I Want My Life Back!
How to fund your life using the Internet
By Adrian Stefano
So you want your life back?
I know how you feel. 9 years ago I was totally fed up with my day job, working for up to 50 hours a week and still finding my account breaking my overdraft limit each month. I realized that a job was just that – Just Over Broke and so I decided to change the way I did things. I spent the next three years working all day and then working all night. I tried different ways of using the Internet to make money, spending every single evening learning what was working and what was not. My success has come through a lot of trial and error and through gaining knowledge of how the Internet and people work together. It took a couple of years for me to realize that I was going in completely the wrong direction. I spent days trying to come up with great ideas, investigating them and realizing someone else was already doing it very well. I also spent months on each project I started, only to find sales were poor at the end of it all. I was spending to much time on the clever and interesting bits and not enough time on making money. As a single person I did not have the resources to continue that way so I started to think SMALLER. I did not want to be tied to a PC listing hundreds of dropship and wholesale items and then typing in orders for hours a day on a website. Neither did I want to invest money in wholesale items. From reading about real estate investment I started to consider the MRMR strategy that the cleverest investors were doing. It is based around rapid decisions, spreading risk and maximising cash in the bank. I considered how I could transfer this to my Internet dreams and realized that thinking small could be the new being big.
I currently have 34 operating web-based businesses, that is coincidentally very nearly one for every year of my life so far! They are fully automated, outsourced and managed for me. I do not intervene other than to check my emails for one hour each day and to read newsletters I am subscribed to across many industries to keep up to date on new opportunities. Every week or so I may spend an extra hour or two surfing for more information if I feel something needs deeper investigation. With no effort on my part I now generate an income of over $7000 per week. I travel, I relax and I enjoy the color of life without having to worry about how I am going to pay my next bills. So why am I sharing my hard work with you when I do not need the money? Well that is exactly the reason! I have spare time now and like a fresh challenge. Even though we are in challenging economic times, the astute and entrepreneurial amongst us can succeed. Those people are my kind of people and hopefully the information I am giving you will help you to realize your own potential and take control of your own destiny. Look at the money you bought this ebook for...if I wanted money I would be selling this gold dust for a lot more than I am! I could put some pictures in this ebook, showing me, or a person I say is me, in front of a big yacht, or car, or house...but would you believe me? Anyone can do that by taking images from google! I could also show you some random graphics of my paypal account and claim its mine. You can get fake paypal graphics showing huge balances with a quick google search, or doctor them yourself. So I see no point in subscribing to that ludicrous practice. My words are my word. Read what I say, and use it to help you put your own strategies into action and make them successful. Once it is working for you, then you will know that I was telling you the truth. So what does this internet Utopia look like? Well for me it looks like an hour of work a day, if you can call checking a few dozen emails a day work! I have a strong and regular income from multiple streams which gives me total financial freedom.
I manage my business interests from anywhere in the world via a Blackberry, so am able to travel extensively. I spent Christmas 2008 in Rome and have now rented an apartment in the center of Barcelona for a few months. After that who knows, the cash is rolling in so I have the luxury of making pretty much any choice I like. I am always conscious that you must never rest on your laurels, so I am still investing some time each week on the Internet investigating any potential micro-business ideas. If I spot one I can get on the phone and get a website deployed and tweaked within 2 days if I need and my nephew back home will do the initial testing work via auction listings if I send him an email and a paypal email with an incentive attached to it! If it works I can then pass the details on to my virtual assistant in India, who has run several marketing campaigns for me and will get straight onto the boring tasks such as signing up to get free hits on banner exchanges etc. My life is relaxed and happy because I have discovered the key to making a success of the Internet as my business. By reading this ebook and using the micro business and automation strategy I have developed, you too can exit the rat race and get your life back. Adrian Stefano Barcelona, March 12th 2008.
To Succeed you have to BELIEVE.
I want you to go and get yourself some paper and a pen. Go on, right now, it is important that you do this right now! Now draw a picture of our life as it is now. Draw your current reality. It does not matter if you are no good at drawing, you know what you are drawing and it is only for your own benefit that we are doing this exercise. Ok, finished? How does it look? I reckon there is a lot you would like to change and a lot of things. So lets no draw a second picture. This one is your life in ten years time, once you have successfully implemented what I am telling you and reaped the benefits of a large income and no Just Over Broke to pin you down. I bet the second picture is a lot more pleasing right? Probably a bigger house, better car, smiling family around you, sun shining, perhaps boats and planes, beaches and money. Am I close?
