Starting a Business?

Many people learn the hard way what works and what doesn’t.  Here’s some great advice that will help us avoid common mistakes made when starting a business.

“Growing up I was surrounded by entrepreneurs. All of my uncles on my mom’s side of the family ran successful businesses, and I learned that working for yourself was a great way to improve your lifestyle.

No surprise then that I now own a few businesses of my own. But I made lots of mistakes getting started, mistakes I could’ve avoided if I’d known a few things.”

Neil Patel

Neil believes these 17 mistakes are most important to avoid:

Starting a business – tips from a pro …

1)     Sell something legal.

This one seems obvious but many of us consider legal and illegal sources of income.  Stick with things that are legal.  It would be a real drag to lose all you made because you got busted for selling something illegal.

2)     Sell something people can afford.

High ticket sales items are harder to sell.  Try to find an in between where you make good profits selling more of a product that is affordable to everyone.

3)     Marketing your product is essential to succeed.

You should learn the basics of Internet Marketing if you want to own an online business.  Even if you are going to outsource the marketing of your product, you should know what they are going to work on and understand how their work will make a guaranteed impact.  It’s best if you figure out your marketing strategy, and then outsource specific parts of it to real experts. Don’t get sucked in by a marketer that knows very little about how to market your product successfully. 

4)     Make payments easy.

If you want to make money then you need to make it simple for people to pay you. If it is not simple to make a payment you could lose customers frustrated about not being able to pay.

5)     Solve problems that customers are facing.

The best businesses are the ones who solve problems.  If we investigate a product and find that customers are having common problems then we can create something that solves that problem or redesign a product with solving all the problems in mind. 

6)     Keep things simple.

People want their problems solved in simple ways.  Take a look at a successful product like a bicycle.  It solves the problem of getting from point A to point B. It’s much faster than walking and much cheaper than a cab.  It’s simple! Nearly everyone knows how to ride a bike and wishes they had one at some point in time.  If our solution to a problem is to complex, hard to explain, or hard to use some people will lose interest before they find a need for it.

7)     Be patient.

It may take a few years for your company or product to take off.  Be patient!  Many people do not see their companies thrive, nor do they earn any profits for their first couple of years in business.  Be willing to keep working despite not making the money you had hoped for.  It could mean the difference between success and failure.

8)     Charge more.

Many people try to run their business with very low fees.  They believe this will bring them a larger audience.  What is more likely is that they will have more complaints about their service because there isn’t as much money put into providing a good service.  Charge a little bit more, you will hear fewer complaints, and can provide better customer service.  Look into what your competition is charging and price your product or service right. It may come as a surprise that people are willing to pay as much as they do.

9)     Go after the big guys.

You may choose to do some work free of charge for a client that you know can introduce you to bigger clients.  Keep in mind the value of experience, and go after the highest paying clients you can find.  Opening doors by working for smaller clients is one way to gain experience and land a job with a bigger company. Think big, but know that every little step counts …

10)  Conserve cash.

If we don’t have cash coming in our business won’t survive.  If we do have cash coming in in large amounts we need to learn to save it for the business and for ourselves.  Resist the urge to spend all of the cash coming in.  There may come a point where things slow down and we will have to rely on money we have saved or invested to stay afloat.

11)  Never stop closing.

Always be looking for clients and ways they can work with you.  Even when you have a handful of clients and are making substantial profits you should always be looking to expand.  You will lose clients over the years and making sure you have new clients coming in will help you combat that issue.

12)  Focus.

Most of us are all over the place when we first start a business.  We spread ourselves too thin.  It is important to listen close to what customers are saying.  We need to focus on creating value and playing on the desires of our customers.  Find things in our business that ARE making us money and focus on those.  Drop the things that are not making us money so that we can funnel our time and resources into making profits.

13)  Always find our passion.

If you don’t love what you are doing it’s more likely you will be dissatisfied with life. F ind the things you know and love and brainstorm on how those things can help your business and earn you a profit.  When you are passionate about what you do even long hours are fun.

14)  Always keep learning.

A successful entrepreneur never stops learning.  It can be hard work to learn new things especially if you don’t enjoy doing them.  Keep in mind that you can learn from anyone regardless of who they are.  Value your relationships and recognize them as learning experiences.

15)  Good help costs money.

Spend time looking for good help that truly work hard and are not just in it for the money.  Don’t be afraid to pay good money for good help.  Think of this as an investment.  Keep track of the people who work for you and monitor their performance.  Generally an enthusiastic worker will perform better and their work will be more valuable.

16)  Emotions rule.

Everyone makes decisions based on emotion.  Some do this far less than others but each and everyone one of us is guilty of this.  Figure out the emotions that your customers are feeling and figure out how you can play on your customers emotions.

17)  Listen to friends and family.

Sometimes our families will be completely against our entrepreneurial efforts.  Starting a successful business becomes our life.  We should at least hear them out.  They may be the reason why we give up on a business that will never make us profitable.  On the other side of the coin family can be very supportive and help spread our business.  Don’t simply dismiss what our family and friends are telling us.  It could save some time and money.

It should be our desire to save time, earn more money, and provide an excellent product or service.  With these 17 tips on Starting a business we can save ourselves time and earn more money.

Starting a business source

Thinking of starting a business? Let me know in the comments below. What is your biggest concern?

How to Be an Expert …

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts in becoming an expert. It is not like the movie The Matrix.  We cannot download a kung-fu program into our brains, and all of the sudden be a kung-fu master.

Mastering anything takes time, effort, and practice. While there are no shortcuts to mastery, usually the path to gaining any type of expertise is relatively straightforward. You simply need to be willing to walk the path.

If that is true then why is the world crowded with so many people who desire to accomplish something great, yet never even come close to their dreams?

Why is the world so crowded with wannabes, and so deficient in true experts?

Is the path simply too hard? Or is there something more basic going on?  Maybe it is because we are inherently lazy? Maybe it is because too many people are looking for shortcuts, while the true disciples of mastery are walking the path one step at a time.

Leo Babauta, who runs the blog called Zen Habits, recently had Corbett Barr of Expert Enough as a guest poster on his blog. Corbett found that although there are no shortcuts to becoming an expert, there are some principles you can follow to help you stay on track. These five principles act like guideposts on the road to mastery.

“Part of me expected to find some secret shortcuts to becoming an expert, and part of me knew better. I’m most interested in how people gain expert-level skills and knowledge on multiple subjects quickly. Being a renaissance man has always appealed to me, as has getting very good at just a couple of things. Both types of expertise are as fascinating as they are useful.

Despite wanting to believe secrets and shortcuts to expertise exist, deep down I think I’ve always known what you probably know too: becoming an expert takes hard work, focus and dedication.

The fact that secrets don’t exist is a good thing in my book, because we can stop wasting time searching for secrets and start making direct progress towards our goals. Instead of looking for secrets, rely simply on these best practices for becoming an expert… “

Corbett Barr

So, whether you are trying to become a modern day renaissance man or just gain mastery in a few disciplines, then meditating on these principles can lead you onward towards becoming an expert.

How to be an expert – refined …

 1.    A Redefinition:

Remember that the term expert is a relative term. There is no such thing as someone who knows everything. Even Albert Einstein spent the last weeks of his life struggling to push the boundaries of his knowledge.

You may already be an expert in certain things. You might not be the person who knows the most, but you may have already achieved some level of learning that qualifies you as an expert to some people.

This helps too because it sets easier benchmarks for you to accomplish. Maybe you do not need to be the best marketer of all time. Maybe you are already in a good place to begin to teach others. Maybe becoming an expert is closer than you originally thought.

2. Become a Student:  

Becoming an expert takes a great deal of learning. You need to become a good student. Reading a lot of great books on your subject helps a lot. You are also going to want to read the blogs that are out there on the subject you are trying to master. This will keep you current on what people who have already become experts are talking about. It will teach you to think the way they think.

Also, one of the missing ingredients to being a great student is experience. This is where many colleges fail their students. They give them tons of book smarts, but no real world experience. You need to put what you are learning into practice, keeping in mind that you do not truly know a thing, until you have experienced it.

 3.    Keep Your Focus:

Keeping your focus can be one of the hardest things to do. This is what separates a true beginner from becoming a master—focus. You need to stay focused on what you are doing now, and not get sidetracked by the bigger picture. Corbett borrows Leo’s four-step process for changing a habit, and adopts it to help you keep your focus:

1. Start very small.
2. Do only one change at a time.

3. Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).

4. Be grateful for every step you take.

 4.    Ask For Help:

Help comes in the form of mentors, supportive family, and friends. Not everyone can have the luxury of being mentored by someone who is already a world-renowned expert. However, everyone can form a great support group to draw strength from.

5.    Don’t Be Afraid of Mistakes:

Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Fear of looking unintelligent keeps most people from even starting their dreams. Do not allow yourself to fall into this trap. Give yourself permission to make as many mistakes as you need to. It is necessary in the pursuit of excellence.

Anyone, who has ever reached a level of being an expert will tell you that their road was littered with many mistakes. Do not let any amount of mistakes stop you, because mistakes are an opportunity to learn.  We can redirect our efforts based on the lessons taught through our mistakes and the mistakes of others.

So what did you think of this “how to be an expert” blog post? Let me know in the comments below!

How to be an expert source

Information Entrepreneurs …

Adventure is the number one reason people quit their 9-5 jobs to become entrepreneurs.

You sail away from all the rules and restrictions on you, to make your own schedule and to do everything on your own without having to work for anyone. 

You imagine sailing for what you hope is a short time and landing someplace where the treasure is plentiful. To work smarter, not harder and longer.  To be paid for the time you put in and the time your crew puts in for years to come.

As pirates you are the captain and your workers are your crew. It`s a wonderful feeling to find your first mates and to watch your crew grow.

To go from working for someone else to having many people working for you and generating profits on other people`s time. Using other peoples time as a resource is an early step of being an entrepreneur.  We should establish or decide what our time is worth and outsource jobs that do not pay us at least our wage. 

If we want ultimate freedom we should always be working on our companies, not in them.  After all we are trying to get away from the strenuous 40 hour work week.

Like pirates, you sail around the internet looking for adventure lovers and ideas for a product or service you can create or provide for money.

Pirates would steal things that would be worth a lot to trade, or sell with the assurance that they would always have a source of income once they landed.

In similar ways entrepreneurs scan the internet using applications and web tools that allow them to visualize the market for a particular type of product or service. Once they find something with a lot of demand they create or offer their own similar product or service and introduce it to the market.

“When I talk to non-entrepreneurs about the start-up world I often use a pirate analogy. Not because I know that much about pirates, but the general stereotypes work well as an analogy.

Why did some people way back in the 17th century, or whenever, become pirates? The likely payoff was abysmal, I imagine. There’s a very small chance you’d make a fortune from some prize, and a very large chance you’d drown, or be hung, or shot, or whatever. And living on a small ship with a hundred other guys must have sucked, even for the captain.

