In this interview, we have the pleasure of hearing from Jon Wedel, and 18 year old free traffic whiz. I recently picked up his course on getting free traffic I could tell that Jon is someone who has spent his time in the trenches learning and actually doing this… so I contacted him about an interview. Here it is: What got you interested in starting an online business and how did you get started? I started off when I was about 13 years old. I had seen people around me my whole life working hard at jobs to only be stuck paying bills. I decided that the lifestyle of trading my time away for money wasn’t for me, and looked for alternatives. I found internet marketing and decided that the lifestyle associated with it was perfect for me. I tried promoting a Clickbank product about shoulder pain. I did article marketing and tried to rank on Google for a bunch of different keywords. I never made any money from it and couldn’t figure out why. The end result? The product was total garbage, along with the sales page. To date I’ve delivered thousands upon thousands of clicks to the offer and not made a cent from that offer. Then came CPA marketing. I heard it was a fast-track way to make money so I looked into it. Most methods required paid traffic and being 13 or 14 at the time, I didn’t have the funds to invest. I started looking towards free traffic methods and it all started from there. I earned my first dollar, repeated the process, and grew outwards. Fun Fact: I still have the shoulder pain website to this day for sentimental reasons Did you have any failures early on and what did you learn from them?  Definitely! I think everybody starting out in internet marketing has (or should have) failures. My biggest problem was that I liked the idea of the lifestyle associated with internet marketing, but I was too lazy to actually put in the required work to get where I wanted. I got sold by the hyped up world of “you can be lazy and rich” and it really wasn’t working out. I learned that the only way to succeed is to put in the hard work and build up a real business. What’s the main thing that made the difference for you in becoming successful? There are two main things that made a big difference. The first one was the realization that hard work turns into success. I finally realized that there is no such thing as push button profits and magic bullets. Realizing this was kind of a hard moment for me… it was like my dream of internet marketing was ruined. I sat back and thought about it and realized that people do make money online but they actually work for it. The people earning good money weren’t sitting on a beach somewhere doing nothing while counting cash… they were online WORKING HARD. The second thing is something I think is the absolute most important piece of advice someone new to the game of online marketing. You ready? Pick something. Stick to it. Get results. Too many people get caught up jumping from method to method and trying different things but never sticking to one. This is commonly referred to as the “shiny object syndrome” and is a very real problem in online marketing. There are so many opportunities and ways to earn money online you can’t just choose one – so you try them all. I think most people have done this and most will agree that you only see success once you start to focus on one thing and bring it to results. Looking back at my past  attempts to earn money, I now realize my failures would have been successes if I hadn’t thrown in the towel so soon. What’s the best piece of “big picture advice you would give to someone just starting their online business? Start somewhere. Anywhere. I know it’s hard, I know it’s scary, but it’s worth it! The whole world of opportunities opens up once you take your first step.  Furthermore, once you take that first step continue to work in that direction until you see results. If you have a solid game plan and consistently take action on it – you will succeed. What is your system for sitting down and getting work done on a daily or weekly basis? I’m a big fan of white boards. I’ve got one sitting right beside my desk where I make gigantic to-do lists that help to keep me motivated. I create a list on paper on my desk as well and make it each night before I finish up work, so I know what I have to do the next day. Obviously I don’t follow it to a tee but it’s nice to have as a guideline to see if I’m being as productive as I should be. If I don’t finish something that’s on my list, I move it on to the next day. Stuff happens and you might not get it done, but at least it’s a good reminder to actually finish it! What could you have done that would have made you successful sooner? It might be the ultimate internet marketing cliché, but if I had to start all over with no knowledge at all, I would find one good method, one that has been proven to bring in money time and time again. Stick with that method until one of two things happens:

You get results. Awesome, stick to it and do it again and again. You realize you’re doing it wrong. Find out why, correct it, and reach success.

