How To Create A Baseline Earnings Goal
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November 2012 Internet Marketing Update

Fast cars, big boats, expensive hotels, private beaches, fancy cocktails, mini-mansions and VIP access are all part of the lavish internet marketing lifestyle…

…at least…that’s the stereotype…but it’s not how you get started.

In today’s “1st of the month” post, I’ll show you the reality of internet marketing and what you should be aiming for if you want to make it big online.

Enjoy!

How much money do you need to make online?

What would allow you to live the IM lifestyle?

I’m not asking how much you want, just how much you actually need…to get by, to be able to quit your day job and start working from home…

A few years ago I learned a cool exercise that finally gave me a concrete daily income to aim for…a number which I knew would change my life. I call it my “baseline earnings goal”.

This exercise also changed my perspective about a few things, read on to find out more…

Lets get started.

Grab a pen and paper right now (this takes about 2 minutes to complete)

The first step is to make 2 columns, title one of them “Living Expenses” and the other “Lifestyle Expenses” (see the video above to see exactly how I do this).

Next, I want you to write down all your daily recurring LIVING EXPENSES in the left hand column…things like rent, groceries, gas bills, electricity bills, cable TV, internet, phone costs etc.

Get it all down.

Next, write down your LIFESTYLE EXPENSES. For me, lifestyle expenses are things you do because you want to, not because you have to…things like your gym membership, Thursday night out with the lads, a movie night once a month etc.

Now, for each thing on your list, you need to create a DAILY cost.

  • If your monthly gas bill is $20,divide it by 30 to get the daily value ($0.66).
  • If your monthly cable TV bill is $43/month, the daily cost will be $1.43.
  • If you have a weekly cost, divide it by 7. If the cost is yearly, divide it by 365.

NOTE: Watch my example video for more details.

Next you need to add up the individual daily costs and write down your TOTAL.

This total number is what you NEED to survive.

It’ll vary a lot depending on what part of the world you live in, if you have children, if you rent a property or if you own one etc.

Here Are My Daily Costs:

Living Costs

  • Rent ($1000/month): $33/day
  • Food / Groceries ($100/week): $14.28/day
  • Cable TV ($30/month): $1/day
  • Internet ($50/month): $1.67/day
  • Gas ($25/month): $0.83/day
  • Electricity ($30/month): $1/day
  • Taxis / Transport ($100/month): $3.33/day

TOTAL: $55.11/day

Lifestyle Costs

  • Restaurants / Nights Out ($60/week): $8.57/day
  • Gym Membership ($70/month): $2.33/day
  • Holiday to NZ ($1500/year): $4.10/day

TOTAL: $15.00/day

GRAND TOTAL: $70.11 per day

Baseline Earnings Example

As you can see, my overall living and lifestyle costs are about $70/day.

Reaching $70/day online isn’t overly difficult – you need a few good websites and a few rankings – that’s it.

Note: Getting to the point where you’ve got “a few good websites and a few rankings” is SIMPLE, that doesn’t mean it’s EASY though…these days a little hard work is normally required.

Small Income Streams Will Pay Your Bills

One of the cool things about breaking down expenses to daily costs is that it makes it EASY to see where your money goes.

It also makes the idea of “a website to pay for my food bill” quite a fun challenge.

If you’re a member of Authority Hybrid, then you know all about the website that pays my food bill.

The website I’ve set up as part of Authority Hybrid ELITE is now paying for my yearly holiday to New Zealand (and it’s only 2 months old!).

How many money making sites do you need in order to cover your bills?

5?

10?

I bet it’s not many.

You Don’t Need $200/Day Websites…

The big misconception about internet marketing is that you need to hit a home run…to nail it with 1 or 2 websites that each pull in thousands per month.

“Home Run” websites are a reality, but they’re not the “norm”…and anyone that tells you otherwise is probably lying to you.

Once you’ve got your daily costs covered, which you’ll probably be able to do with a handful of websites, THEN you can really start living the IM lifestyle.

So how much do you need to make?

Work it out, then get a plan in place that’ll let you hit your goals.

Follow through on your plan, take the occasional failure with a grain of salt and keep moving forward.

Internet Marketing can provide you with more money than you can spend, but it’s smart to get the basics covered first.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, share it with others!

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Leave a Comment…

If you’ve enjoyed this post, if you’ve got a question, or if you just want to say hi, leave a comment below! I read them all and your comment WILL be approved!

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24 Comments so far:

  1. Craig says:

    Aidan, thank you ONCE AGAIN for yet more useful information! This is just what I needed!

    I’m curious to know how you made that video? Is it a tool that anyone can use?

    Thanks you once again Aidan – this kind of thing is what separates you from from other internet marketers 🙂

    • Aidan says:

      Hey Craig, thanks for the compliments – I’m glad you found this useful!

      As for the video, I use a tool called “Video Scribe” from a company called Sparkol (sparkol.com – thats my affiliate link :)). It has a free trial version you can check out.

  2. Cheryl says:

    I LOVE the video Aidan! And the exercise sure puts things in perspective – it makes it all seem less daunting! THANKS!

    • Aidan says:

      Hey Cheryl, thanks for commenting! So many people get overwhelmed with internet marketing (I know I did)…it’s worthwhile from time to time to take a step back, look at what’s really required, focus on that, then build from there 🙂

  3. Mario Soto says:

    I hit a triple all the the time! hehe All Kidding aside I remember when I did this, and it shocked me that my “need” bills were so low. My next goal is for a set websites that make what my wife makes every month so I can just give her that.

    So yeah this keeps things into perspective. I hope more people see that and Sparkol I just found that today you are always one step ahead of me lol.

    I’ll get it through your link, The monthly is really inexpensive I might even get the lifetime.