But in my fantasy pirate world these guys just had really screwed up risk aversion algorithms. Unlike most of the other people they actually lusted after that risk. The potential for riches was just an argument for the venture. But the real payoff was the pirate life itself.

Also, it was nearly impossible to be an entrepreneur back then.”

MICHAEL ARRINGTON

Like Michael said there is risk in starting up your own company. 

Entrepreneurs take risk – so what?

Don`t be discouraged though there is risk in nearly anything we do and from taking risk comes adventure, and hopefully great rewards.  But like in Blackjack, the dealer may take what we have gambled.

This may leave us to refocus our efforts or abandon ship.  There is always chance you may be left with what you started with or less.

Finding unclaimed riches and leading a crew of people that generate a fortune for us, is a dream I can`t imagine anybody would deny having. 

So before you head of to work for someone else for another day, think about how you could be sailing the open sea in command of a workforce and generating an income that simply isn`t offered when working for someone else. 

If this sounds appealing to you, I recently wrote a blog post on one way to do this.

Entrepreneurs source

Argentina Mate Giveaway …

If you’ve been following my blog then you know that every few weeks I give a prize away to my blog readers from wherever I happen to be.

I’m in Argentina right now. I figured it would be fitting to give out a prize from here. Something local.

This prize giveaway consists of some Traditional hand crafted Argentinean goods.

Here in Argentina almost everyone drinks Yerba Mate.

It’s tea. The Argentineans drink it several times a day. You’ll see people walking in the street carrying their Mate Kit.

It’s a little bag which has their Thermos of hot water, the Jerba – which is the special cup they drink the tea out of. The bombija, which is the straw that you put in the mate. And then of course they have some sort of cracker or cookie to go along with it.

Alfajores are these yummy cookies they have here in Argentina.

Anyway I thought that it would be fitting to give away one of these Argentina Mate Kits for this prize giveaway.

The Argentina Mate Kit Includes:

• Yerba (the tea)
• Mate (the gourd you put the tea in)
• Bombija (the straw you put in the matte)
• Matte Kit Carrying Bag
• Alfajores (delicious Argentinian cookies)
• Some other Argentian cookies
• Argentian crackers

I’ve randomly chosen a winner from the blog comments and Facebook comments.

The winner is: Roger Coleman

Roger, I’ve sent you an email. Please reply with your address and I’ll send this off to you right away.

Thanks everybody for reading the blog and leaving your comments and questions.

The next prize giveaway will be from Chile. We’re going there to surf in the next few days. We’ll be there a few weeks depending on the waves.

Also I hope to post a cool video of our Argentina trip soon. I’ve been waiting to get some kitesurfing footage to put in the video, but even though I have been kiteboarding a lot, I haven’t been able to get any video of it yet. I’m hoping to get some video in the next few days and then I can complete the video and post it.

What do you think of the Argentina Mate giveaway? Leave a comment and you may win the next prize!

How to Get Things Done – 7 Ingenious Ways to Accomplish A Goal

Ciara Conlon posted on Lifehack.org an inspirational post on how to gain focus and push ourselves to accomplish our daily tasks and goals.  She outlines “7 Wise Ways” to do just that:

“It has to be one of mankind’s greatest challenges; staying focused in the fast paced, technology driven world we are living in. Information overload, a common phenomenon, work overload another. But staying focused is perhaps the best way for us to get things done and move forward with our lives and our jobs. So how do we keep our eye on the ball when it’s accustomed to bouncing around from court to court?”

Ciara Conlon

Ciara is a getting things done (GTD) fanatic. She is obsessed with accomplishing what she sets out to do and feeling as if she has done a lot each day. Here are the seven ways she says we can stay focused on each task:

How to get things done …

1)    Focus on one thing

Conlon quotes Confucius, “He who chases two rabbits, catches none.”  This idea is simple to understand.  Our brains only work at one thing a time despite the multi-tasking claim.  If you have numerous things to do you should focus on one thing at a time.  Don’t hop around task to task or you’ll lose your rhythm.

2)    Eliminate Known Distractions

Get rid of anything that will distract you.  Phone, Internet, TV, Music could be examples of this.  Don’t do anything that decreases your productivity, and keeps you from concentrating on your task.

3)    Calm The Mind

You may consider starting your day with breathing exercises or meditation.  You begin with a calm mind and you are ready to face challenges in a professional and productive way.  If your mind is not calm it’s easy to get upset about a really busy day.  If your mind is calm, you will breeze through the tasks without the dread.

4)    De-clutter

De-clutter each day or at least once a week.  Do a quick pick-up and get rid of the clutter in your environment.  If you let things build up it becomes a real chore.  If you do a little cleaning each day it will create a better environment for work, rest, and relaxation.

5)    Exercise

When you exercise, your body produces neurotransmitters in your brain that cause you to feel energized. For some people (like me for example :-) it is a high they chase daily.  Serotonin and endorphin levels increase almost immediately with exercise.  Those are just two of the chemicals that are known to elevate your mood, and make you feel good. If you feel good, work and your daily activities become easier.

6)    Clarification of Goals

Ensure that what you are working on is in line with your objectives. For each goal you have there is an objective.  Be sure you keep that in mind as it is your reward for working towards your goals.  Focusing on your objectives, you will work on things that will help you reach your goals.

7)    Simplify

Work at the most important things first.  This will give you more progress early. After you have met many important objectives you can work on the smaller details.  Simplifying, involves prioritizing, and system analysis.  If there is an easier way to do things you need to find it.

These seven steps are guidelines on how to approach your productivity limits.  Do you know how to get things done? Please leave comments about additional approaches on how to elevate our productivity.

How To Get Things Done Source

How to Make Money Online. This is Part 2 of the Live Case Study.

Please read the How To Make Money Online Case Study Part 1 Overview if you haven’t already.

In this blog post we’re going to get into the Nuts and Bolts of how Mitch can create his Online Business. He’s going to create an Information Product.

Mitch is going to create an Information Product about Fitness Training. This will allow people to improve at their sports and to become better athletes.

Here are the basic components Mitch (and you) will need for an online business:

1. Product or Service

A) Decide on type of Product to create
B) Decide on Name and URL
C) Create Logo and Graphics
D) Create Your Product

2. Order Page / Payment Processing

3. Sales Page

4. Email Autoresponder System for email lists

5. Email Opt-in Page (Squeeze Page)

6. Valuable/Helpful Freebie (Bribe) for squeeze page

7. Prospect Email Series

8. Customer Email Series

9. Traffic (visitors)

How to Make Money Online – the easy way …

Let’s build Mitch’s Online Business shall we?  You can follow along and do the same for yourself.

1A) Decide on type of Product to create

There are many different products or services that you can create and sell online. I recommend you start by creating an Information Product. These are easy to create and distribute.  Possible Information Products include:

• Ebook
• Audio course (interviewing experts for example)
• Video course
• Coaching program
• Membership website
• Software

Mitch is going to create an Online video home-study course. He decided that instructional videos will be the best way to teach his fitness training methods.

He could create a physical DVD video product but has decided to go with an online video course so that he doesn’t have to worry about shipping a physical product.

It’s actually pretty easy to use a fulfillment house to ship your DVD for you. But Mitch wants to keep it as simple as possible. He’s decided to create a digital product. No DVDs, just online access to the video home study course.

1B) Decide on Name and URL

When coming up with the name of your product you should try to include a big benefit in the name.

If you can include your main keyword in the name, that helps too.

For Mitch’s information product name and URL he came up with:

Go Pro Fitness Training

GoproFitnessTraining.com

He chose this name because it has the keywords “fitness training” in the name and URL, and because the words “go pro” convey the benefit, the idea that by doing this fitness training you can become as good as a professional athlete at your sport.

He then registered the URL online. You can register your URL with any online registrar.

I recommend namecheap.com for registering your URLs.

1C) Logo and Graphics

There are many ways to create your logo and graphics for your product. You can hire a graphic artist online at websites like: rentacoder.com, elance.com, freelancer.com, etc.

Or you can post a contest on 99designs.com

Mitch posted a contest for the logo design on 99designs.com

He received 44 entries.

The way it works on 99designs.com is that you post a description of your project and then graphic artists submit their mockups and they compete against each other.

You give them feedback on their mockups and they come back with new ones. Then you decide on the winner.

Then you pay for the winning design and they send you the files.

Mitch went back and forth with the different designers and decided on this logo:

Next Mitch created a simple header graphic for his product.

1D) Create Your Product

Mitch is going to create a video homestudy course. Once people pay for the course they will receive access to the product online.

They will be able to watch the videos online and also download them to their computer to watch offline. The fitness instructional videos will be housed inside an online membership system which runs on a wordpress blog.

For this he is going to use: Wishlist membership system software.

This is an easy system to install and run on your webserver.

For his web hosting he is using Hostgator.

He purchased the Wishlist membership system software and had them install it for him on his Hostgator webhost under his URL goprofitnesstraining.com

The beauty of the Wishlist membership system is that it runs on top of the WordPress blogging platform.

This is perfect for Mitch’s needs because he can place his Fitness instructional videos inside of blog posts inside the membership system.

It’s easy to update and he can do it all himself without needing a webmaster to help him.

When customers watch a video and have questions they can post their questions or comments under his video blog post, and he can answer them right there.

All of the other customers will be able to see the question and answer. This is a way of making the program interactive. Which is very beneficial to his customers.

Mitch is in the process of creating his Information Product.

He’s created the fitness training program product outline. It consists of a PDF manual, and the fitness training instructional videos.

He’s creating the videos and the manual and will post them inside his product area of his Online homestudy video course product.

This is what it looks like so far:

To finish the product Mitch still needs to finish the videos and post them.

Once the product is finished he will work on the rest of the steps, creating a sales page, order page, squeeze page, follow up email series, etc.

And once that is all done he’ll have to drive traffic (visitors) to his squeeze page and offer.

As Mitch progresses with the rest of the steps, I will post them here so you can follow along with his progress.

I hope you have found this case study helpful and that you can follow along and build your own information product business.

How to make money online? Please ask your questions and share your comments below.

How to make money online? Start here …

This blog post marks the start of a series of blog posts on how to make money online. More in particular, how to build an online business around your passions.

Please start by reading this blog post if you have not already:

http://chrisc.com/freedom

There are a million ways to make money online.

I used to recommend that people start with Affiliate Marketing. That’s what my Google Cash ebook was all about.

What I don’t like about this model is that you don’t build a customer list. In fact you work hard to build someone else’s customer base.

For this reason I now think that the best way to start making money online from scratch, is to create and sell an Information Product.

Selling your own product gives you much greater leverage. You build a list of customers and you are able to sell to them over and over.

You can also allow affiliates to promote your product for you. And you are able to promote affiliate offers to your customers on your backend.

Information products are great because they are relatively quick and easy to create. And they have a very high profit margin. The reason is because it costs very little or even nothing to reproduce your product. Take an ebook for example. It costs you the same to create one ebook as it does to create thousands of them. It’s a digital product.

