This Small "Shift" In Thinking is a Game Changer

byTimMcKinlay

68.8K followers

4 years ago

When I first started out online, all I wanted to do was make money.

And I must’ve tried just about every system out there to make that a reality. Listening to all sorts of “gurus” who had this system or that system, hoping I’d finally figure out the elusive secret to making money online.

I eventually learned what I believe is a truly overlooked and underestimated fact about making money online. And that is - in order to start making money online, you need to stop thinking about making money online.

WTF?

Yes, you read that correctly.

When I finally figured this out, it became a major turning point in my journey. Understanding this took me from making nothing, despite continued desperate attempts, to now earning 6 figures per year as an affiliate.

In order to be successful, you need to take your focus completely off of what you want, and think about what other people want. Specifically, you need to be thinking in terms of how you can help others.

Now this may sound a little counterintuitive, and it’s one of the hardest things to do when the whole reason you’re learning this stuff is to make money for yourself. I get it.

But when you shift your focus from “what’s in it for me” to “how can I help others” it gets you into a way of thinking that leads to results. Very tangible results.

Why?

Because, in the case of building a successful site, you start thinking about how you can create a site that helps people. Helpful content, helpful products, helpful comments, helpful site structure… and so forth. Your focus becomes all about how you can help the people who visit your site.

And as a DIRECT result of this:

You create better content. Which leads to more traffic, because Google wants to rank the most helpful content. And which leads to better conversions, because you’ve built more trust with your visitors, and because you promote the most helpful products. And ultimately, this translates into earning more affiliate commissions, which translates to more money in your bank account.

In other words, you win.

But to clarify, you don’t just want to “help people” and leave it at that. Well not if you want to make money, which I’m pretty sure you do!

So in the context of running an online business, what you need to do is help people, in a way that ALSO helps you.

So for example, instead of thinking “how can I rank in Google and get traffic”... think “how can I help Google in a way that also helps me (ie. gets me traffic)?

And the answer to that question is, you think about what Google wants. Which is to provide its users with the most helpful, relevant content. Because then more people visit Google, and when more people visit Google, more advertisers spend more money on Google ads. And Google continues becoming a bigger and bigger giant.

So you help Google by helping Google’s users, which you do by creating the most helpful and relevant content you can. Which translates into traffic and sales for you.

You can apply this concept to ANY business, and absolutely dominate the competition. It’s so simple but extremely powerful.

I’ve talked about the importance of this for years and honestly sometimes I think people think I’m just saying this to be a good guy or something. Like as if I’m just saying it to spread “happy talk”. But this is not the case. It’s because focussing on helping people leads to more profit for me. So in a way it's actually kind of selfish!

I understand how valuable this concept is from an economic point of view. And I use it to create more profitable businesses. That's the reality. But I think it's a "win win" reality, so I feel good about it, because the more value I give the world, the more I get back in return.

Why do you think sites like Wealthy Affiliate, Amazon and Google are so incredibly successful?

Because they provide their users with an enormous amount of value!

In everything they do, they focus on VALUE. And by being the biggest givers of value, they naturally make the most profit. Because nobody delivers the kind of value that they do in the market. In fact, most companies don't even come close.

That is the winning, proven, time tested formula.

So starting today, make a deal with yourself that you will put your main focus on helping the people in your niche as best as you possibly can. Think about ways you can help them in every aspect of what you do. I guarantee you this will translate into more success for you, while also creating more successful outcomes for those you help.

Cheers,

Tim