WebCraft – In The Beginning

The current global economic downturn shows no sign of stopping and has resulted in thousands of families finding it necessary to secure additional streams of income into the household, to protect themselves from becoming financially destitute as many other families have already done so.

I was determined to find out what additional streams of income were currently available to anyone seeking ways to adequately protect themselves from the butterfly effects of an evergrowing economic storm which was not of their own making.

The questions I wanted answers to were…

• What additional streams of income are available?
• How difficult are they to implement?
• Can a non-techie with no computer skills get started?
• Do they cost money to get started?
• How soon can I get started?
• Are they simple to operate?
• Are they worth my time?

These primary questions guided my research and would eventually lead to me gaining a unique, life-altering insight into the Internet. The Internet was not only the right tool for researching the best methods for creating additional streams of income, the Internet is the best method for creating additional streams of income.

WebCraft – In The Beginning

The biggest problem I faced in the beginning when researching the increasingly popular subject of ‘make money online’, was trying to juggle the vast amount of information so-called ‘gurus’ assured me I had to acquire, study, learn and implement if I were to succeed.

From live weekend seminars and remote late-night webinars to one-day workshops and learn-from-home study courses, as an IM (internet marketing*) newbie, I did them all.

Information Overload

During my research and study, I’d amassed so much written, audio and video content, it wasn’t long before I began to experience a phenomenon suffered by most, if not all Internet newbies… ‘Information Overload’.

You see… even though each piece of information in this vast collection was of enormous value in its own right, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in a box without the box lid image, I had no clue how these pieces fit together.

It became evident that the problem had nothing to do with the ‘quantity’ of information I was absorbing, it was my inability to successfully ‘organize’ the information that was the real problem.

Filter Failure

Clay Shirky, leading thinker and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies once said, “It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.” I found these words perfectly described my current information situation, and probably that of millions of other Internet newbies researching this dynamic topic.

Up until then I’d been continually acquiring vast amounts of information but failing to ‘filter’ this mountain of data into smaller, easy-to-recall, nuggets of useful wisdom.

Filter Success

In order to filter all this ‘valuable’ information, I first had to decide what the filters should be. So I grabbed a large notebook, a ruler and an assortment of colored pencils then locked myself away from any distractions.

First I divided the pages of my notebook into two columns and wrote ‘Activity’ at the head of the left-hand column and ‘Filter Category’ at the head of the right-hand column. Then I listed every activity I learned were associated with the ‘practice’ of using the Internet as an additional stream of income remembering to assign a ‘filter’ category in the adjacent column. How these filter categories were created is explained below.

ACTIVITY	FILTER CATEGORY
Pay Per Click Advertising	PROMOTE
Keyword Research	INTELLIGENCE
Outsourcing	LEVERAGE
Affiliate Marketing	SYSTEM
Planning	TIMESCAPE
Email Marketing	INCREASE
Self Development	YOURSELF
Autoresponder	AUTOMATE
Guarantee (Risk Reversal)	CONVERT

I finally ended up with a very extensive list comprised of dozens of activities (of which the example above is a sample) and was surprised to identify no more than ten MAIN ‘filter categories’ were needed to cover the entire list of activities. My next task was to arrange these ten MAIN ‘filter categories’ into a logical yet easy-to-remember sequence.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.I.T.Y.

I did this by coming up with an acronym that would help not only myself but others remember what activities went where, why, when and how. The acronym I came up with is S.P.E.C.I.A.L.I.T.Y. with each letter representing one of the ten MAIN filter categories or ‘disciplines’ essential to online income success.

Understanding the purpose of, and relationship between, each these ten disciplines will provide you with the ability to see the image on the ‘puzzle box lid’.  Know where all the information pieces fit. Avoid the pitfalls and common mistakes most, if not all, newbies have to deal with on a daily basis. This is too much pressure for a newbie to handle and I’m certain there are numerous ‘Noob E. Goldchaser’ stories which don’t end well.

To learn more about the ten disciplines, click the following link… Ten Disciplines of WebCraft

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