How To Make Money Online? Requires hard work …

I have to be honest with you here. Making money online and building an online business is a lot of hard work. There is no way around that.

But there is a secret. And that is that if you build your online business around your passions, then the hard work hardly feels like work. Instead you are doing what you would like to be doing even if you did not have to work for money.

The main purpose of this blog, the whole reason I put it online is to help YOU achieve ultimate freedom and true wealth.

I’m going to teach you how to build an online business around your Passions, Skills and Strengths.

I believe the best way to teach and learn this stuff is through a real-life, live case study. 

So here we go with a real life case study.

Making an information product …

I have a friend Mitch Toelderer. He and his wife are professional snowboarders. He is also a doctor and his wife a Physical therapist.

Mitch is 36 years old and nearing the end of his snowboard career.

He’s spoken to me often about how he’s not sure of what to do for income after he finishes his snowboard career. He’s stated that he’s not interested in working as a doctor as the hours are ridiculous and he’d have no free time for snowboarding, surfing and spending time with his family.

I’ve been telling him that he should consider building an online business, an information product around one of his passions.

He finally took me up on my offer of helping him build his online business.

How to Make Money Online – Step By Step

We’re going to build it and I’ll share everything with you here, step buy step.

If you haven’t already, please first read this blog post I wrote, “How to achieve ultimate freedom and true wealth”. That will set the stage for this post.

Mitch started by following the steps in the blog post above.

He took an inventory of his Passions. They look something like this: Family, Snowboarding, Travel, Cinematography, Surfing, extreme sports in general, etc.

He figured out how much his dream lifestyle would cost him, and estimated that $5,000 a month would cover it.

He then did some general market research in the 3 main niches where most of the money is. (money and business, relationships, health and fitness).

His main passion is snowboarding. But he decided that it did not fit in so well with the 3 big niches, and it he wasn’t sure if there was a big enough opportunity there for an information product related to snowboarding.

So he kept on brainstorming his passions and interests.

He realized that fitness training was a big part of his life. In 2011 Mitch was the Freeride snowboarding world champion. He attributes his winning the tour to the specialized fitness training that he’d been doing.

After researching online Mitch decided that perhaps a good niche for him to create a product in is the Fitness niche.

It is a very competitive niche. But it is best to create a product in a niche where there is lots of competition. That means that people are making money in that niche.

Mitch’s thinking is that he can create an Information product around his fitness training to help athletes improve in their sport.

A fitness training specifically for athletes in sports like: snowboarding, skiing, surfing, climbing, mountain biking, tennis, soccer, etc.

A training that helps them get better at and  step it up in their sport.

Last year Mitch shared his fitness training system with me and I’ve been doing it religiously. It’s helped me to become a better surfer and skier. Before I could only surf for a couple of hours before I had to come in from being tired. Now I can surf for 4 to 6 hours without a break.

Same with skiing. Before doing the fitness training my legs would tire and often I would have to stop half way down the ski run to rest. Now after doing the fitness training I am able to ski from top to bottom without having to rest.

Many hobby athletes such as myself are looking to improve their performance in their sport. This is what Mitch’s product promises …

Mitch has decided on a niche and possible product to create.

In the next blog post we’ll get into the actual nitty gritty, nuts and bolts of creating  and marketing his Information Product.

How to make money online …

Please leave me any comments and questions you have below.

Skiing Austrian Powder …

Skiing Austrian Powder for the last eight days in a row has been epic! It’s been great to chase Mitch around the mountains!

I hope you enjoy the video above. It is a quick taste into skiing in Austria from my headcam.

Thanks to Mitch and Bibi for having me visit them! Mitch and Bibi are amazing human beings!

It’s so nice to see such a beautiful example of how to live life to the fullest. These two are an absolute inspiration!

Skiing Austrian Powder – a viable business model?

The main purpose of this blog is to help you build an online business around your passions.

So these “fun” little lifestyle videos I post are more of a diversion and really just for fun. I love doing this stuff so much, that’s why I post it here. Even though I know that you don’t really get anything out of it, except for maybe a little entertainment. And I guess that is important too.

However, to get back on track with the purpose of this blog, the next videos I post will be on how to build your online business around your passion, and not so much about me having fun.

I’m helping Mitch and Bibi build a Lifestyle Business around their passions. And I’m going to post case study videos here of how we do it.

One of their big passions is fitness training. So they’ve decided to create an information product around their fitness training methods.

I’ve actually been doing their fitness training the last few months. And thanks to it I was able to almost keep up with them in the mountains.

Hanging out with them and getting my ass kicked by them has motivated me to keep up on the fitness training. I really want to step up my skiing to the next level. I ski like a little girl compared to Mitch and Bibi. If my legs and core were stronger then I’d feel confident to go faster and and ski bolder lines.

So to step it up, today I’m starting another 6 week fitness training program they designed. I’ll post parts of the program here so you can join me in the training if you like.

I’m going back to Argentina in a couple days. My ski trip got cut a little short. So I won’t be able to help Mitch and Bibi create their information product business in person, but will do so virtually. That shouldn’t be a problem though.

I’ll post the video case studies here of how we setup their business, so that you can follow along and do the same.

Thanks for being here on the blog with me. What did you think of us skiing Austrian powder? Please share your comments below.

Freeride Snowboarding

In the video above, Mitch explains how he prepares to snowboard a big mountain line.

Mitch Toelderer is the Big Mountain Freeride Snowboarding World Champion 2011.

I’m super excited to be going to Austria to ski with Mitch.

I’m actually on the plane right now, on my way there.

Freeride Snowboarding in Austria …

Mitch has a little time before his 2012 Snowboarding Competition Season starts, and invited me to come visit him in Austria. I’ve been skiing and snowboarding for the last 15 years or so. And I really love skiing big mountain lines. Mitch is one of the world’s best big mountain riders.

Freeride Snowboarding World Champion 2012

Mitch also happens to be a fitness expert and attributes winning the 2012 world championship to his fitness training.

For the last couple of years I’ve been telling Mitch to create an information product around his fitness training methods. I know there are many extreme sports athletes out there who would like to step it up and get better at their sport. Mitch’s fitness training methods will help them do that. I’m going to help Mitch create an Information Product.

And I’m going to case study the entire process here on this blog.

My hope is that you can follow along and do the same for your self.

And while I’m skiing with Mitch I’m going to be picking his brain about big mountain riding.

Hopefully some of his big mountain riding skills will rub off on me. :-)

In return for his help, I am going to help him create an Information Product that he can sell online. Seems like a good trade, don’t you think?

To end this post, checkout some of Mitch’s amazing big mountain freeride snowboarding lines.

What do you think of freeride snowboarding? Is it something you would be interested in? Let me know in the comments below!

 Please watch the video for some quick updates.

A Case Study on how to build an online business around your passions is coming soon.

Another prize giveaway is also coming soon.

Stay tuned!

Successful Online Business …

There is a “secret” to starting a successful online business.  The secret is that success can be duplicated.  We can reverse engineer the methods used by other successful online businesses and use their systems in our company.  If a company is succeeding it is likely because they have developed, documented, and fine-tuned their business systems.

Okay so it’s not really a secret but many people don’t try to mimic other people’s success. Instead they wing it and develop a chaotic system for their business.  This is the worst mistake we can make in an online business.  If we take a look at people marketing online today we see that much of their marketing methods are highly automated and structured. 

“If your goal is to start a small online business that replaces and exceeds your current income this may be the most important article you read this year.

Brash, huh?

Here’s the deal: I’ve been working online full time for almost 10 years, since age 19. I’ve had a lot of failures and a lot of successes.

There is no better way to learn how to succeed than to learn from someone who has already done it.”

Karol Gajda

Tip #1 Concentrate on what’s Important

The most important thing is action. If we are just starting out don’t worry too much about the details.  Limit the amount of paperwork in your business; remember this is an online business.  Most paperwork should be electronic.  If someone wants to contact you all you need to do is direct them to our site or we can ask for their email address so we can follow up with them.

Start the business in your own name to avoid all the paper work involved in registering a corporation or business. Although we will eventually need to do this it is better to first concentrate on minimizing costs and paperwork.

Tip #2 Education is An Essential Investment

There is always someone who has done it before you.  Look for someone who has succeeded and now wants to share with others how they can succeed.  They may have a blog or information product that is very helpful. Don’t be afraid to part with a little bit of coin for education.  It doesn’t have to be traditional education it can be as simple as purchasing a product such as an e-book.

Concentrate on getting an education in marketing as that is by far the most important part of businesses.  There is often no need to distinguish online and offline marketing. Once we learn traditional marketing we can apply it with any business with minimal amount of adjustment.

Successful Online Business Owners Embrace Help …

Tip #3 Don’t Hesitate to Ask For Help

This is usually the most important part of being in business.  We need to be able to reach out and ask for help.  This may involve sending out unanswered phone calls or emails but don’t get discouraged if people simply ignore your messages.  Starting a business isn’t easy and if we can score some good help or advice from someone who has previous experience it is worth it to ask.

If we talk to enough people we will almost certainly get the help we need.  You may be surprised at how accessible people make themselves.

Remember we want to communicate clearly and effectively.   Many people follow a five sentence rule for their introduction emails.  They want to outline their questions and purpose of the email in less than five sentences.  Anything longer is more likely to be ignored.  Be sure people know what you are asking them.

Tip #4 Get Involved in Your Community

Regardless of which niche we enter there is always a community to interact with.  For example for E-bay users there are several E-bay forums.  It is here you can ask for help from people who are already involved in similar projects.  It’s a great place to ask for help and also give advice so that other people can taste the success you have.

Tip #5 Don’t Bet the Farm

It’s easy to find a bunch of stories about people who quit their day job and invested nearly all they had in their businesses.  Don’t be fooled, more people will likely have stories of failure to share when betting the farm. The difference is most people don’t write about their failures.

Don’t quit your job before it’s time.  You have to have an income to survive when our business is at first unprofitable.  Take the side of caution and work your new business into your schedule at first.  As you become successful you can better weigh the risks of quitting your day job and dedicating all your time to your business.

Successful Online Business Source

Do you have any successful online business tips? Leave them in the comments below!

Tow-In Surfing Action 

 I’ve been getting lots of emails from people asking if I could share more of my tow-in surfing and skiing and adventure videos.

This surprised me because my blog is here to help you. I was surprised to see that so many of you wanted to see more of my action videos.

My friend Mitch made this video above of our tow-in surfing session we had several weeks back.

It shows the tow-in experience and what it is like.

The day before the big swell, we are all nervous. We sit around the computer
looking at the swell charts, wondering what the monster swell is going to
look like.

The day of the “big day” we wake up at 4 am and prepare. Everyone
has their own little ritual to get ready.

I do yoga and eat a good breakfast and double check all of the equipment.

My friend Stan has his lucky white shorts that he always wears on the big
day.

