There are countless possibilities for side hustles, and the best one for you will depend on your skills, interests, and available time. Here are a few potential options to consider:

1. Freelance work: If you have a particular skill set, such as writing, design, or programming, you can offer your services as a freelancer. There are many websites and platforms, such as Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer, that connect freelancers with clients looking for their expertise.
2. Selling products online: If you enjoy creating or have a knack for sourcing unique products, you might consider setting up an online store. There are a variety of platforms, such as Etsy, eBay, and Amazon, that allow you to sell physical or digital products.
3. Providing services: If you have a particular talent or hobby that you enjoy sharing with others, you might consider offering services such as tutoring, coaching, or consulting. You can advertise your services through social media, local classifieds, or by networking with people in your community.
4. Renting out a spare room: If you have an extra room in your home, you can use platforms like Airbnb to rent it out to travelers. This can be a great way to make some extra money, especially if you live in a popular tourist destination.
5. Driving for a ride-sharing service: If you have a reliable car and a clean driving record, you can sign up to be a driver for a ride-sharing service such as Uber or Lyft. This can be a flexible way to earn extra money on your own schedule.

No matter what side hustle you choose, it’s important to do your research and ensure that it’s something you enjoy and are good at. With a little bit of effort and dedication, a side hustle can be a great way to earn extra income and pursue your passions.

Now, as you may guess, I’m onto a side hustle too. And even though it may not be for every parent of an autist, you may want to reach out to me if you want to know more about it. The good thing about it is:

• it is free to join
• Free training is provided to you
• you can do it from everywhere in the world (yes you would need some tool for calling if you are not in the US, but it’s around 4$/month phone subscription)
• The small business owner you are reaching have nothing to buy (not from you, not from anyone else too)
• and it’s legit. The last four months this program has been launched, affiliates have earned a whopping $1,5 millions in commissions (and counting, …)

Now you may wonder why I am willing to share that incredible opportunity?

Well, first of all, I know that only 1% of people who are reading this post will actually take action. And that’s fine as I want to work with action-takers only.

But second, we both win from it. But reach out and see by yourself, then decide if this is a good fir (or not) for you. It’s not an issue if you don’t want to move forward with it.

How do you reach out to me? Comment of this blog post. Or send me a private message on my facebook page

But first, what’s ROAS?

Return On Ad Spend is one of the greatest KPI that you should monitor whenever you decide to use paid advertising. Simply put, one can summerize it this way:

If you spend 1$ on advertising, and that it can help you generate 5$ sales, then your ROAS is 5. The higher your ROAS, the better. A few caveat though, this KPI needs to be considered along with the charges you incur for producing. But you get the point. So whenever your ROAS is negative, or not so high, you may conclude that you are losing money with your ads. This means that either you should shutdown the ads, or reconsider some parameters.

Case Study

I assume you already know how to setup tracking and analytics for your website/e-commerce store. Which means that you know how to read the right KPIs. Along this case study, I’ll talk about some of the KPIs that matter.

For the purpose of this little explanation, let’s assume that you are a fitness mentor/coach that sell different services. So your high-ticket offer would be a one-to-one coaching program sold at $1 997. This may include a whole package: membership to your gym, DIY at-home video series, nutrition indication, monthly checkup with you and doctors. That’s the full-blown offer. With some experiences, you know that not everyone would convert into a paying customer, especially at that price point. In order then to bring your customer to your “world”, you have published a series of videos describing easy exercises that educates your target customers with your technique. This is a kind of “discovery” package, priced at $17.

See,on this previous paragraph, I’m already bringing you into the world of funnels. While most coaches would only have the $1 997 program to sell, I’ve just shown to you what is called “the value ladder”. This means that you, as a coach, is bringing the customer through a journey where he climbs the value ladder so as to get into the $1 997 coaching program. Not everybody would buy that program, and that’s fine.

But hang-on, I’ll show you how you add more ingredients to this funnel later on this article.

The usual approach (the one that need to be challenged)

Most of the times, you would be considering paying for some online ads so as to get some leads, hoping that they would convert to your $1 997 offer. But the fitness industry is a very competitive one, and even with the best online advertiser, it’s going to be very difficult not to lose money on your ads.

Most people would do the following:

• create a landing page that directly sells the $1 997 offer, with all the arguments and testimonials that are shown on that landing page
• create awesome Ad creatives (graphics, videos, text with great copywriting)
• decide on the Ad platform to use: Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Youtube Ads, Pinterest, …
• set on a budget ant then run the ad.

