point where you want to call your good friends and say, “Hey listen! Let’s not exchange presents this year!”

We know that if they give us something we will have to return their present with one of greater value, or we’re going to feel bad.

We are automatically obligated when somebody gives us something. There’s a sense of obligation to return the favor. Sometimes we do this for love or for fun. But many times we give gifts or do favors out of a sense of obligation. If I gave you a gift or did you a favor, would you feel you owed me something in return?

Most likely you
would want to give me a gift or do me a favor in return, possibly to be nice, but mainly to get rid of the feeling of owing me something.

This is an unconscious filling, but quite strong.

Gift giving and favor swapping is what makes us human. It’s necessary for our very survival. If one person gives someone some food, shelter, money, a gift or even a favor, it will cause that person to fell indebted to the other person.

The only reason we are here now is because our ancestors shared their food and their skills an honored a network of obligations.
When we give someone a gift we trigger a feeling in them of being indebted to us. The only way to get rid of this feeling is to respond and return the gift or favor. Sometimes they will ignore these feelings, but these feelings will linger. It might even take a long time for them to act on the feeling. But the neatest thing about this is that when the gift or favor is returned it is normally of a higher value.

If someone returns a gift of lesser value it will leave them with a feeling of an unpaid debt. So, in most cases they are going to give something of higher value than the original gift.

There was some research done in 1976. They sent Christmas cards to total strangers and not only did they get a large number sending cards back to them, but these people (who were total strangers) continued to send Christmas cards many years after the experiment was over. Think about it like this; say you are in a room with another person, as a team or working separately on different task. After a while a guy comes into the room to tell you that you have a 10 min. break. The other person in the room ask, if he can leave during the break and the guy in charge says, yes.

A few minutes later this person returns with two cans of Coke. He opens one and hands the other one to you and says, I asked the guy if it was okay to bring soda in and he said yes, so I bought one for you too.

You open the soda and drink it.

The person in charge comes in the room and starts the task again. A little while later the person in charge says he needs to take care of some stuff and everyone is free to go. When he leaves, the other person turns to you and ask, if you are interested in buying some raffle tickets. The person who sells the most tickets gets a prize; you say okay and buy three raffle tickets for five dollars.

You see, they did this experiment.

If someone gave you a can of soda would you then reciprocate in buying raffle tickets if they asked you to? Half of the time Joe offers the soda. The other half he doesn’t. The results?

When Joe brings you a soda you’re twice as likely to purchase a raffle ticket as when Joe doesn’t bring you a soda. You feel that you have to buy the raffle ticket because he gave you a gift even though the raffle ticket cost a lot more than the soda.

The power of reciprocating has been well known to people who manage direct marketing campaigns.

For example, mailing unsolicited donations for a veterans group generated an average response rate of 18%. When the mailing campaign included personalized address labels, the donation almost doubled to 35%. Marketers use this method to persuade you to perform some type of action, such as making a purchase, volunteering, or funding a project.

It is difficult to say no to a gift.

Any time you give something away for free on your website it creates an opportunity to obligate the person that is receiving the gift.

Let’s say there’s an e-commerce site offering free shipping on orders over $75.

But does this offer really obligate us?

Consider the fact that we not only have to buy something; we have to spend a certain amount of money.  Perhaps more than we wanted to spend. By agreeing to spend more than we’d originally planned, we presented the first gift, our willingness to spend more money. The company then reciprocate by giving us free shipping.

This feels like an exchange, at best. So the offer of free shipping does not create a feeling of being indebted.

To in debt someone they have to feel like they got a gift with no strings attached. At Zappos.com’s online shoe store they offer free shipping with no strings attached. Even better they offer free shipping if you decide to return that item.

Now that’s cool!

This makes the offer feel like a gift, to you when you shop on their online shoe store.

Free gifts are very powerful. If the site gives you a free no strings attached gift, it will trigger you to reciprocate.

There is a coffee store inside the mall where I live and every time I go there they give my son a little bag of cookies. And in return I sit down and drink a cup of coffee. After

all, the cookies are free with a cup of coffee. So by giving my son the free cookies they obligate me to buy the coffee.

By giving a gift with no strings attached, you could cause a customer or friend to become a longtime customer or friend.

One way for a website to give a gift would be giving the gift of information.

For example, this website sells website designs, and we dedicated pretty much the whole website to giving guidance and information on making money online rather it’s with your website design, search engine optimization or even social media marketing.

No, this doesn’t guarantee someone’s going to purchase from me, but it does increase my chances.

And it could be the difference between them spending money with me or with my competition. Even if they don’t purchase right away, they are likely to eventually come back and buy. It’s also a great way to get people to feel out a form.