“Without goals, a nd plans to reach them, you a re like a ship th at h as set sail with no destination...”
So you have now have a strong visual idea of what you would like your life to look like in the future. The second big thing I need you to consider right now is this: How much money do you need to make each month to make your visualization into a reality? Is it $1000 a month, $5000, $10000? It is vital that you know right now what your goals will cost to realize. Why? Because getting your life back is not just about getting as much money as you possibly can. There are people out there earning millions who are still not in control of their lives. If you decide that your ideal lifestyle will cost you $3000 a month then aim to earn that cash, not to dream of earning millions and then feeling like you have failed when you are only earning $6000 a month! The key to getting your life back is just that, it is about setting up work systems that allow you to generate enough income to do what you want, when you want. It is not about having a huge bank account stuffed to the rafters, while you still work 50 hours a week running your online empire. Quality of life and choice are just as important as a huge bank balance, so remember that as it is one of the golden rules in getting your life back.
“ANY ROAD WILL DO IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING....”
So what options do I have for making cash?
Well the options are limited only by your desire to succeed. You can sell items via dropshipping, wholesale purchases or referral links to other sites. You can buy or write ebooks or sell software via referral links. The list really does go on and on. Diversify your portfolio of products and services as you develop. Never rely on one income stream alone and never continue to add to it if it is not developing. Do not forget ebay either, or the fact that there are now other viable auction site alternatives out there that are far cheaper than ebay. Also remember that there are alternatives to Paypal out there. Many new auction sites and payment solutions offer you cash for referrals so you can make cash simply by offering a range of easy payment solutions. Offering global payment solutions is key to making global sales, never, ever offer just one payment solution. I have micro businesses based around many things. Server space is cheap nowadays so for example I paid $50 three years ago for a storage/download webscript (php driven). I paid $200 for a few custom tweaks and $150 for a 'skin' (a web template). That site now has 6700 members and generates $420 per month, all built through using free banner exchanges. Not much, but its free money, apart from $25 webhosting a month. I do not need to intervene ever, people join, upload items and then they sell them online. People buy them and download them securely using a generated secure link. I get paid – that is all I do!
I also have five niche auction sites (like ebay). They each reach out to a certain market/niche and have a few thousand members on each. Each one generates about $150 profit per month, so its small profit for one, but IT ALL ADDS UP. After costs I net about $250 a month on those five sites alone. But auction sites must require a lot of email support? Well yes, but I have comprehensive FAQ's and interactive tutorials tailored for each, a programmer who updates the bugs once a month and I pay a friends wife $25 a week to spend an hour a day answering emails or forwarding tough ones on to me. Auction sites were tough when I set them up as there were no real ebay alternatives, but ebay is now distancing itself from its founding members and so there is definitely space in that market. Investigate some of the better webscripts out there, or even better visit the auction site directories, find a good looking site that looks like it has had money spent on it but has few members and put in a cheeky offer to buy it! The key point is in the main to look for online options that are not driven by visitor volumes. It is really hard work to get volume visitors to a social networking site for example. So do you invest your life in trying to market it or do you go for a download site which means the seller is driving people to the site to download and process payments? Mix and match as the opportunities arise but always remember automation and your eventual exit strategy. If it is a really complicated site then how can you automate and outsource it? It is this strategy of minimising risks and maximising returns that has made my money for me in a safe manner, and that is what we are going to discuss next.
Minimize Your Risks, Maximize Your Returns.