What would you tell people just starting out that they should focus on? Focus on a single method. I don’t care if it’s building adsense websites, creating products, CPA marketing – it really doesn’t matter. If you focus on one thing and stick to it you will learn the process behind making money. Once that first dollar comes in, an entire world is opened up to you. You can scale it up, branch outward, and ultimately realize that you can earn money online. Make that first dollar and go from there – your first project doesn’t have to be a blockbuster but it should set you up to produce more and more successful projects. Why do some people succeed online and others never do? It’s funny how once people start to learn that you earn an income online, they all want to learn how to do it. For some reason people think that earning money online is super easy and requires no real work. These are the people who will not succeed until they realize how untrue it really is. Too many people come in with high hopes and no work ethic. This is a recipe for disaster and leads to people throwing in the towel too soon. Like I said before, stick to it – you might fail for 6 months until you earn that first dollar. That first dollar might seem small, but it is life changing. It’s at that moment you sit back and think: “ I can do this. I can really earn money online. And from there a whole world of opportunity is opened. How has running your own online business changed your life? Knowing that I’ll never have to work a “real job? It’s awesome. It’s a nice feeling knowing that no matter where I am in the world, no matter what situation I’m in, I’ll be able to access the internet and earn money. It’s truly a blessing and I’m happy that I finally got over my initial phase of laziness and put in the true hard work that allowed me to reach this stage. What motivates you to keep going and become even more successful? I made the mistake of getting too comfortable and relying only on one source of income early on in my career online. When that source dried up, I lost everything. It was devastating but it was a lesson well learnt. Since that happened I have always worked on expanding my business and trying to diversify into as many different fields as possible. At first it was grueling work but now it’s something that I enjoy doing and wouldn’t change for anything. Another thing that’s really important to me is understanding that it’s impossible to know everything. There are so many new methods and lucrative opportunities out there that I can’t wait to learn about – but not until I finish what I’ve already got going! How much of your time do you dedicate to: 1) self-education and learning new skills 2) generating new traffic, leads and customers for your business and 3) generating revenue? I like this question because I think too many people focus too much time in the wrong areas. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now as far as ideas I want to go after, new methods I want to try, etc. so I don’t spend too much time learning new skills BUT – I’ll never stop. This is an ongoing process where you can never learn everything there is to learn, so I’m always doing my best to put a solid effort out there to learn more. Lots of my focus is placed on generating traffic and getting customers, because in the end that’s what generates you revenue. I’ve found that by putting customers first you will find that the money follows. I know it sounds like total crap but it’s just the way things work. This is all crucial in building a solid online business, rather than a simple one-off method to earn money. I wasted so much time spinning my tires trying to chase money, but it was when I focused on building a real business that I started earning. You seem to teach mostly about traffic strategies… What is the top skill that someone needs to learn in order to always be able to generate traffic? You want to know the secret to getting traffic? Be social. That’s where the internet is heading now, and I’m sure that’s where it will stay. In the last year we have seen such a huge shift to social aspects of marketing and you need to know how to take advantage of it. Find out what makes people feel the need to share content, learn how to spice up your website’s content so people feel that need to share. If you learn what makes people tick and how to get deep within them and make them share, you’ll forever be a traffic generating machine. What traffic strategies are working for you right now, and are there any that will always work in your opinion? Since I already mentioned being social (which will always work in my opinion) I recommended mastering the art of getting inside of your users heads. Sound creepy? It’s not really! Always be thinking like your prospect/user/buyer would and ask the question “what’s in it for me? Try to use this knowledge to offer them something of value. Put together a free report for them on the subject and then use other websites in the niche to drive traffic to your own using a call to action. Where can you go to do this? Think of places where other people are leaving low quality backlinks. Use these exact same places but put big, bold calls to action with an enticing offer. Methods like posting to forums, document sharing websites, getting guest posts publishes, press releases published, and so on are all very much alive. You just need to create that perfect enticing offer and then get it out there as much as you can. Remember you can do this by asking that very important question of “what’s in it for me?. If someone only has 20 minutes a day to dedicate to generating free traffic, what is the best use of their time? If I only had 20 minutes to spend getting free traffic I would do a few things. First, I’d work on building up a solid following on social communities (forums, Reddit, StumbleUpon) and become an authority there. These kinds of followings last a lifetime and can bring you steady, consistent traffic for a very long time. Look for places where you can leave calls to action and start becoming everywhere within your niche, once you get the hang of finding where to post them – you can do it over and over again. Getting free traffic is so easy once you have a good system in place. A good system to me is one that you can scale up and repeat multiple times. Obviously finding places to leave calls to action is both very repeatable and very scalable, so try it out! Where can people go to learn more from you? I would recommend starting with my course, Traffic Shockwave, where I detail my exact system for generating a lot of free, non-Google traffic. If You’ve Read This Far… Good… I’m doing a simple giveaway of 3 $25 Amazon gift cards.

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