There was a test done in 2007 were they used a website that provide useful information about different formats of media files, definitions of media files, when to use each format and so on.

In the reward condition, visitors can access the information by first completing a form that asked for their names, addresses, and other demographic information.

They tested this site against a separate site were visitors could immediately access the information and then they were asked to fill out a form.

Visitors were twice as likely to fill out the form after getting the free information then filling out the form to access the information.

You know there are a lot of things that we can do that would be like giving a gift to our website visitors.

Showing your visitors other products they might be interested in buying, could be seen as a gift.

Giving away free content could be seen as a gift.

Giving away an e-book, could be seen as a gift.

The reason we want to do this is that giving a gift triggers or increases the likelihood that others will reciprocate by giving us something in return.

I just read an article where the Arthur said that 95% of successful business owners pivot at least once before they become successful.

All these years everyone thought I was crazy but in reality I was just pivoting, changing directions. It wasn’t that I couldn’t make up my mind. I knew exactly what I wanted to do . . . today. The problem was little things would happen throughout the day, and by the end of the day I would have a new system, something I thought would work better. There are two problems with this.

• I am never focused in any one direction long enough to see the results I am looking for.
  
• It’s not a mathematical approach; it’s a flavor of the week approach.
  

When it comes to running a business I don’t know what approach is the best. All I can do is tell you what 10 years of running a business has taught me.

The neat thing about making a living online is that it’s not necessary to go into the main niche. For example; if you wanted to start a search engine optimization business it might be a better approach to start a directory business that submits websites to web directories. Instead of going in and competing with the big SEO companies, you could sell a service to them.

Ideas of Industries inside SEO:

• Blog Commenting
  
• Article Submissions
  
• Press Release
  
• Ad Posting
  
• Video Submissions
  
• Pay Per Click Advertising (Google Pay Per Click ads)
  
• Link Building
  
• Directory Submission
  
• Social Bookmarking
  
• Forum Postings
  
• Blog Postings
  
• Keyword Research
  
• Consultation
  
• Onsite Optimization
  
• Social Profile Creation
  
• Social Media Marketing
  
• Reputation Management Company
  

You could build a business around any of the above niches.

Now…once again I don’t know the best way to go about doing this. I only know what has worked for me in the past. I am sure there are better ways of doing this is but there is just so much to learn and do it’s difficult to always know the best ways of doing things. But here’s how I would go about starting an online business in the SEO industry.

The first thing I would do is make a list like the one above and go through and see if there is anything on the list that I feel I could really get into.

• 
  Blog Commenting – Too much like spam. Plus you would have to hire people to sit around and comment on blogs all day. I have no idea how long before Google makes such links totally useless as they continue to fight spam. Stay away from this one!
  
• Article Submissions – My understanding is that
  this industry has already started taking a hit as the links are pretty much worthless and the traffic is about the same. Stay away from this one!
  
• Press Releases – This is another one I have to wonder about. It sounds boring and I have to wonder how much longer before this is a total waste of time. I believe with all the social media sites out there reporters can find stories and videos without going to a website full of boring poorly written content. Stay away from this one!
  
• Video Submissions – There is software that will do this but as video sites fight spammers and people who sit and submit videos all day are spammers. Stay away from this one!
  
  
• Pay per Click Advertising (Google Pay per Click ads) – This I actually like!

  I like it because if I’m going to sell pay per click advertising unlike the many SEO’s that spam me every day, I am going to find my clients using PPC advertising. Of course this would mean I would need money I could afford to lose in order to learn how to get the most out of PPC…so I’ll just leave this one for the time being.
  

• Link Building – Link building is spamming! Anything you do for the sole purpose of ranking higher in the search engines is spamming. I can do things for a combination of reasons and it be okay.

  Let’s say that I’m looking for information for an article. As I search Google I stumble across a form where someone has asked a question that I know the answer to. I think about it and say to myself, “I really don’t have time to answer this person’s question,” but then notice I notice that I am able to leave a link to my website I realize I could get a little traffic to my website, maybe even pick up a client, at the very least I’ll get a link back to my site. Now as I write my anchor text for my link I might use a keyword I want to rank for, but I am no longer a spammer.

  And the quality of my answer should be of a much higher quality because it was written for the purpose of finding a client and not a link. Stay away from this one!
  
  

• Directory Submission – Directory submissions have become less effective over the years and I wonder how much longer they’re even going to be around? Stay away from this one!
  
  
• Social Bookmarking – I like the idea of social bookmarking but it appears to have turned into a spam feast. It’s just a matter of time before all links from social bookmarking sites become useless. Stay away from this one!
  
• Forum Postings – This is another one I have to wonder about. As social media sites become more advanced I have to wonder if forums are going to be around much longer. Stay away from this one!
  