In the dark as we prepare the jetski and get ready to launch from the beach,
we are all a little quiet, and nervous.

Once we get out on the water though, the nerves settle down and it is
time for action. Then you’re not scared anymore. Now you’re completely
focused and in the present moment. You’re in the zone!

Tow-In Surfing is what we live for!

Here I catch the first wave of the "big day".

More Tow-in Surfing

And here is another video of a tow-in session we had earlier in the season.

Anyway, this post was a departure from my normal how-to style posts.

Just for entertainment purposes I guess.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I sure had fun doing it. :-)

And if this sort of video was not your cup of tea, don’t worry, I’ll be posting the normal “How-To” posts again after this quick diversion.

Are you a fan of tow-in surfing? Other water sports? Let me know in the comments below :)

Who else wants to make money selling information?

Recently, on the Kajabi blog, I found a post entitled, “’Information Marketing’ Demystified”, which I took an instant interest in. The author attempts to clarify some of the confusion surrounding information marketing.

He starts about by giving us the true definitions of the terms “information marketing” and “information products.” Millions of people are making money selling information online so let us demystify the process …

Overview

“Defined, Information Marketing (“Info Marketing”) embodies the entire process of researching, creating and selling information-based products to a market.

Information Products (“Info Products”) are products that teach you how to do something. These products can be real (like a book) or digital (like an eBook). They can also be considered services (like a live seminar, coaching or consulting), or software (like MBS 2.0). Bottom line, anytime you’re using, reading, listening or watching a piece of content that aims to teach you how to do something, you’re consuming an info product.”

In short, information marketing helps us sell valuable information to our target market. While, information products are the products we create to sell our priceless information. The idea behind it all is to teach our target market important information that can help enrich their lives.

The Three Critical Elements of Information Marketing

“Information Marketing encompasses the act of i) researching, ii) creating and iii) marketing info products.”

Let’s dive deeper into the ideas behind these three elements:

1. Research a Market

Researching our product is the most important step you can take to create a valuable product. While doing your research, you should try to find three things within your niche market:

1. A big market.
2. A market full of passionate people who don’t think rationally.
3. A growing market.
4. Create a Product

It is important that your info products actually teach information about your niche that creates value in the world. This means recognizing that different people prefer different styles of learning… reading, videos, experience, etc…

You must provide info products that touch on each of these learning styles in order to reach the masses.

Kajabi helps create “membership-only” websites that are centered around your informative content. It organizes all the products you use to interact with your online visitors and customers.

It makes it easier to integrate these products into your sites, creating a more socially interactive experience for your site users. In essence, your goal should not be to sell these products, but rather to sell access to these informative products.

2.  Market the Product

Now that you have developed your informational products, it’s time to market them. The blog post suggests that we use a method called the “Product Launch Formula” for our marketing campaign:

“In brief, the Product Launch Formula involves the process of doing three things over a handful of days:

1. Capturing leads via a Squeeze Page
2. Teaching the leads about your product through a series of events (Which we call, “Event Posts”)
3. Converting the leads into customers through a Sales Page”

The Kajabi product helps to automate the process of the Product Launch Formula. Information Marketing focuses on the “Three Critical Elements of Information Marketing.” Kajabi focuses on the last two:

1. Creating a Product
2. Marketing the Product

Summary

Information Marketing - “…embodies the entire process of researching, creating and selling information-based products to a market.”

Information Products - “…products that teach you how to do something.”

Market Research - “three things to look for in a market:

1. A market that is big
2. A market that is filled with irrationally passionate people
3. A market that is growing

Product Creation

Your information products should teach while utilizing all different methods of learning that consumers currently use.

We shouldn’t just attempt to sell our products. We should sell the actual online access to our products.

Product Marketing – According to this blog, the best method to use when marketing our products is the “Product Launch Formula” using Kajabi.

I hope you found this post useful and that it cleared up any confusion you may have about Information Marketing.

I’m in the comments if you want to talk about it.

Fitness … anytime, anywhere … without a gym

It’s very important for me to be as FIT as possible. It makes everything much more fun!

It makes me feel light and strong and gives me tons of energy to practice my favorite extreme sports like: skiing, snowboarding, surfing, kitesurfing and dirt biking.

Fitness can become complicated …

I’ve tried all sorts of different fitness programs, and they’ve always fallen short for one reason or another.

Finally I found a killer fitness program that I can do anywhere, anytime, and without a gym. I’ve shared the program with you here. Watch the video above, and print out the PDF document below which explains the circuit and each of the exercises in greater detail …

This workout program was created by my friends Mitch and Bibi Toelderer. This amazing husband and wife team are both professional snowboarders. In 2011 Mitch is the Freeriding Snowboard World Champion.

Mitch is also a doctor, and Bibi a physical therapist.

They are both fitness experts and when they recently visited me on a surf trip I asked them to show me a workout I could do anywhere, even while traveling.

Achieve Fitness Without Excuses

This simple Training Plan can be performed anywhere, anytime so there are no excuses.

Build it into your morning ritual, while watching TV, or after you wake up. Try this system for
2 weeks, and I guarantee you will feel better than ever, and you will look great. It works!

So, come on, won’t you join me?

Watch the video, download and print out the Workout description, and do the workout TODAY!

Please leave me any questions or comments below.

If you’d like to be updated when we come out with more fitness related stuff, then please click on the Connect with Facebook button below and that will sign you up for free to my fitness newsletter.

Dream Job Advice … What do you truly love to do?

Life isn’t easy or enjoyable when you are unemployed and depressed because of it.  You may have a job you hate and you’re stuck in that trap.  You may not like following orders or working for other people.  Perhaps it’s time to get your dream job?

There are many people that can relate to those feelings.  Luckily there is a proven solution that nearly anyone can implement to create their dream job … 

Your dream job will still require some work …

It will take some hard work and the willingness to take risks.  It may involve failures that you will have to look past and learn from.  It can bring success that will put you on the top of the world.   Building your own business doesn’t have to just be a dream.  You should take action on it.

Leo Babauta put it nicely here:

“Create your own dream job. Don’t wait for someone to hand it to you. Don’t hope that you’ll win the lottery. Don’t give up and consign yourself to a fate of misery and (worse) dullness.

Create your job! It might sound far-fetched for some of you (while others have already done it) but it’s very possible. Not easy, mind you: it takes hard work and smarts and passion and a crap-ton of learning and a willingness to take risks and make mistakes.”

Leo Babauta

Really start to consider what you love doing.  No I mean what you truly love to do free of charge. Find something you would do anyways because you love it. 

Leo also offers some advice on finding your passions.  If you have a trouble thinking of what you are truly passionate about consider reading more from Leo here. 

Choose one or two of your passions and use them to create something. 

Take Leo for example his passions are writing and changing his habits for a better life.  And that’s what he does.  He writes about how to change our habits for a better life.  Leo started ZenHabits so that he could do what he loved.  He got so many readers and had so much fun that he is now working his dream job.

Finding the Funding For Your Dream Job

Most people think they need a lot of money to start. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  There are a ton of free online services like Blogger.com, Google AdSense, Google Analytics, ect. 

You usually can start your business up with a very small amount of money if nothing at all.  Simple rule but hard to follow for many people: Spend much less than you make.  Not so easy for so many of us.  The very idea of acquiring debt to start up a business isn’t a good one.  Instead invest in what you can afford based on any income that comes in. 

Our skills, our experience and our contacts are more important than our funding. Without those it will certainly be hard to start a business without money.  So let’s look at some examples of how real people start a business with very few expenses.

Hypothetical Businesses

1)   Starting a Ballet School – To start off you could offer classes at schools in your neighborhood after school and charge per head or per class.  The school, the parents and the kids will love the idea. 

Once you earn enough to rent out a space perhaps you could adjust your business to your dream of owning a school.  But to start up and to really experience living your passion you need to look to low cost alternatives to poke around and gain some experience, learn and achieve the freedom of working your dream job.

2)   Playing Video Games for a Living – There is big money in gaming. 

People pay to play and for the secrets of elite players.  They fiercely compete to be the best.  You could start an online coaching class for players who want to increase their skill and level within a game.

3)   Becoming a Chef. – The equipment for a restaurant kitchen is quite expensive.  Usually as a chef you have to start out working for someone else’s restaurant. 

An alternative is to host dinner parties and cook gourmet cuisine.  Charge per head and make sure you get feedback on how to improve and what we have done well.  Sell tickets in advance so you can buy food at no cost to you.

4) Build an Information Product Business. – You could build an info product business around something you are passionate about. Perhaps you love Yoga, or African Drumming, or <insert your passion here>.

You would create an Information Product, something like an ebook or online video course. You setup a blog where you post frequent articles and information about your passion, be it yoga, drumming or whatever.

Then you join the online conversation going on about your topic, and you help people. And slowly people will come back to your blog. They’ll read your posts and some will want to buy your ebook or home-study course. Ok, that was an over simplified outline of the process of building your information product business – but you get the idea.

Those are just a few examples of how you can get started with very little money. 

Okay so you are doing what you love but that doesn’t mean you have to start out as a pro. 

We learn as we go, we start a business so that we can get really good at producing a product, or providing our service. 

We learn through research and personal development.  In fact getting good at something usually involves making a ton of mistakes or reading or learning about the mistakes others make.  This is how we learn to avoid mistakes and really get good at what we do.

Attract an Audience

An audience is different than a customer base.  An audience is a group of people who you can help and that like your business. 

They might not pay you anything but they like you so that is a good thing.  The easiest way to attract an audience is to provide them with valuable information.  It is not an easy thing to do.  Learn to examine what your audience is saying and how to avoid people who cause trouble for your business.

Build Up an Income

Many people use one of the following income streams to build their income:

• Charge for an eBook or digital product.
• Charge for a subscription or membership service.
• Charge for online courses or tests.
• Do consulting or Freelancing.
• Do speaking engagements or training seminars
• Build web apps and mobile apps.
• Provide a service where you visit someone’s home to do something for them (painting, lawn maintenance, etc.)

Choose one of these or come up with your own.  Try it out for a bit. 

Do you really love it?  Do you see yourself getting really good at it?  If you can’t answer yes to both of those maybe you should try something else.

Becoming your own boss and seizing control of your life is incredibly empowering.  Always look at any situation as an opportunity.  Whether we fail or succeed we must always learn.

Let me know in the comments if you’re ready to make a change and do something great. What is your dream job?

I really hope you go for it and find success.

Internet Marketers revealed …

Internet Marketers are never …

Down in the dumps

Just last week a friend of mine and I were making pizzas out back in my adobe brick oven. 

I was stoking the fire, when I noticed my buddy seemed down in the dumps.

I asked him what was wrong, “Why the long face?”

He said, “I just spent $2,000 on a marketing course and it’s over 50 hours of video and audios on DVD, and hundreds of pages in pdf!”

“It’s gonna take me months just to get through all of this shit. It’s completely overwhelming”, he added.

“What’s your secret Chris, how do you get through it all?” he asked.