    • Aidan says:

      Hey Mario, your wife must be a lucky lady!

      I often find myself working on a website with the motivation being a holiday, or an extra weekly luxury – setting small goals like these has really helped me over the years though 🙂

  4. Marisa says:

    Hi Aidan! Thanks for sharing this with us. For me it is very useful that you share your personal experiences and everything you tell us was tried by you before. This is a powerful exercise and help us set small goals and keep focus. Will implement it!! Gracias

  5. Great lesson, Aidan.

    Watching that exercise is like taking a two minute ‘time out’ to
    reset my goals. I began early 2012 with those goals and lost sight of them.

    Thanks for the re-boot.

  6. Kent says:

    Wow Adian,

    I was totally impressed with your presentation video. Hope you will share what software you used for the “pen in hand” slides. Great, usable information on expense breakdowns too!

    • Aidan says:

      Hey Kent, glad you liked the video!! Sure, I’ll be happy to make a tutorial about the video software I use, watch out for it in another blog post 🙂

  7. KevinS. says:

    Aidan,

    Thank you for posting this, it was needed very badly.
    You really put it all into perspective … something I know I need from time to time.
    This makes being successful all the more reachable because we are making them attainable steps instead of being a HUGE mountain to climb all at once.
    I would like to order your Authority Hybrid course now… well after Christmas shopping is done. Hope it is still available then.

    KevinS.

    • Aidan says:

      Hi Kevin,

      Thanks for the comment and I’m glad you found this post useful. As for Authority Hybrid, the doors are currently closed unfortunately…I’m not sure I’ll be opening them up again, but if you sign up on the Authority Hybrid waiting list (at authorityhybrid.com), you’ll be the first to know!

  8. Eileen says:

    Hey, Aidan, great video. I really like the new video technique a lot. Hoping to be able to engage with Authority Hybrid soon, after a really, really busy period in my life offline. Your video gave me renewed motivation to do so.

    Thanks,

    Eileen

    • Aidan says:

      Hey Eileen, great to hear from you. Let me know how you get on with AUthority Hybrid – I’m still in the private forum 5 days a week 🙂

  9. Larry says:

    Such a simple excerise to determine how much one needs to make on line to cover basis living costs. But making the money online is not as easy as most internet marketing gurus make it sound. I have been building sites with unique content and many backlinks but the sites never get to page one of Google. I keep working at the process of building sites and backlinks but it is not working for me.

    • Aidan says:

      Hi Larry,

      Your 100% right – most (so called) “gurus” make it sound easy – but the reality is that it’s not easy. Not every website will work, even my websites fail from time to time. What we can try to do is minimize the chance of failure and stack the odds in our favor.

      We can do our best to build high quality sites that Google genuinely likes and we are usually rewarded with good rankings when we do this.

      Now, I know you’ve had a few challenges with getting rankings recently, but you need to stick at it. Look at the things that could be causing the problems…Here are some questions to ask yourself:

      – Is your bounce rate too high?
      – Have you over-optimized your anchor text?
      – Do you have high quality information?
      – Are people staying for very long on your site or are they leaving quickly?
      – Do you have enough link on relevant websites?
      – Does your link building incorporate the social side of the web (Likes, Shares, Tweets etc)
      – Do you have return visitors?
      – etc etc etc

      There are lots of reasons why a website might not rank, but generally speaking, I do get rankings and so can you.

      Try to stay positive…you’ve had 3 sales from you newest website in the last month, I’m sure that’s worth about $120 – so while it’s not ranking in Google, you are making money from it and I think with more time and more persistence, you will get the rankings you’re looking for 🙂

      Thanks for the comment Larry!

  10. Oscar says:

    Aidan,

    Is authorityhybrid is still working even after the updates of panda and penguin? This is very good information that you are providing after looking at it this way then there isn’t a big goal that you need to have. You can start up small and go from there. What is authority hybrid elite?

    • Aidan says:

      Hi Oscar,

      YES! When I was planning Authority Hybrid I thought long and hard about the direction Google (and other search engines) were moving in, as a result, the methods taught in Authority Hybrid are designed to give Google what it wants by using THEIR monetization program (Adsense) and creating high quality informational websites 🙂 My example site still has a top 5 ranking and has come through all the major Google updates unscathed 🙂

      AH Elite is an extended version of Authority Hybrid in which I work with 10 students to build out a website live…everything is done on camera in small eClasses. The program started a few months ago – I don’t have plans to open it up again any time soon…

      If you have Authority Hybrid Oscar, I just recommend you follow through and implement the methods 🙂

  11. Reece says:

    Aidan

    Thanks for the amazing updates, I have done this exercise and its not much at all including a holiday which i am very please to discover, 😀

    I would like to know do the methods from RAP (rank and pillage) still work? Or am i now to purchase another product (note that i have only ever bought one [RAP]) and i have recieved fair results but not one sale to date… But i am hanging in there

    Please advise
    thanks for the support!

    • Aidan says:

      Hi Reece,

      Thanks for the feedback – it can be quite an eye opening little exercise and what people need to earn is usually much less than they think.

      Rank and Pillage still has some good tactics, specifically the Product Launch sites and the Authority sites, but my Authority Hybrid method is what’s getting me the best results nowadays – unfortunately it’s no longer on the market…

      If Rank and Pillage is what you’ve got, then I’d recommend using the Authority Site info in that course and trying to replicate the example sites I made.

  12. Aidan!

    Simple and effective, your clarity to transmit is admirable !!!!

    Thanks Aidan!

    Joaquin

  13. Arthur says:

    This was great! After going through the exercise, I was very pleasantly surprised
    when I found that the hill is not as steep financially as I thought. This awareness
    will prevent a lot of personal worry regarding my finances. Now, I know what I have to
    do. A big thanks!!!

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