Win $100,000 Worth of Business Coaching and Products from Rich Schefren

Was reading a blog post titled If You’re Reading This Blog Post… You Could Get $100,000 Worth of Coaching and Products From Me.

Basically you answer three questions to win some business coaching and products from Rich Schefren. Inspired me to write a post as it hit home to a problem I’ve been having for going on two decades!

1. Do you know what your single greatest constraint is right now? If so, what is it?

My biggest constraint is a physical disability, while at University in my early twenties (studying genetics with an aim to being a research scientist) my lower back got so bad I couldn’t complete my three year Bsc degree. After dropping out of Uni I couldn’t work due to back pain whilst sitting/standing (had to claim government benefits on medical grounds).

I eventually got online (couldn’t afford it until there was free Internet access in the UK) and knowing nothing about building websites managed to build an adult store with over 1,000 products using a very poorly thought out piece of ecommerce software (ShopFactory: was almost anti-SEO in design).

Through SEO means (spent a LOT of time learning search engine optimization techniques) I got the site to 8,000 unique visitors a day and sold £80,000 worth of stock in a year (£25K profit for me from zero profits for the first 6 months trading).

The business was run from home with the help of my wife, so everything was stored/packed in the living room (worst part was returns!!).

We considered opening bricks and mortar retail stores and possibly warehouses, but wasn’t a realistic possibility due to my back pain. What I was doing (all the work at home) was about all I could do.

I’d used blackhat SEO techniques on the site and got it banned in Google, eventually resulting in putting the site in moth balls (currently makes pennies a day). Site went from 8K visitors a day to under 1K!

Fortunately I’d already seen the error I’d made (using blackhat SEO techniques not a good idea long term) and had started an SEO business.

I didn’t enjoy selling adult products, so when I realised I was not only very good at search engine optimization I enjoyed the challenge it didn’t take much to go from performing SEO tasks on my own site to offering SEO services for a fee.

I got plenty of SEO clients lots of people knew I was good at SEO research (perfect business for me with my research background) and still run that successful SEO business today (majority of my clients stay very long term).

Again due to my back problems I can’t expand my SEO business much, have to keep it relatively small so limited clients etc… (I’ve turned many potential clients away).

I also try my hand at affiliate marketing (I love the idea of residual income, especially on auto pilot) and do OK, currently my sites are receiving about 15K to 17K visitors a day, was moving over 25K visitors a day due to one of my sites, (was getting 10K visitors a day) but Google penalised it last month, (now 2K visitors) I think (99% sure) for selling text links via one of the popular text link selling sites (trying to get it re included, removed the 2 links I’d sold, d’oh!).

I was closing on making $100 a day from AdSense, but the loss of 10K visitors a day has pulled that back to below $50. Starting to do better with Clickbank, had a few $100+ days this week, but it’s all small fry compared to what is possible.

Last month I made around $3,500 in affiliate type revenue, looks like I’ll make around $4,000 to $4,500 this month despite AdSense income almost halving!

I should be able to do much better with my skills set and resources (have over 100 domains).

2. How many constraints away are you from having the business and the life of your dreams?

One, my back problem, all other issues are minor in comparison. I’ll be getting an operation on my back within the next 12 months. Finally got so bad the doc’s would operate: having two disks in my lower back replaced with plastic spacers and a couple of metal pins either side!

After which I hope I can finally sit/stand and even walk in a more normal way. Currently I never sit in a chair, right now I’m lay down in a custom built bed typing with the keyboard leaning on my knees. I can’t stand in queues, wait in waiting rooms etc… I have to keep moving to limit the pain. Stand me still and I rock from side to side to avoid back pain, kind of rules out face to face meetings with potential business clients.

My 12 year old son is a very good artist (one of his sites: http://www.caleb-law.com/). He’s going to design some Christmas cards and maybe other types of greetings cards and we’ll try to sell them to supermarkets etc… In an ideal world I’d travel to meet the buyers and sell the products face to face, as it is it’s going to have to be via the phone/email/snail mail which isn’t as effective.

3. What are the three greatest benefits you’ll enjoy once those constraints are removed?

Assuming the operation is a complete success I’ll finally be able to really live my life in every way.

From a business perspective all the opportunities I see will finally be open to me, I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve seen a closed retail store in a good location and thought of the possibilities, but I physically can not currently manage anything like this: would love to setup a retail store and when running well pass it on to others to run with me in the background.

Currently have to limit myself to online business only, I use my car so little the battery goes flat, weeds and green moss grows on it!

Don’t get me wrong I make a good living online, we bought a house almost three years ago in need of some renovation work and I paid £36K deposit and still had plenty of cash left over in the bank for renovating.

What I want to do in the future is possibly create info products, I know a lot about SEO so that would be he most obvious niche to create in.

I’ve also made WordPress SEO/AdSense themes which I can say without a doubt are the very best SEO’d WordPress themes available today. Would like to do something more with those.

David Law