Internet Marketers concentrate on the things that work …

I explained to him that you don’t necessarily have to buy and consume any of the Marketing Guru’s products.

It’s more about analyzing their approach to online marketing and studying their emails and websites so that you can set yours up in similar ways.

Use all this information to reverse engineer and then mimic their methods.

I told him straight up, “I follow their marketing campaigns and save everything to swipe files so that I can reverse engineer it all and learn their secrets.”

“But there are hundreds of real and fake marketing gurus. Who do you follow?” he replied.

I gave him the list I am about to give you.  I closely monitor these people’s marketing campaigns and promotions regularly. 

I’m not saying to never buy any products, I buy tons of products. If I can get even 1 really good tip from a product that increases my conversion rates or bottom line somehow, then it is totally worth it.

However, you can get an excellent marketing education simply by studying the ways of successful people.   Here is a list of the marketing gurus I follow.

1.   Frank Kern 

Website:  http://frankkern.com

Frank is like the Godfather of Internet Marketing. 

With over 11 years under his belt and many 7 figure product launches, he still believes anyone can duplicate his success or anyone else’s!

Frank stresses the importance of our thoughts, actions, decisions, environment and informational inputs.  These things will all affect our sales and ultimately our success.

INPUT–> Thoughts—> Decisions—-> Actions—–> Sales

Check out Frank’s video on how we can increase our sources of positive influence and in turn make more sales.

http://www.frankkernsuccess.com/

2.   Andre Chaperon

Website:  http://andrechaperon.com/

Andre is a marketing genius who lives in Spain. I only found out about Andre last year and I quickly devoured all of his content.

I especially liked his “Autoresponder Madness” (A.R.M.) e-book.  It’s all about how to make huge profits from tiny email lists. ARM focuses on what to do once you get people on your email list.

Get on Andre’s list and study his emails. You will notice that they’re engaging, and entertaining like a Cliff Hanger TV series.

Notice how even when Andre is recommending a product or service - many times you don’t even notice that you’re being sold.

Get on Andre’s emai list here:

http://autorespondermadness.com/list-building/

 3.   Peter Spaepen

Website: http://peterspaepen.com/

Sometimes I’m not sure if Peter is really another person, or if he is just a persona that Andre Chaperon created, or vice versa.

These guys go hand in hand. You can’t watch and study Andre Chaperon without also following Peter Spaepen. Whenever they launch a product, one launches a companion product.

All kidding aside, Peter is one bad-ass marketing genius. It’s scary!

Spaepen does an excellent job building a relationship with his lists.  He has been able to outsell people with lists twenty times as big. His buddy Andre Chaperon has bragged about how many copies of A.R.M 2.0 Peter was able to sell in just a short period of time.

Study what Peter does closely I have learned tons from this dude.

4.   Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney)

Blog: http://shoemoney.com

Shoemoney is an affiliate marketer and a blogger. He’s made millions of dollars over the last 5 years and he blogs his marketing insights.

You can see on his blog that he goes to tons of marketing seminars and seems to like to surround himself with beautiful women. His blog has over 30,000 daily readers!

He’s had a couple killer product launches during the last year. Keep a look out for more from him.

He backed out of a book deal he had writing about how to make money online and instead turned the book into a completely free online marketing course with over 100,000 subscribers to date!

You can signup at: http://www.shoemoneyx.com/signup.php

5.   Andy Jenkins

Website: http://www.andyjenkinsblog.com/

Andy Jenkins has been involved in several multi million dollar launches. He’s a great copywriter, scriptwriter, product launch planner and video expert.

StomperNet first opened in October 2006, with Jenkins as the CEO. Membership was a cool $800/month.  Stompernet was the highest grossing Internet Marketing Launch of all time. It brought in something like $18 million in just a few days.

Andy recently launched his Video Boss product which teaches how to create professional marketing videos that put money in the bank. 

It won’t be long before Andy launches another product. When he does, you’ll want to see how he does it, save everything to swipe files, reverse engineer, and study his methods.

6.   Yanik Silver

Website:  http://www.yaniksilver.com

This guy is  one the biggest badasses of them all.  

A self-proclaimed “adventure junkie” he brings top entrepreneurs together to teach others how they have succeeded. Yanik works to lead entrepreneurs of the future to success in online marketing.

I love all of Yanik’s products, and seminars.  His Mavericks Business Adventures product is the coolest concept ever. Check it out at:

 http://www.maverickbusinessadventures.com/.

He combines awesome adventures like the Baja 1000 off-road race, with business networking and how-to sessions. 

His adventures aren’t cheap but I hear the value you get from the information you learn and the contacts you make, more than makes up for the cost.

Watch Yanik like a hawk. You can learn a lot from this mofo.

7.   Eben Pagan

Eben makes over $20 million a year selling information products, like his dating and relationship e-books.

He is also a great teacher. 

His early claim to fame came from his Double Your Dating E-book, where he teaches men how to approach women and get more dates than they have ever had. 

Eben created several dating e-books and earns a few million dollars per year in profits off of these books.

He’s launched a bunch of Internet Marketing products over the last few years. My favorite is his Guru Blueprint, which teaches you how to become an Information Product Marketing Guru.

He’ll be launching a new product soon, and when he does you’ll want to pay close attention. Watch and study what he does for a great, free education.

Signup for his list at:

http://www.ebenpagangurublueprint.net/

8.   Jeff Walker

Blog:  http://jeffwalker.com/ 

Jeff created the Product Launch Formula. This is an incredible system for launching information products online. It is easy to learn and implement, and works across all niches.

Most of the gurus that I have mentioned here – use Jeff’s formula. Of course they add their own little twists and variations. 

Watch what Jeff does in his product launches. Every new launch he does things a little different. You can learn a lot by noticing these differences and what he repeats each launch and what he does differently.

9.   Jeff Johnson

Website: http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com/

It seems like Jeff always has a launch going on. He’s always testing new things and I’ve learned a lot studying him. He’s got tons of methods for generating traffic and making money with your blog or website.

Checkout his free videos and training on his website.

10. Ryan Deiss

Website: http://drivingtraffic.com/

Ryan tests so many different strategies. You can see his ads all over Facebook, and Google Adwords. He’s on the cutting edge of Internet Marketing and is always trying new things.

Then in some launches you will see him go back to his tried and tested strategies. Analyzing his different launches and marketing strategies is a great way to learn what is working and what isn’t.

If you were to pick just one marketer to follow and reverse engineer, you couldn’t go wrong if you chose Ryan Deiss.

I learned everything I know from guys like these … 

Everything I have learned in Internet Marketing came from analyzing the moves of the best marketers and most successful people in making money online. 

Save everything these guys put online into files for access later.  Analyze the files and mimic their general methods. 

You will begin to notice patterns in what they are doing. This is how you learn marketing and anyone can do it absolutely free.

You will not even need to buy their products after studying their ways. 

After you watch enough marketing gurus you realize that they set up their product launches, squeeze pages, email marketing autoresponder campaigns, videos, etc. in similar ways. 

Reverse engineer what these guys do and you can’t go wrong.  

Well guys, what do you think? Did I nail the top 10 Internet Marketers list? Or did I forget anybody? Let me know in the comments.

Facebook Vs. Google

Here’s a story you may not have heard about Google.

It includes a little underground history of Google including:

•    A big reason for Google’s early success.
•    Some huge mistakes Google has made.
•    Why Google is losing its appeal.
•    How Facebook could crush Google

Facebook wasn’t even born …

And in 2003, even Google Adwords wasn’t very popular yet. A relatively small amount of people were advertising with them.

At that time I figured out a way to make money by advertising people’s products as an affiliate via Google Adwords. I placed my affiliate links for a product in the destination URL of an Adwords Ad. I bid on keywords related to that product or service. When someone clicked through my ad and purchased or signed up, I would earn a commission.

I was earning far more money through affiliate commissions then I was spending to advertise with Google Adwords.

It was great money. In early 2003 I was earning $30,000 a month in profits doing this.  But I wasn’t really happy.  I wanted more time to myself and for my income to become more passive.  

The thing I hated the most about the way I was earning money with Google was that it involved massive amounts of time at the computer looking at figures, and analyzing results so that I could fine tune my system of advertising and find new products to advertise.

It was around that time that I decided I was going to write a book about how I was making money as an affiliate using Google Adwords. 

You may have heard of it “Google Cash”.

This knowledge was set to spread like wildfire!

I wanted to show people how they could make more money and do less work. 

I wrote the 87 page book on how I was making the money I was.  It includes instructions with screen shots and a complete explanation on how one could duplicate my success. Since then that is one of the primary principles I try to get people to adopt. 

SUCCESS CAN BE DUPLICATED. 

Within 2 weeks, without any advertising the book soared to the #1 selling eBook on Clickbank.  It remained at the #1 spot for over three years.

This was the kind of money I wanted to be making. After all I only worked one weekend and I got paid for it for years to come.

As I said the method of making money in my eBook was more lucrative at the time that I started selling Google Cash.  Regardless the methods are simple, effective and still work today.

Perry Marshall credits my book as the reason for Google Adwords’ early success.

Here is an excerpt from Perry Marshall’s article:

A 20-something surfer dude named Chris Carpenter put Google Adwords on the map.

You’ll never read about this in the Wall Street Journal…. but it is my professional opinion that “Google Cash” in 2003 and the firestorm of affiliate activity in the lowly “bizop world” was THE tipping point for Google Adwords.

Suddenly every imaginable keyword was being bought up by affiliates and Google ads started multiplying like rabbits in Australia.

How cool is that? 

My eBook might have been the initial spark for Google’s success.

A Google insider once told me similar.

In 2006, on a surf trip I met a guy in the water while we were sitting in the lineup waiting for the waves to roll in. When I introduced myself, his eyes lit up and he said, “Are you the same Chris Carpenter who wrote Google Cash?”

That kind of freaked me out, as that had never happened before. But things got even weirder.

He told me that he was an employee at Google. And that he and his team knew about my Google Cash eBook. We talked and talked.

He said that they estimated that between 2003 and 2006 Google Cash had brought them around 100,000 new advertisers. He said that at that time, on average an advertiser spent $1,000 on Adwords.

He said that a joke around the office was that I was their #1 sales associate, having made Google easily over $100 million in sales.

I joked with him that you’d think that Google would give me some stock options or something.

But no that never happened.

Instead just a few years later I got my Google Adwords account banned for life, just like thousands of others did. But more on that in a minute. Back to my story.

Things were cruising along fine for years. I was making good money promoting lots of different products as an affiliate on Adwords. And I was selling lots of Google Cash eBooks.

My coining of the name “Google Cash” was based on the concept that pay-per-click traffic from Google could earn affiliate marketers cash.

Simple enough: but I made a mistake in that “Google” was a trademarked name. I should have never used their name in the title of my ebook.

Then the scams started …

In 2008 scammers started using the name “Google Cash” to lure people into their “Work For Google” scams.

There was nothing I could do, since Google was not my trademark.