One of the main golden rules is to always spread your risk as much as you can. Another way of putting it is, do not put all your eggs into one basket. I am not in the business of throwing cash at something in the hope or belief it will work, nor do I fall into the trap of thinking things are going well because it is exciting splashing the cash. If you spend six months setting up a webstore selling 4000 items and it fails, you have wasted six months on one big and expensive project – what is in reserve? Better to spend that six months launching 20 websites each selling one item or a handful of closely associated items. That way you can really focus your attention on who to market the site to and you can set up sites quickly using a similar template and then move onto testing the next products viability while launching the previous one. Spreading your risk further by splitting up your sale items is a sound strategy. It is far easier to test one items selling potential and then launch and market one specific item. It is also easier to leave sites to tick over while focusing on a site where an item is selling well. Think of it as owning your own high street rather than a single store! If one store is not doing great, move your resources to one that is doing well. It is an old military strategy: always reinforce success, never reinforce failure. By selling a single item on a website you can also really build up the impression that your product is unique and worth having. Tell your
potential customers that you believe in the quality of the product/item so much that it is all you sell. Tell them that it is such a fantastic premium item that it the only item you need to sell as it sells itself on its quality. This is especially true for dropshipping. It is very labor intensive to set up a webstore or auction site listings for a hundred items. You will end up not really selling the quality, cutting corners on your service, marketing and sales pitch. So if dropshipping set up a site for one quality item once tested for sales potential and sing its features from every single page of the site! So for selling physical items the MRMR strategy is important, but it is more important to remember it within your overall strategy. Spread your risk by branching into different types of market, service and country where possible. If you develop 10 websites, do not develop ten retail sites for product selling. Develop a few for retailing and also focus on offering sites that provide a service or home to people. Diversify and develop always. The MRMR strategy is vital to your success. Facebook has already been invented. The great ideas are snapped up and backed by mulinationals nowadays. You cannot enter into a competition with these guys. Your great idea is the same as a dozen other people are having right at this minute, so don not spend your time chasing the big bucks dream of global success. Do not dream of owning the new Amazon or Ebay – it simply is not going to happen. MRMR is the new concept of being big by thinking small.
What Are The Risks?
The obvious risk is that you are not going to make any money! Lets make sure we kill that one off right here and now so you do not get all depressed on me. Anyone can make money online if they have the will to succeed and spread their risk. Chasing one site or one market in isolation is suicide in this fast moving Internet-driven world. Whatever you invest six months doing, someone else is also doing it and will be doing it bigger and better. Launch things quickly and aggressively then move on to the next project. You will initially be spinning a lot of plates and a few may break but its the whole point of the strategy - 20 plates spinning with a few broken has more chance of success than keeping one plate spinning forever. As I said you need to know what your goals are, what your lifestyle looks like now and what you want it to look like and to continually strive to achieve it. I am not going to kid you. Initially it is going to be hard work. Continually test-selling items on auction sites for example and then creating a website for each one is not easy and then marketing the site takes more time and resource. It will get easier though. As your product portfolio grows you will be able to focus on the products/sites that are doing well. You will also be able to adopt things that worked previously and copy resources from one project to another. Remember that it is far easier to drop one item and website from a portfolio of 30 than it is to fail on a single site selling lots of items, simply because there is no margin for marketing diversity – all your eggs are in one basket, one market. You will however gain a deep
understanding of each product, be safe in the knowledge you are spreading your risk and can also dump the odd micro-business if it is simply dead. It is much easier to road test a single product prior to launch rather than trying to test a hundred items sale potential. If you want to sell thousands of items, how do you know the ranges you want to sell are profit making? I do not just mean that they will tick over and earn you a little bit each month, I mean make real hard cash? Another risk that many people do not consider is the current international exchange rates. Say for example you have a site that takes moast of its payments via paypal in US Dollars, but you live in Great Britain. To extract money from a paypal account to your bank account involves converting the currency into your local one ready to transfer. Paypal are very clever because on top of their fees they use their OWN exchange rate! This is lower than that days interbank rate which means they cunningly claw back money from you. This means that if your currency is weak against the currency you are converting from then you could lose out. Keep an eye on the markets and only convert and withdraw cash from paypal when you know you can minimize your loss in the conversion process.
So Give Me An Example!
Pick a single item that you can see from a reputable dropshipper that is well priced, readily available and of good quality. Buy one item and take a few clear, quality photo's of the item. Then try selling that item via an auction listing. Make the listing fully descriptive, visually appealing and most importantly sell the quality – they MUST own one of these items! They will NEVER find better quality. Once you have seen how well the item did (how quick did it sell, how many watchers or bids did it have, how many questions?) now is the time to try a larger scale test. List 5 items on at least three large market place sites such as Ebay and Amazon. Back the listings up with a small google Adwords campaign if you wish. If you sell 3 out of the 5 on each site within a week then the item is pitched correctly. Next set up your website, with its own domain pointing to it. There are hundreds of website templates out there, just do a search for free web templates on google and download the ones you like, you can then open them in an editor and add your own text and logo. Spend some time adding images to your site. Make sure they are a consistent quality, size and look. A picture can say a thousand words. It is the words that will clinch your sales. The sales text and support test are the most vital areas. Tell your potential customer how good the item is, that it is very good quality and that it is the only item you sell. Make it look as though it is YOUR item, nurtured from concept to manufacture to selling. Stake your reputation that it will be the best quality and most reliable item of this type they have owned.
