I’m sure I’m not the only small business owner who has been struggling a bit recently. Over the past few months, my online revenue has dropped significantly, especially from the source of income I was relying on the most.

Of course, this provides a good lesson that I’ve always known, but never got around to heeding fully – don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

Now, I pull in revenue from several different streams of online income, but since one of these streams was doing particularly well, I spent most of my time cultivating it. Now that the revenues from that stream have scaled back considerably, I’m left scrambling to bring up my income.

There is a silver lining though. I think in a year or two, I may look back to these few months as the catalyst for making my business grow to unprecedented levels. Without the revenue I was relying on, I’ve been forced to push the limits of what types of services I offer. I’ve had to leave my comfort zone, and I’m already seeing great results.

The first thing I did to try and earn more revenue was to promote my custom website design. I had built a website months ago called Porcupine Website Design, mostly to assuage friends and family who occasionally ran across people who needed a website and wanted to know where to send them. I was making enough money by pre-designing websites and selling them, that I didn’t have much time to do custom work.

Promoting that has opened me up to several new customers, generated tons of great website ideas in my head, and really expanded my view of what’s out there, and what people are looking to create.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had to take a hard look at my business model, and determine how I can not only make money online right now, and how I can build my profits to make sure my business is secure in the future.  I think I’m well on my way.

I have a special place in my heart for Yanik Silver.  I think his hype can be a bit over the top sometimes, and the price for most of his products is quite high, but if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be writing this blog.

Seven years ago, I bought a copy of his book ’33 Days To Online Profits’, and that was the start of my internet marketing career.  The methods in the book didn’t apply very well to what I was trying to sell at the time, but I learned things about the world of internet marketing that I had no idea even existed.  That book opened the door for me, and eventually led to an escape from my “Day Job”.

I recently joined his Maverick Business Insider newsletter.  It sounded interesting, and Yanik always seems to be at the forefront of the latest marketing trends.  With the package came his short, but interesting book – “34 Rules For Maverick Entrepreneurs”.

Rule #3 intrigues me, but goes against the way I usually do business.  Rule #3 states that you should always charge a premium price for your product or service and then over-deliver.  Though I agree that going above and beyond your customer’s expectations is a great way to keep existing customers coming back again and again, I’ve always been of the mindset that you should charge a price that makes the customer think “How could I not take advantage of this awesome deal?”

Recently, a lot of my income has come from custom web design and coding.  I create website layouts and graphic design, do a bit of coding, install scripts, etc.  Since people can hire anyone in the world, this is understandably a competitive market.  I charge what I believe to be a fair price, but one that potential customers will see as a bargain.  And it’s worked.  I’ve gotten quite a few customers recently who were attracted to my low prices.  It’s hard for me to justify charging a lot more when it’s clear that my customers sought me out because they wanted a low price.

Of course, Yanik’s a millionaire many times over, and I’m not, so I think if anyone’s mistaken here, it’s probably me.  I’ve been studying Yanik’s methods, and I’m definitely going to make a few changes to the way I do business, now and in the future.

Back to the first product I ever bought – I followed up my purchase with a similar but more extensive product of his a few weeks later.  That product came with a special benefit.  Yanik would personally review your website once you finished it and give you pointers.  I never cashed that in.  Maybe I’ll send him here once it’s up and running a bit more and see what he thinks

I’m sure I’ll discuss more of his rules in future posts.  What do you think about Yanik Silver’s rules, his products, seminars or anything else he does?  I’m really interested to hear what you think.

Welcome To ‘How I Earn Money’.  This project has been in the works for years, and I’ve always seemed too busy to actually post to it.  This time, I’ve challenged myself to follow through and post at least several times a week if not more.  I’m hoping this can be a good sounding board where I can discuss ways that I make money online, talk about new projects I’ve been thinking about putting into action, and talk to other people in the internet marketing community.

First, let me introduce myself.  My name is Robert Dickson and I live in Baltimore, MD.  I’ve been working online for several years, though I finally made the jump to working from home full-time less than a year ago.  I have many streams of income, including a few info products I’ve created, affiliate and AdSense websites I maintain, web services I offer, like Web Design and Coding, and a membership site that I run where I offer unique niche websites and other great stuff to my members.

With my niche websites and web design, I work with a lot of newbies, and I feel like I have some pretty good advice to give, having been around this industry for most of a decade.  I am always learning more though, and this should be a good place to share everything with anyone who cares to listen.

If you want to know more about me, you can check out the ‘About’ page, or just read the posts.

If you have questions, or if you just want to say hi, feel free to leave a comment.  And of course, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

Thanks!