These scammers were offering “Google Cash Kits” where people paid $1 for a kit that supposedly told them how to work directly for Google.

Many of these sites had photos of people holding sizable checks they received from Google. These of course, were bogus checks.

When people ordered one of these “Google Cash Kits” for $1, nothing ever arrived in the mail. They never received anything. However, their credit cards got charged around $60 every month.

The FTC received over 275,000 complaints about these “Work for Google” scams. Google filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against Pacific Webworks, alleging trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition and cyber piracy.

They commented about the matter on their blog.

“Although there’s no secret kit that can guarantee riches, many people really do make money online. In our experience, the best way to build a business on the web is to really serve users – offer useful products and services or write about something you have a passionate interest in.”

I started to worry about my eBook business.

I wasn’t sure if Google was going to be confused that I was one of these scammers since my “Google Cash” ebook held the same name as the “Google Cash Kit” scam.

I called Google and spoke with their lead council and was relieved when she told me that she knew of my eBook, and that I was not associated with Pacific Web Works and their “Google Cash Kits – Work For Google” Scam.

My eBook has been one of the great guides to creating an online business. So to distance myself from the scammers, their illegal activity and the profoundly hurtful nature of these types of scams, I started to give away my eBook for free.

I’ve been giving it away for free ever since.

You can download my Google Cash eBook for free here. It’s still an awesome eBook. The system still works. It is just a little harder because of more competition.

I’ve heard from lots of people who read my eBook and later ended up making money a different way online.  They said that reading the Google Cash eBook made a light bulb go off in their head, and changed everything.

So if you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you give it a quick read when you have a chance.

In 2009 and 2010 the FTC cracked down on the scammers.

They also gave Google a lot of flack about this, because many of these scams got most of their traffic from Google Adwords.

Google started banning Advertisers who promoted any of these questionable products at any time. Even those who had them in their deleted campaigns years ago.

Google used an automated system to ban advertisers accounts. A banned advertiser would go to login to their account and it would tell them that their account had been banned for life and that they could not sign up again.

It’s been widely said online that over 100,000 Google Advertisers were banned.

The dirty little secret …

The dirty little secret is that many of those who were banned had invested millions in Google advertising and were the reason why Google was able to expand the way it did.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly Google forgot the 100,000 Advertisers that started the spark and momentum for Google to grow to what it is today?

In 2003 to 2006, 100,000 affiliates started using Google Adwords like crazy and gave Google the momentum to grow big time. Over time large corporations flocked to Google because it gave the best results on searches.

Today SEM Rush estimates that Google’s profit can be visualized in the following chart.

 Today 80% of Google’s profits come from the top 1.35% of advertisers (people who spend more than $10,000/month).  

In short Google doesn’t really care for the little guy as much as they should since most people who advertise on Google do not make up a significant share of their profits.

Regardless due to the popularity of Google people will advertise with them despite the primarily one way relationship. 

Ignored by Google

I found myself ignored by Google on the issue of my banned account, with Google sending out only automated standard response to all affiliates that were banned.  Google really didn’t care about the advertisers they lost and they got the FTC off their backs and only lost a small portion of their profits.

As I previously stated, Google got rid of over 100,000 advertisers.

Guess where those 100,000 advertisers went?

Yup, you guessed right – FACEBOOK!

Facebook is serious about PPC …

We all started advertising on Facebook. We might have never bothered with Facebook advertising, but by Google banning our Adwords accounts, we were forced to give Facebook a try.

And it turns out that, when done the right way, Facebook advertising is like Google Adwords was in 2003. Tons of targeted traffic for low cost per click.

Since Facebook Advertising is relatively new and people are still learning to use it effectively the cost for advertising is relatively cheap.  As competition increases prices on Facebook will increase like they did on Google.

Google is now in a very precarious place.  They make the vast majority of their money from their search engine advertising income.

They banned and got rid of many of the smaller mom and pop style online businesses advertisers.

They alienated hundreds of thousands of people.

Here’s the problem for Google.

If people stop using the Google Search Engine, then Google is doomed.

Right now we all use Google because it is the best search engine, plain and simple. It gives you the best results for what you are searching for.

Even those of us who got banned from Google Adwords still use the Google Search Engine, because it is the best.

However, as soon as there is a good alternative search engine, then many people will jump ship.

This is how Facebook could crush Google.

As soon as Facebook learns to better harness their data and the power of it’s people (800 million+) to help each other find what you are looking for, Google will be doomed. 

Imagine doing a keyword search at your computer and having millions of human minds point you in the right direction.

So what can Google do about this reality?

Google can still survive. They can even come out on top.

I think I have the answer. Perhaps I’ll write about it in a future blog post. Google if you want the answer now, you need to send me some love! :-)

Guys, what do you think? Is Google Doomed? Is Facebook going to crush Google? Or will Google trump Facebook? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

(Photo: My awesome wife Mariné striking a Freedom pose)

Freedom starts in the mind …

I was recently surfing with a friend of mine who is a famous professional surfer.  What he said to me got me thinking about the ultimate freedom I have.

He said he was envious of the amount of freedom and wealth I have to do what I want.  He pointed out that being a professional surfer comes with its downside.

I had just come from a heli-skiing trip in Alaska and he said that he would love to have gone, but his sponsors would never have let him on account of the risk of injury.

That got me thinking about allowing others to discover how I have achieved my freedom and reward in life.

Not everyone can do the exact same things as me and succeed but nearly anyone reading this can follow the same system and achieve success and freedom.

Freedom – 8 steps to follow …

Step 1: Develop an Understanding of What Ultimate Freedom and True Wealth Really Means.

Achieving ultimate freedom means you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and wherever you want without worrying about money.

When you achieve ultimate freedom – you become free from time constraints, geographic constraints and financial constraints. Life is easier. This is true wealth.

Having a lot of money doesn’t guarantee ultimate freedom or true wealth.  Instead how one spends and values their time defines one’s freedom and wealth.

Time itself is the heart of true wealth and ultimate freedom.

True wealth affords the time to enjoy life now and not defer a dream life to a later date.

Living your dreams now is the ultimate freedom.

Step 2: Make Money in Ways that can Bring You Ultimate Freedom and True Wealth.

There are three basic methods for making money.  They include working, investing, and creating income streams.

1. Working

96% of the population makes their money through working a job.  Working is a trade of time for money.

It is the worst way to build wealth and freedom, as time is limited and thus so is money. You have to give up a large part of your life to make good money working.

I’ve seen 9-5 jobs ruin peoples freedom, relationships, and health.

2. Investing

About 3% of the population makes money through investing.  It is a great way to create wealth.

It can give one freedom but it can be risky and usually involves having a lot of money to achieve ultimate freedom through investing.

3. Creating Income Streams

This leaves the third way of making money: creating multiple income streams.  This is by far the best way and is accessible to most people.

You may be surprised to know that only 1% of the population earns their money through creating multiple streams of income.  The reason is mostly because they are not informed or taught how to do it.

We are mostly taught to work 9-5 jobs where we will never achieve true wealth because of the low value we usually end up trading our time for.

The Money Making Skill Set

Creating multiple streams of income leverages technology and automation.

You take yourself out of the equation of “time=money” and begin to experience the rewards and freedom of separating yourself from the mechanics of making money.

This leaves you time to create value for your customers.

A big part of the money making skill set is to engage in making money surrounding your passions.  This way when you are putting efforts into making money you are enjoying yourself.

If one learns to embrace their passions in their money making plans they will never “work” again.

Making money will be something that greatly interests them and that they enjoy. If you choose a market you are passionate about you won’t burn out along the way.

Some of my past and current online income streams involve:

• Affiliate marketing
• Information products
• Web services
• Software
• Consulting

Of all the income streams I’ve built, I like Information Products the best. I highly recommend you set one up.

Step 3: Determine Your First Income Stream (Information Products) Surrounding Your Passions

Quite simply information products are products instructing people on how to do something.

You can make it a physical product like a book or a DVD or a digital product like an e-book.

Perhaps your income stream is centered on a seminar that you deliver on a regular basis and that you sell tickets to.  There are nearly an infinite amount of potential information products!

Any time you are reading, watching or learning something you are consuming an information product.

If people are searching for the information on your task then you have likely chosen a good information product to market.

Fitness is one of my passions, and together with a friend we figured out this great system for getting as fit and strong as professional athletes.

So, we bundled up this system into an online video training course, and we sell it online.

Every person on the planet has an ‘Information Product’ inside them!

Developing Your Passions

Passions are not discovered they are developed. Our passions are not always obvious to us.

A passion is an area that a person has interest and skill.  If they have the skills but lack the interest in an endeavor, they will not be passionate about the endeavor.

To help in developing your passions and recognizing them I recommend that you build two lists.

Create one list defining your interests and the other defining your skills.

Where these two lists overlap will be where your passion lies.

To get you started on an interest list consider the following questions:

• What activities and hobbies really excite me?
• What really makes me happy?
• What do I like to read and talk about?
• What would I like to try?
• What do I spend money on? (list everything)
• What would I do for free?
• As a child, what did I love to do?

For the Skills list ask yourself:

• What do I make money doing?
• What am I good at?
• What do I find easy to do?
• What sparks my creativity?
• What do other people tell me I am good at?

In order to develop your passions you may need to find new interests and take some risks.

Step 4: Design Your Ideal Lifestyle on Paper

Take a few minutes to reflect upon your dream lifestyle. Shut your eyes, and picture what would be a truly fulfilling life for you.

Write down your answers to these questions:

• If you had 100 million dollars in the bank and you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do with your time?
• If you knew you were going to die in a year, how would you spend your last year?
• What would you like to be doing 1 year from now, 3 years, 10 years, 20 years from now, at the end of your life?

As you’re imagining your dream lifestyle, please keep the “Fulfillment Curve” in mind.

The “Fulfillment Curve” is a concept discussed in the book, “Your Money or Your Life”.

The concept is that as you spend more money you move from basic survival, to comfort, and eventually to luxury.

At some point in time you have all that will bring your fulfillment.

At a specific point you may or may not realize that nothing will bring you additional fulfillment.

Once we have everything we need, comfort, and a satisfying amount of luxuries most people consider themselves to have enough at a certain point in their life.

Enjoyment of what money brings into our life is fully experienced at the peak of the curve.

Personal freedom allows the opportunity to take action on our concerns for others.

We will seek to address the needs and wishes of others.  Our effect on the world as whole brings us both emotional comfort and reward.

“Your Money or Your Life” talks about this concept in detail and is a must read for anyone who wants to experience true wealth or ultimate freedom.

It’s more than a book about money it’s about drawing lines between our actions and our fulfillment. It teaches you to align your spending and earning with whatever brings you fulfillment in life.

Step 5: Discover Your Niche

One must investigate and find a niche through the information they gather.

A niche is a gap in a group of people where their needs aren’t being met. 

Products fill niches in markets.

