John Gokongwei is an entrepreneur who owns one of the top corporations in the Philippines. His is an inspiring story. Here are some excerpts:

…”I was no more than a student then, at San Carlos University in Cebu, when my father died suddenly. It left me, the eldest, the responsibility of taking care of my mother and five siblings. That was tough for someone who was 13. Creditors had just seized our home and business and I had no experience with earning a living.”

…”My day began at 5 in the morning. I would load my bicycle with soap, thread, and candles, and then bike to neighboring towns to sell my goods. On market days, I would rent a stall, lay out the goods from the bike, and make about 20 pesos a day, enough for me to survive and to buy even more goods for next time.”

…”But I chose to live my life unafraid even during times when I WAS afraid. I discovered that opportunities don’t find you. You find your opportunities.“

…”Call it trite – but, believe me, success CAN BE ACHIEVED through hard work, frugality, integrity, responsiveness to change – and most of all boldness to dream. These have never been just easy slogans for me. I have lived by them. I hope that many of you in this room will some day choose to be entrepreneurs. Choose to be an entrepreneur because then YOU create value.”

Inspiring isn’t it? You can read the rest of his speech here.

Many people go into internet marketing hoping to amass a fortune right from the comfort of their homes. Many enter this field hoping to get rich quick after buying a program or an ebook. And who can blame them? The internet is awash with overhyped sales pages promising they could earn this much in a ridiculously small amount of time. Indeed, one can make money on the internet. But the time and effort involved in achieving this is not as realistic as the sales pages might claim.

I’m not saying that these programs do not work. Some of them have sound business models. But the problem is that those who buy these programs are led to believe that making money online is easy. The lure of plug and play and automatic income is irresistible to newbie internet marketers, and therein lies the problem. Many who buy these programs are full of enthusiasm at first. But after a month or so without seeing any monetary results, they hang up their computers and come up with a conclusion that it was all a scam, which is an unfair conclusion since one can really make money online, and some of these programs are sound.

A beginner in online marketing should adopt a mindset that what he is doing now is something that will reward him in the future. Many feel that they have failed if they did not make this much money in x amount of time, and they give up after that. I compare this to planting a seed. It may not benefit me now if I plant it, but given time and effort, this seed will grow and benefit me in the future. And the more seeds I plant, the more rewards I will reap tomorrow. If you would read a biography of any successful entrepreneur, they would say that it took them years to succeed in what they were doing. And majority of them would say that they have failed many times. There is not one entrepreneur who would say that he achieved success overnight.

An online business is just that. It is a business. It is no different from any other physical business, except all transactions and business activities are occurring online. And no business has ever achieved success without an investment of time and effort.

You might wonder and say ” What the heck is that question for? Of course negative is bad, that’s why it is called negative, right?” Well, we all know that negative is bad, for anything in general. But allow me to just ponder on this thought:  How does it affect your actions?

Whatever form negativity comes, be it self-doubt or fear , it profoundly affects our actions in whatever endeavor we aim to perform. Somehow it is able to paralyze us, preventing us from doing something productive with our time and dampens our creative potential. So instead of thinking what else you can do to maybe increase traffic, write content, or  just tweak the meta-tags for your site, we end up doing nothing at all. And man is not made to be static. The whole universe is dynamic, and we have to flow with that. After all, time moves forward, not backward.

I sometimes find myself like that. And I do my best to do something, even just as simple as reading from other sites on my niche. That is better time spent than lying down and doing nothing. After that I begin to get ideas of what else I could do today for my online marketing business and for future strategies. The very act of doing something gets me off the ground and overcomes my inertia.

What am I trying to say? Just DO something (note:this is not an endorsement of a popular athletic brand;-).

I do not remember who said this, but it goes like this:

“You will succeed through movement, not through meditation.”

In a news article published by cnet.com (read full story here), online sales for the past holiday season totaled to a whopping $27 billion! Truly, selling online has never been more lucrative, as more and more merchants are harnessing the power of the internet to achieve more sales.

You can grab a piece of this online pie by becoming an Amazon Associate. When it comes to affiliate marketing, Amazon is one of its pioneers. And with their wide range of products, you can be sure that you will find at least one product that fits your niche.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Go to this link to signup. (it’s free)
2. If you have an existing website, you can get links which you can post on your website. When people follow these links and make a purchase, you receive a commision from Amazon. or…
3. If you do not have a website of your own, you can create an a-store using your account dashboard you can access when you login. Get the url of your a-store and promote it whichever way you like – emails, forums, offline promotion, etc.

In a nutshell, that is what affiliate marketing is all about. You get a reward for every customer you refer to a merchant, and it results in a win-win-win situation for the merchant, the affiliate, and the customer.

I hope you find this post helpful. Here’s to your online success!

(for another free online store option, you can click here)