What’s the issue with that approach?

Let’s say you want to spend $1 000 on that ad. And let’s say that out of this ad campaign, you have generated 30 000 views to the offer on your landing page. Out of these 30 000 views, you “only” need one person to buy the $1 997 offer, and let’s assume you break even (you have some charges for producing your offer too). But this is cold traffic, and converting cold traffic has a very low ratio. Moreover, since there are a lot of similar offers out there, it’s pretty random that you’ll convert. After all, you haven’t build any rapport with your target customer yet, why would they buy from you. In the online business industry, it is assumed that one person will only follow-up with you after seven touchpoints. Have you deployed what it takes to get to those seven touchpoints? Will your potential prospect trust you enough so that he will give you his attention? Given the short attention span that we all face in the internet world, it’s not sure that you have build rapport with a 30 seconds ad, along with a two minute reading on your landing page.

What should be done then?

You should deploy funnels. So let me take you through it. Let’s get back to the assumption that you put $1 000 ad budget, and get 30 000 views to your ad.

Let’s say that out of these 30 000 views, 20% percent clicked on the URL of your landing page. This makes 6 000 people who arrived to your landing page. If your ad is more effective, you can get higher than 20% conversion, but for the purpose of the exercise, let’s assume these are the reference figures.

First of all, on that landing page where you send your ad traffic to, DON’T put yet your $1 997 offer. Instead, put up an opt-in page. An opt-in page is a page where you put a video or an interesting hook with a lot of curiosity that will invite your target prospect to give you his contact so as to know more. This contact can be one, or both, of the following:

• first name and e-mail address. This way, you can fire an e-mail sequence once you get the e-mail address. This will allow you to build rapport. Your e-mail sequence can be as frequent as you want, but most people use a 5 day sequence (in the jargon, it is called the “Soap opera email sequence”)
• facebook messenger chatbot: if the person uses facebook messenger, you can invite him to join your chatbot, and do the education within the messenger bot,

At this stage, let’s say that you have an opt-in conversion rate of 20%. This means that out of 6 000 people who arrived on your landing page, 1 200 gave you their contact, so that you can follow-up with them either via e-mail or via Facebook Messenger.

Now, let the funnel do the work

In your e-mail autoresponder, or with your Facebook messenger bot sequence, you’ll need to mix content that bring value (and build trust) as well as sales pitch. But here again, the goal isn’t to be pushy yet with the $1 997. Remember, we need to bring them along the value ladder. Very few people will directly buy the $1 997.

Instead, bring them to your world and have them get the credit card out with a tripwire offer. A tripwire offer is one that doesn’t cost too much. But it has a very effective result: it’s the first time the prospect commit with you. And as it is always said in the sales field: the first sale is always the toughest

So let’s say that, out of the 1 200 people that gave you their contact, 10% buy the $17 set of educational videos. That’s 120 people at $17 each: which makes a total of $2 040. Remember, our ad budget was $1 000. So at this stage, our ROAS is 2: which means, for every $1 put in ads, we get $2 sale. This isn’t enough yet, as you may still be losing money if you add your different charges.

Now that the prospect has agreed to give you his credit card information, you can make what is called an “order bump”. An order bump is an impulse buy. Think about it as the products most supermarket put next to the cashier desk. For our case, let’s propose to the prospect a $97 nutrition pack book that goes along with the exercises. Out of the 120 people who bought the $17, let’s say that 10% bought also the $97 order bump, that makes an extra $1 164. At this stage, we now made $2 040 + $1 164 = $ 3 204. It’s getting better, isn’t it? Now our ROAS is 3.

But you may be wondering when are we going to sell the $1 997 offer. Well, we can attempt a first try at this stage. Remember, the checkout process isn’t over yet at this stage of the funnel. Now is the time you put out what is called a “One Time Offer”.

Let’s say you’ve already communicated, and prospects know, that your coaching program costs $1 997. With the One-Time-Offer (aka OTO), you can prompt the buyer at his checkout process the THIS TIME ONLY (he can’t find it anywhere else), instead of $1 997, he can get your coaching program for $1 497 (for example). This is what is called the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Let’s say that, out of the 120 persons who’s buying the product, you get a 3% conversion rate, that means that 3.6 persons would buy it. Let’s round it to 3. That means an extra 3* $1 497 = $ 4 491.