• Blog Postings – If blog posting is guest posting, you would have to have one hell of a writer. Someone that understood the industry they were writing about, had their own unique twist, was able to write in an interesting way that interested people and could put it on paper well enough so that people understood what they were trying to say.

  I’m not capable of doing it. Someone like that would cost you a lot of money. Stay away from this one!
  
  

• Keyword Research – Keyword research is funny because it just seems that eventually we have to run out of ways to write the same word. Plus what is it, something like 30% of Google’s searches are keywords that no one has ever searched for before? There are new tools that come out daily with new and better ways of finding keywords. Stay away from this one!
  
  
• Consulting – I could only consult people that knew less about the topic then I did. And if something happened to me, the people left could only consult people with less knowledge then they have on the topic. The business would be built around one person and I don’t like that. Stay away from this one!
  
• Onsite Optimization – As search engines become better at understanding websites, and content management systems become better at setting up the content for the search engines, I have to wonder how much longer we will need onsite optimizers. Stay away from this one!
  
  
• Social Profile Creation – As software becomes better it becomes more difficult to create multiple social media profiles across lots of social media platforms. Plus, how boring would that be? Stay away from this one!
  
  
• 
  Social Media Marketing – Too big and too complex. Stay away from this one!
  
  
• Reputation Management Company – This one, sounds cool!
  
  

As I look at the industry and sub-industries associated with search engine optimization I see an industry that is rapidly changing. As a matter of fact, if you think about search engine optimization as being a table and each niche being a leg on that table, you have to wonder if the SEO industry doesn’t have a bad case of terminates?

As the search engines get more into personal searches and Google gets better at fighting spammers and social media sites improve their software to fight back against spammers, where does it leave the SEO’s?

Another problem that the SEO industry faces is the local search engine optimization gurus. The warrior forum has unleashed a group of SEO’s that have no idea how to do SEO but have all the right tools to convince you otherwise. There must be hundreds of e-books on the warrior forum telling its members how to find SEO clients off-line or by email-spamming. The problem with this is that it doesn’t tell how to take care of those clients once you get them. Other words, we don’t know how to do the service we are selling, but it’s a really cool way to make money.

This will awaken the small business owners to the online world but will it turn them off to search engine optimizers? I have to wonder if the combination of the number of small businesses that are currently being brought online, along with the ever ending fight with the search engines and social media sites over spamming, might forever change the search engine optimization industry in 2012.

And let’s not forget that the current makeup of the SEO industry relies on Google’s ability to market their business online. If Google loses ground, the search engine optimizers lose ground. Their whole business is based around how well Google is able to market Google.

The reason I’m telling you all this is not to discourage you from going into the SEO industry but to show you how important it is to set your website up with the right statistics so you are able to take a mathematical approach to running your business.

If there is one thing I’ve learned is that there is nothing Easy about making money online!

The Online World Doesn’t Care About;

• Your family
  
• Your childhood
  
• How hard you work
  
• Your education
  
• Your needs
  
• Your plan
  
• How much money you have
  
• Your sex, color, or age
  
• It does not care about your wishing, dreaming, and thinking positively
  
• Rather you know the right people in the right places
  
• Or what school you attended
  

The Online World doesn’t care about any of that stuff.

Putting a website online requires taking risk and making sacrifices. By knowing when it’s time to change directions you are able to keep ahead of the competition.

But you have to be willing to sacrifice to live like few can.

• Making your website work is like cooking a meal, there are a combination of ingredients that need to be used.
  
• Building a business cannot be outsourced. It takes knowledge, wisdom, personal growth, and strength to build a business. It is an event.
  

People who make money with their websites don’t do so by stumbling around online. Making money and losing money are a direct effect of the path you follow.

Going into 2012 I want my website to be more than just a place to sale stuff, make money, or even serve customers. I want it to be a tool to run my business. This can be done scientifically by testing each element of your website, against itself.

The idea is to make little changes and see how customers respond to those changes. Building a business requires focusing on the boring stuff.

I Ask Myself Every Day, “Why Do So Many Websites Fail to Make Money?”

I think it’s because the old business models no longer work. The internet does not care about a good business plan, a solid strategy, or your market research.

You need to know as quickly as possible;

• Are you on the right path?
  
• What information do you need to collect?
  
• What will you do with that information when you get it?
  

This is a rolling never ending process. Once you answer one group of questions it’s quickly time to ask another; you should always be asking questions that go to the heart of your business. You answer those questions with real data from the marketplace, from real customers, with real products and experiences and then you move on.

This is how you build a business plan. Scientific answers to critical questions about your business. You are creating a business plan.

Not… formed by assumptions before your business starts, but informed decisions based on information from real customers within your market. When you finish you have something that can be used to run your whole business.