The 3 BIG Niches

About 85% of the money spent on information products is spent on products surrounding these “3 BIG Niches”:

1. Money and Business
2. Relationships and Dating
3. Health and Fitness

These niches are extremely popular because they are lucrative even during times of recession.

But one cannot create a product “Health and Fitness”, it’s far too broad.  They will have to narrow it down.  For example a few goldmines within the Health and Fitness niche are:

• Fat loss
• Weight loss
• Gain muscle
• Reduce stress
• Organic and raw food
• Natural remedies – alternative health and healing
• Wellness
• Any specific health problem

Most of the time people will narrow the above niches down even further.

For example, fat loss can be broken down to: losing belly fat, losing beer belly, losing the last stubborn 10 pounds, getting six pack abs, etc. etc.

There is a big misconception that lots of people seem to have. They believe they need to find a market with tons of interest and zero competition.

Don’t try to find an untapped market. Go where the money is. Go where there are lots of products being sold and many people actively looking for stuff to buy.

Step 6: Set Up an Opportunity Income Stream or a Lifestyle Income Stream

There are generally only two kinds of income streams one can set up online.  They are opportunity, and lifestyle income streams.

An opportunity income stream is where you look for an opportunity, or inefficiency in the marketplace where you can fill the gap and profit.

I spent a great deal of time finding these opportunities of inefficiencies in the marketplace and learning how to vibrantly succeed marketing via Google Adwords.

Times have changed, the competition has drastically increased and profit margins in that area are no longer what they used to be.

I shifted my approach to building lifestyle income streams. Learn from my mistakes!

Start with a lifestyle income stream and look for a booming market related to your passions.

Then making money is more than just about the dollar value for your time or your return on investment.

It’s about doing things you like, to get the things you need and want. Unlike the opportunity business you don’t have to constantly be looking for new opportunities to go after.

You can just focus on the one thing that drives your interest.  By focusing on a small number of markets one develops expertise and works on their skills in selling in those markets.

Step 7: Research the Markets You Are Interested In

Consider your skills in Step #3 when brainstorming about which markets to enter.  Think about where you would like to apply your knowledge and skill.

If you have trouble naming your passions, start keeping track of the things you like to do and eventually you will be able to embark on an interest with good skills.

What do you do for hours on end?  Maybe that is your calling?

If you become scared or intrigued in marketing a product, it’s probably a good choice.  Keep your eyes open for popular niches that involve your passions.

Keep a notebook handy or use a note taking application (Evernote) to keep track of ideas that come throughout the day.  Soon enough you will have a list of niches to choose from as a result.

Market Validity – Determine If Your Niche Really Has A Market

Competition is a good sign and often indicates that the opportunity to make money is there.

If there are lots of products being sold and lots of people buying the products then that is a perfect market to enter.

A few places to go to learn about the competition and the niche include:

• http://boardtracker.com
• http://google.com    search for (keyword +forum)
• search.twitter.com
• Facebook feeds.

Determine statistics regarding searches within this market.

What you can do is visit the Google Keyword Tool and perform searches for keywords relating to your market and niche.

Once you enter the keyword have a look at the “Global Monthly Search Volume”.

This will give you an idea of whether or not a market exists.  If there is a high search volume and cost per click (CPC) then you can determine that there is indeed a market there.

Create an extensive list of keywords surrounding your niche and sub niches.

This will give you more insight into the market and help you decide which keywords you want to focus on in writing content about your product on your website and on other pages on the internet.

Step 8: Create Your First Information Product

Identify problems, challenges, frustrations and issues people are facing, and searching for solutions to, in your niche.

Competition can give one ideas on how to make a product more unique and appealing.  They can help you make improvements on your product that will give it more value over their products.

Whether you are reading boardtracker.com posts, or any blog that you have been following, read the comments on the most popular threads and identify things that are heavily discussed.

Identify that problem, that fear or frustration, or that dissatisfaction they have with a product. Brainstorm on how your product can improve on these issues.

Perhaps your product focuses on one specific need people are not getting from the products they have purchased.  In this way your product can be an excellent addition to another product.

Don’t spend too much time on your first product.  All that you need to ensure is that your product is useful for helping customers with a common need.

Don’t put all your birds in one basket.  If the market dries out for one product, multiple streams of income can make up for it and sustain you until you set up another income stream.

How to Market Information Products

Your success in marketing the product will depend on your ability to get the word out to customers on how your product fulfills their needs.

It is the hard part of the process but it is made easier today with social media and other web applications.

Now using social media strategies, you can enter the online conversation that centers on the problem your product solves or the frustration that it eases.

Automating a newsletter that is giving away useful information for free is a teaser on what your product can offer them.  If they love the free information and it is helpful to them they are more likely to purchase the product.

Building a relationship with your customers (via facebook, twitter, blogs and forums) and helping them solve their problems and frustrations is your marketing.

This is what you should concentrate your time on.

Your product will sell, and market, itself on autopilot.  For example sales emails and follow up emails are automated with an email autoresponder.

Clickbank.com is an excellent resource to begin selling your products. They provide a payment processing service for any member with a product to sell.  Selling, order processing, and customer fulfillment can and should be put on autopilot.

I’d Love To Help You

Listen, I’ve setup many online businesses, and I’ve helped thousands of people do the same.

I’d like to help you too. I’m holding a free webinar (not yet scheduled) where you can learn about:

• Why 98% of the people who try to make money online FAIL and what you can do today to guarantee your success.
• How you can join an underground society who are living their dream lifestyles doing what they want, when they want and where they want.
• The right way to do market research and find your niche
• The most effective way to market your products and services
• And much more

Sign up to my list below, and I will let you know once I am holding the free webinar so you can attend.

Also please give me your feedback in the comments below. Did you like this blog post? My first blog post.

Did I leave anything out? (lol – longest blog post ever!) Have you achieved freedom? Let me know in the comments below!

Six-pack abs sell! (Photo: Marine's lovely sixpack)

Truth About Abs – the success story …

Digital products can make us rich with little upfront costs … 

Tim Ferris published a wonderful interview with Mike Geary and asked him some interesting questions.  Geary gives advice on advertising, buying traffic, the Clickbank marketplace and more. 

Geary brought his product to Clickbank offering affiliates a 75% commission of the $47.00 sale price.  Almost instantly affiliates were switching over to promote Mike’s informational product due to higher commissions.

“I sell a fitness information product called “The Truth about Six-Pack Abs,” which has sold more than 500,000 copies since 2005.

I publish a fitness and health newsletter to about 680,000 subscribers (with subscribers in almost every country), and have built a large content based website that goes along with this fitness newsletter.

I act as a media buyer, purchasing large amounts of traffic (mostly in the fitness/nutrition niche) that I funnel to a few select partners. This allows me to become integrated into several other large fitness and nutrition businesses (they promote my product extensively on their backend) since I act as a very large source of their overall traffic.”

Mike Geary

Truth About Abs revealed …

Let’s look at some of the questions Tim Ferriss asked Mike and our summaries of his responses from the interview:

Tim: Can you describe your muse?

Mike responds saying his business is comprised of three major components: 

The first is his book: “The Truth About Six-Pack-Abs”.  It has sold over 500,000 copies in the last 7 years.  At a price of approximately $50 that’s $25 million.  Not bad for digital product with little cost of distribution.

The next component of Mike’s business is his 650,000+ subscribers to his fitness and health newsletter where he takes advantage of affiliate commissions and selling advertising.

And finally he purchases large amounts of traffic and drives it to his partners who promote his products in return.

Tim: What is the website for your muse?

The main website is www.TruthAboutAbs.com.

How much money are you making?

Tim: How much revenue is your muse currently generating per month (on average)?

The three components listed above generate approximate $1million in revenue each month for a yearly total of approximately $11million.  Mike speaks of his financial freedom in his reply and the feeling he gets from knowing he has changed people’s lives with his work.

Tim:  To get to this monthly revenue number, how long did it take after the idea struck?

It took Mike 5 years of learning marketing to get to the current figures. After just two years he was earning a decent salary at $50,000.year.  Once he quit his corporate job the growth of his business increased tenfold.

Tim: How did you decide on “Truth About Six-Pack-Abs”?

Mike said his mentors told him to follow something he was most passionate about.  For Mike that was fitness and nutrition.  Mike speaks of how he bought a since discontinued information product from Ryan Lee, that turned out to be his best investment.  He said that Ryan’s product inspired Mike and he began to notice that people really wanted and needed information on how to get great abs.

How did you get started?

Tim: How did you get started? What ultimately lead you to your current lifestyle?

In 2004 his internet business started.  He was sick of the time constraints of his corporate job in engineering consulting.  He wanted more time to enjoy hobbies and the company of friends and family.  “Time Freedom” as he put it was the first goal of his online business. 

His second goal is a little easier when we are our own boss.  He wanted to never have to wake up to an alarm clock for work again.  For the past four years he says he hasn’t had to.

His third goal was financial security for his family.  This was on top of what he had already for his family.  Mike was working a cooperate job that pays well.  But he reminded himself that he could work less for a lot more and have even more security for his family. 

He wanted to build on the progress toward all of his goals, but his final goal was perhaps his dream come true. He wanted to be able to travel anytime he wanted and go anywhere he wanted in the world with no financial or time constraints.

Today he has accomplished all of his goals that he set out to accomplish in 2004 his business has grown to 7 figures in revenue.

Tim: What does your daily/weekly routine look like? Where do you live and what does your lifestyle look like?

When he quit his corporate job in 2007 he moved to Colorado because he loved to ski and there was ample opportunity to do so.  His business was booming so he spent most of his time skiing, hiking, mountain biking and other sources of outdoor fun. 

He speaks of how he has traveled all over North America and the Islands and how he has plans for more travel throughout Europe and Asia.  He travels 10-15 days per month and works about 2 hours per day while traveling. 

He talks about his working habits and admits to putting in 10-12 hours at a time on days where he’s really into it.  His schedule when not traveling is completely free and he says some days when even when he’s not traveling he still only puts in approximately 2 hours.

He started with just 5 visitors …

Tim: What were some of the main tipping points or”A-ha!” moments? How did they come about?

He foolishly believed that a flood of people would rush to his website at first.  In his first month he had only 5 visitors to his site.  The tipping point came when he started using Google Adwords to drive traffic to his pages.  Learning how to buy traffic and profit on Adwords opened the doors to knowledge of how to do the same thing elsewhere on the net.

 In 2007 the main tipping point of his business came.  He put his product on Clickbank.  He wisely offered the maximum commission rate allowed on Clickbank and affiliates flocked to his product because of the higher commissions and ROI.  In just a few months Geary’s product was a top product on Clickbank.

Tim insists that we must treat our affiliates and customers like gold.  He even offered his affiliates as much as 90% commission once they had reached a certain volume of sales.  His visions were large volumes of sales so even if he only made $2 per product he sold the 500,000 copies sold since 2005 earn him $1million.

Tim: What resources or tools did you find most helpful when you were getting started?