Make sure your FAQ text is comprehensive - your test auctions should have thrown up any obvious questions from potential buyers. Make sure you use a professional help text with a fair and full returns policy etc. Give the people looking at your site every reassurance you can about buying the item. If possible make sure there is a real address on the site (a PO box will do) and a phone number (use a low cost virtual P.A. Service to add this element of professionalism). Put a 100% mark-up on the dropship price and sell your item as a quality item at a premium price. Using original images of the product will ensure that people do not associate it with the other people selling the dropship line elsewhere using the standard image supplied by the dropshipper. When you go on ebay for example and do an item search have you noticed how many identical item images you will find. That is because people are lazy and use the stock image, so set your item apart with original images. Give your auctions and website an authentic look to reinforce your price and stated belief in the product. Now promote your item like crazy!
Productive V's Active...
Never lose sight of how you are spending your valuable time. It is so easy to drift into the modern habit, maybe even a social disease, of getting obsessed with surfing the net. You can have fun surfing google for 4 hours researching widgets, but is it a valuable use of your time and do you have any real intention of selling widgets? Do not invent tasks to make it feel like a real business until it is! By this I mean, do not spend time keeping spreadsheets of income, expenditure, website stats etc until you really, really need to. It is to easy to feel important and successful because you can tell people your business has increased its turnover by 40% in a week. 40% of 1 is not worth wasting time over. Focus on researching, launching and marketing. Keep a simple diary and write down important figures as they happen. That will do until you actually make some real cash. Ask yourself this fundamental question every morning: “If I had 2 hours today of work, what would I do?” Focus your mind on the tasks that make you money, not on the tasks that make you feel good about what you are doing. This is a crucial element in ensuring that you are developing the MRMR strategy to maximum effect by constantly developing new micro business possibilities.
So how do I market my microbusiness empire?
When you begin researching your chosen potential markets you must begin vacuuming up details to help you market yourself later. Bookmark the links to relevant forums, e-groups, banner exchanges, industry directories and any other sites you can find. Always think as a marketing person, recognize each potential advertising opportunity. Consider free banner exchanges. Rubbish you say! Well no, actually they can be very valuable for your initial 'hit' of advertising. Joining one, yep, useless. Joining 50 banner exchanges, not so useless. Especially if your item is of general interest. Banner exchanges usually offer a signing-up bonus of free banner views. By joining general or niche banner exchanges, using multiple new accounts if neccessary, you can give yourself literally MILLIONS of free banner views! As your micro-businesses develop you can look to invest in adwords on sites such as Google and Overture. It is the same principle with these as with everything else in the MRMR strategy, start small, rapidly develop and exit. Do not throw cash at adwords it is suicide. Only use them for your most successful sites, not the ones that are struggling. Use VERY tight keywords. This is not about traffic but converting sales. It is better to have 50 visitors and ten sales than 1000 visitors and 2 sales.
Another marketing source is facebook and myspace. These sites can be hit with their own ad programs and myspace also allow google ads to be displayed. There are millions of people on these sites and you can drive them to your profile or an external site using tight keyword marketing. --------------------------------------------------------------LEARN ABOUT THE SHOCKING NEW LINK BUILDING METHOD THAT WILL SEND YOUR WESITE INTO SEARCH ENGINE ORBIT!
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Fair enough but how does it run without me intervening?
Automate. Automate. Automate. From minute one think about automation. Use software to send a continual flow of pre-written informational snippets via automatically timed email shots. Make your payment process seamless. Make your FAQ's comprehensive. Use a virtual PA to take your calls and pass on the details for you to deal with at your convenience. If it is a digital item even better, as you can automate delivery after payment. But how do I automate EVERYTHING? Well, you can even get rid of your email answering and the need to key orders manually by outsourcing. For example, everyone knows someone who is a mother, who sits around at home bored each day and who would love some cash in hand for an hours work a day. Pay her to answer your emails, only forwarding on ones that cannot be answered easily. Get her to key your dropship orders each day. She can even do your accounts if you do not want to, or download back-ups of your databases.
Hey that is sexist surely?! Not at all and she is not the only cheap option. Do you have a nephew at school or college who would like a great way to earn some cash? Again, they can answer simple email questions, forward you the difficult ones and key on dropship orders. IT SURE BEATS THROWING NEWSPAPERS AT DOORS EARLY IN THE MORNING! Another great trick is to set-up sequential autoresponders. When a person visits your site, offer them something free for joining a mailing list. You can then hit them with automatic marketing messages set-up in advance, with no effort on your part at all. They really do work and no site should ever not have a newsletter and sequential autoresponder system set-up, they allow you to keep touching potential customers for literally months without you ever getting involved. Most people can be reliable if not overloaded. Use a combination of outsourcing and automation to allow you to relentlessly maintain your exit strategy. It works.
“When all is said and done, much more is said than done....”
You can read a million books, watch a million tutorials and spend your whole life reading forums. Everyone likes to dream and to talk big and some people fall for their own hype. For you it is time for action. Time to move, time to make decisions. Research your chosen market, find the product you think will fit into that market and jump in. Take a deep breath, you are going to need a lot of air! I KNOW that you are reading this in the hope that I will make your decisions for you, take the risk away for you and basically place the cash in your hands. Think again. Nobody can do that, no matter what they claim.
“Too m a ny people a re thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afr aid of life th an death....”
Make sure you have your exit strategy in your mind from the beginning and recognize when to implement a piece of that strategy. Make sure you never lose site of the fact that your goal is lifestyle, not to spend your life working but for more money! By spreading your risks using the MRMR micro-business model you are giving yourself the chance to be big while acting small. Being small can make you big, while thinking big and trying to compete with the Internet establishment is always doomed to failure. Think of yourself as a parasite on a dog! You get well fed, carried around and have no hassles while the dog makes all the effort in leading the way to your destination. You are nurturing a large family of virtual tenants, each earning you an income without intervention. You are creating a virtual empire that will eventually eradicate your need to intervene in its existence. It really is a simple concept that most web-savvy entrepreneurs forget. Focusing on one idea that may struggle is not the way forward in these times. As an example of the behavior you will need to adopt to succeed, I will tell you a story..... A few years ago I was in London and I managed to get a free invitation to see one of the top UK motivational speakers. He spent an hour basically telling people that dreaming of success is pointless, you have to actually get off your fat lazy ass and do something if you want to get anywhere. After this hour of constantly reinforcing his message he held up a note in his hand, I believe it was a £10 note. He simply said to the room “who would like this money?” NOBODY MOVED. Eventually one guy near the back of the room realized the point that was being made and started to walk towards the front. Suddenly several people were up and moving and the pace towards the stage quickened.
Then from nowhere a lady jumped up and sprinted down the aisle and up the steps and grabbed the money from his hand triumphantly. The others who had started moving more slowly began to move back towards their seats looking slightly embarrassed. The point is obvious. You have to act to get what you want and you have to move more quickly than others who also want to get to the same place! If you have an idea, move right now.
“You cannot aim a duck to death...”
Be Positive, Regardless.
You may realize this or you may not. It is essential that you do recognize this fact and act on it. This is possibly the most vital piece of information you will need to help you prevail.
AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE.
Negative people can suck the lifeforce out of you! They are called emotional vampires because they will drag your optimism from you and leave you feeling defeated. Think about your parents for example. Did they tell you to work hard at school, get a safe job, buy into property as soon as possible and marry? It is not that they did not want the best for you, but they might have helped you mores if they had spoken more about shooting for your goals, living for the moment and never giving up. So much of what our parents tell us is good for us revolves around living for tomorrow. As you will know, tomorrow never comes! Get a huge mortgage to pay off for your whole life, put money into a pension, get job with 'prospects' the list goes on.
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty....”
In their good intentions they have unwittingly reinforced a negative message that most people take onboard. They then spend the rest of their lives saving for a day that never comes, surrounding themselves with debt and wishing something would make them feel more secure. You will recognize other emotional vampires as you chase your dreams. Stick a stake in their heart immediately! Surround yourself only with positive, successful people and those who think way above a house and car as success. I hope my words have struck a chord with you and opened your mind to new ideas. I am living the way I want using the methods I have briefly described in this text. It can be done and you can get your life back if you adopt the correct mindset.
See you on the beach.
Copyright Adrian Stefano This ebook has been licensed exclusively to http://www.24hourlinks.com
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