He says that Chris Carpenter’s “Google Cash” ebook was super helpful, and…. Ahhh, just kidding, he didn’t say that. I wish he had. :-) I wouldn’t be surprised if he had read it though. How about it Mike, did you read my Google Cash ebook and get something out of it? hehehe

All joking aside, back to Tim’s interview with Mike.

He says that low priced internet marketing, SEO, and PPC e-books were a great asset to him although much of what was in them is now outdated.  They gave him a solid foundation to build on a direction on what he should learn for his online business.

Truth About Abs … Mistakes To Avoid?

Tim: What are some common mistakes when buying media/traffic?

The most common mistake he mentions is when people don’t allow enough traffic to come in before giving up and thinking the ad won’t be profitable.

Another mistake is not testing variations of our ads to see which ones are the best. For example on Facebook he found that ads with a certain picture were more likely to get a click through.  He would have never known this if he invested everything on the one ad sample.

He insists that he expects to lose money on his first campaign but through tweaking the ad copy based on results, the second campaign is usually profitable because of what he learns. 

Tim’s Interview with Mike

Did you guys like this post? Would you like more like this? Can you believe how much money is in the Fitness niche? $1,000,000 a month? Geesh, that’s incredible! The Truth About Abs is just a single product! Share your thoughts in the comments.

Adventure?

You’re about to discover 10 tips on living a more adventurous lifestyle.
I learned these tips from a 47 year old big wave surfer called Laird Hamilton.

A guy who became so successful, that he broke out of his chosen niche and barreled his way into the mainstream.

A modern surfing legend. Someone who knew what he wanted – then went out and got it. But most importantly – someone we can all learn from …

If you’ve ever wanted to break free, create and fund your own “dream lifestyle” – then you must read this post …

You see, Laird travels around the world surfing the biggest waves, and he gets paid for it. And yet, he is not a professional surfer and he rarely participates in surf competitions.

He is something different. Something of his own making …

Laird Hamilton is a free surfer and a big wave surfing specialist. By building his own brand and monetizing it, Laird Hamilton created and paid for his own dream lifestyle.

Discover 10 “Laird Hamilton” tactics to live a more adventurous lifestyle …

 Adventure starts in the mind …

1. You’re never too old to start something new

Picture the scene. I was in San Clemente, a southern California surf town, at a pizza joint.

Surf posters lit up the walls, and surf magazines covered the tables. I reached for a glossy magazine and Laird Hamilton graced the front cover.

He was frozen in time, inside a big blue barrel, taming a wave the size of a house.

I’m not sure why, but something inside me clicked. A burning desire to experience the exact same feeling that Laird must have felt, riding that monster life changing wave …

I turned and said to my friend, “Oh my God, I want to do that. I want to experience that.”

His response was certainly not encouragement, “Buhahahaha. Yeah right.” he replied.

“You’re a chubby geek and don’t know how to surf. Dream on. Besides 31 years old is too old to learn how to surf.” he added.

Right after that a young kid with sun bleached blond hair, wearing a wetsuit half pulled down around his waist (he was a surfer for sure) leaned into my booth in agreement, “There is no way in hell you can learn to surf barrels like that.” He said.

I was pissed. How could these turds tell me what I can and cannot do! That little punk motivated me more than any self-help book ever could.

I changed my lifestyle, began fitness training and started surfing. After 7 years of hard work, I am finally riding some pretty sick waves.

Don’t let other people set your limits. You are never too old to start something new.

Checkout the video at the top of this post that I quickly threw together some of my waves and friends waves from this year so far.

Adventure requires spare time …

2. Free Up Your Time

Living an adventurous life requires free time. If you’re currently feeling overwhelmed, then dreaming up and going on adventures may seem frivolous.

To free up your time – you must free yourself from financial burdens.

The best adventurers (like Laird), build multiple income streams doing what they LOVE. You can profit from your passions and it’s easy!

If you’ve ever wondered if you have “what it takes” to do something a little more adventurous with your life (instead of just working for someone else) – then I suggest you read a blog post I wrote on how to Make money and achieve true freedom and adventure.

It can change your life!

3. Develop Your Personal Brand

Other surfers compete and become professionals so they can surf, but Laird Hamilton didn’t like competing. Instead, he actively promoted himself as the greatest big wave surfer ever.

Because of this, he’s been in many movies – surf movies as well as Hollywood films. He’s even written a book, had his own clothing line and now has a stand-up paddleboard company.

You don’t have to become an egomaniac, but it’s essential to build your personal brand like Laird. Why?

Your personal brand is the ladder you use to escape the average.

• A well-built personal brand will help you attract attention from the right kind of people.
• It will set you apart from competitors in your niche.
• It will help you develop some notoriety.

I strongly urge you to download this practical guide to branding called “Rockable Personal Branding”. It’s free, and it rocks!

Rocking your own personal brand can give you more of what you want!

4. Setup Your Honeypots and Network of Bros

For the last 7 years, I have been free from all constraints. I have traveled the world, year round, in search of the most epic adventures.

• Steep and deep untracked powder to ski
• Un-crowded waves to surf
• The strongest wind for kite boarding
• The best places for a family to be together

I constantly monitor the weather in different parts of the world, and keep in touch with my bros.

It’s easy to keep in touch with your friends these days using email and social media like Facebook and Twitter.

It’s really exciting to login and see what sort of adventures are going on with my friends, where the best conditions are, and where I want to be.

When conditions are perfect – then my family and I travel there on a moments notice.

But, to be honest … it can be a real pain in the ass dragging all your adventure gear around the world.

So I setup “Honeypots” (little compounds) – at key locations.

Each Honeypot has a place to stay, a vehicle and all of the gear we need. We can fly in, and not miss a beat, and be up on the mountain or out in the water the same day.

For example, our Mexico Honeypot is all about surfing and the ocean.

So we have jet skis for tow-in surfing and fishing, a 4X4 truck and camper for surf trips, kayaks, fishing gear, kite surfing gear, surfboards, etc.

We also have Honeypots in Utah, California, Alaska, Argentina, Central America, and the Mentawaii Islands. I’ve been working on adding some new honeypots in Europe.

However, just recently I’ve started thinking about simplifying everything, and owning less, and not constantly adding more, more, more.

In that vein, I’ve been thinking about turning our Honeypots into a club of sorts – allowing “members” to use each facility as they like …

I can imagine a situation where we offer workshops at each Honeypot for members.

Creating a club is just an idea right now, but if I go that route, I’ll let you know.

If this idea appeals to you, please let me know in the comments, and subscribe to my email list so I can keep you informed.

5. Become the Fittest You

To have the most fun on your adventures, you need to be as fit as you possibly can.

Skiing down massive mountain lines in Alaska is not too fun (or even safe), if you have to stop 10 times to rest on the way down. You want to ski those lines from top to bottom.

In order to do that, your legs have to be trained, flexible and strong.

Same goes for surfing. It doesn’t make sense to fly half way around the world to go on a surf adventure, to paddle out and retire to the beach after 2 hours, because your arms and shoulders are too tired to continue.

When the surfing conditions are good and it’s pumping, you will want to stay in the water for 4 to 6 hours and milk it for everything it’s worth. Don’t let your body let you down!

The beauty of fitness is that it is a system you can implement and automate. The way you automate your fitness is by turning it into a habit.

To turn your fitness system into a habit, do it consistently for 90 days. After exercise becomes habitual, every day you will look forward to doing your fitness training.

It may seem hard to believe now, but it’s true!

The fitness system I do takes an average of 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week.

You can do it anywhere, at home, while traveling. It doesn’t require a gym, but you can do it in a gym if you wish.

It is a mix of: circuit training, functional fitness, strength and balance, cardio, and yoga.

If you are interested in learning the system, you can download the free video training here.

6. Always keep learning and practicing

This could very well be the real secret to happiness:

Learning new (exciting) stuff + Practicing = Happiness

Learning and practicing new things keeps you firmly rooted in the present moment, a place of tranquility.

When you are learning something new like: playing an instrument, speaking a new language, marketing, or surfing, you can’t think about much else other than what you are doing.

In that moment of practice – when all of your other cares fade away in concentration, you have a quiet mind. Paradoxically, this is also when our best ideas usually come to us.

There’s a great book on this subject called “The Practicing Mind” by Thomas M. Sterner. Grab it now, I guarantee you will LOVE IT.

7. Take some risks and overcome your fears

Though I’ve been described as a risk taker, I am quick to let people know that I am a calculated risk taker. Big difference!

There are many activities I don’t do because I consider them too risky, like base-jumping for example.

When I go surfing or skiing, I stay safe within my limits. To me it’s an average risk.

To a bystander with no experience in the sport the risk is absolutely crazy. I kind of like it that way actually, people thinking I’m a bit of a nut for doing what I do.

If you’re an adventurous person, you might be falsely labeled “fearless.”

Fear is a great motivator and attention getter. That’s why the media, politicians and corporations spend time and money trying to convince people that the world is a scary place.

It’s not. Even for the most adventurous people, disaster rarely strikes.

The secret to overcoming fear is to acknowledge it, feel it, and then take the risk anyway.

8. Develop a clear vision of what “adventure” means to you

To some people adventure is making it to the next level in their favorite video game. Sure that can be fun but it’s not REAL ADVENTURE.

Grab a pen and paper and spend 30 minutes writing down everything that comes to mind when you think of Adventure.

What types of Adventures excite you?

Perhaps like me you enjoy the great outdoors and traveling.

Or maybe you prefer exploring ancient ruins, trekking, hiking, or going on a safari?

Maybe you prefer something entirely different.

Be creative. Whatever comes to your mind, write it down. This helps you plan your dream lifestyle.

9. Set some Adventure Goals

10 out of 10 of us die! That’s a fact! You can’t avoid it.

Another fact is that life is short and if you don’t take charge, it can pass you by.

Commit to experience the adventures you want to go on – before you die.

Choose 5 to 10 adventure goals that you’re most excited about from your brainstorming session.

Pick one that you will do within the next 3 months. Then pick another that you will do in the following 3 months, and so on.

Your first goal should excite you, but it also needs to be reasonable so you can achieve it and build momentum.

With that momentum and faith in yourself you’ll go on to achieve the rest of your goals.

10. Take Action – Just Do IT! Get Your Ass Out There!

Be strong and tough with yourself and commit to giving yourself the gift of an adventurous life.

Don’t just stare out the windows or plan to do something later.

Get on it, and take action right now!

Do the brainstorming session.

Set some Adventure goals, and choose the ones that excite you most.

Choose one adventure goal to complete within the next 3 months.

Then figure out what is the first action step you can take towards your first goal.

Maybe it’s doing some research on the Internet, or asking people some questions. Figure out what that first step is.

And then….TAKE IT!

Life is an Adventure!

Here’s to living an adventurous life!

Yes Laird Hamilton taught me all this. Thanks Laird.

Leave me a comment if you would, and let me know what you thought of the adventure video and of the tips.