After the OTO, our sales is now $3 204 + $ 4 491 = $7 695

This means that, for $1 000 ad spent, we have generated $7 695 in sales. This means that our ROAS is 7,6

We can stop here. But remember, at this stage:

– your prospect have been in touch with your message through multiple touchpoints (ad + remarketing ad, landing page, Soap opera sequence for 5 days inna row)

– some have given you a mean to contact them later on (via email or facebook messenger)

Even after the five soap opera e-mail sequence is over, tou can still continue to nurture your relationship with your prospect by sending other e-mails or facebook messenger. You can also use some follow-up funnels, but that’s another top

Do you see now the power of funnels? Instead of random, unpredictable results with the old approach, you can now have a more predictable result. Now you can work on improving the KPI at each step of the funnel to get even better results. I’ve learned these techniques with Clickfunnels. You can too.

I spent the first years of my professional career as a system and network administrator for Internet Service Providers. My daily routine involved setting-up and running linux-based systems. During my spare time, with some other linux people in town, we started the first Linux User Group in Madagascar. That was around early 2000s. I then arranged with my employer so as to get some free time to pursue some education in the marketing field (not that obvious choice, right?). But I have one thing in mind: I was always convinced I can be great at marketing.

Then I spent the second part of my professional career advising small businesses on how to use internet tools for their businesses. In fact, at that stage, my goal was to be an entrepreneur in the digital business. During that time, we setup some kind of one-stop-shop website providing tools and resources for small business owners. Topics covered on that website include: writing business plans, dealing with sales, managing human resources, …I spent almost seven years doing that.

Logically, I ended up starting my own digital marketing company for the third part of my career. The value proposition was to provide Pay-Per-Click advertising (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads) to my clients so as to get leads. That was back in 2013 and those were so new for my target customers that I spent a whole part of my time educating them. That same offer came with some Done-For-You online community management services. Although I ended up signing for one major Telco company, and smaller businesses, that entrepreneurial journey ended few years after since I wasn’t prepared enough to grow with my client.

From failure to mindset shift

That “failure” (“we don’t fail, we learn”, isn’t it so?) had me go back to employee-mode by becoming the executive manager of another IT company. While that company specialized in integrating network systems, it tried to diversify its activities by setting-up a game developer studio. Few years later, That Game studio was sold to another IT company, and I ended up being one of the shareholder as well as running the company on a day-to-day basis.

During all those years, I’ve always been fascinated by online businesses, all these laptop-lifestyle. I stumbled upon articles about the New York Times best-selling book “four hour work week” of Tim Ferris. All along my professional career, I was connected with the blog ecosystem. By the way, if you look at the first article on this blog (my blog), the first article was published back in may 2008. As most bloggers do, I also wanted to find a way to monetize it.

So as to give more perspective, I have a son under the autism spectrum. And at some point of time, I felt a bit guilty spending so much time at work and so less time working/playing with him. That’s one of the main reasons why I always wanted to run an online business. In my mind, online business will give me the flexibility I would need for taking care of my autistic son since I could generate enough revenue while being able to manage a flexible schedule.

From that point, I wanted to connect the dots between blogging and online business. And I set my target on affiliate marketing: recommending useful services/programs to my readers.

Trying to create a funnel on my own

Since I have some experience on setting-up standalone wordpress blog, I knew I had to setup my own wordpress-based system. From youtube videos, to blog articles I found out that in order to be successful at affiliate marketing, I need to setup some online funnel. Simply put, this would go this way:

• create useful, value-adding content with regards to the product/service I want to recommend

• redirect interested people to a bridge page that captures the e-mail address (or eventually facebook messenger contact) of the reader. This is a key part since we want to be able to communicate with the reader in some kind of automated way (via e-mail autoresponder, or via Facebook bot)
• once the reader opt-in (leave his e-mail), then redirect him to the affiliate offer
• Once we have the contact of the reader, we can then deploy all the funnel so as to educate the reader on the product, provide more value-added content and eventually have him/her buy.

But, although I had a good understanding of the big picture, I had technical difficulties finding out and implementing the right wordpress plugins. I tried free plugins, but they have very limiting features. With the paid ones, I wasn’t still satisfied.

A-ha moment: discovered Clickfunnels

This is the moment that I stumbled upon ClickFunnels . I discovered it back in october 2019. And from there, I stopped trying to setup funnels with my wordpress blog. While, at its core offer, ClickFunnels is a Software As A Service for setting up and running funnels, it goes way beyond that. For example, once you buy your subscription with ClickFunnels, you get a lot of other products. Russell Brunson, the guy behind ClickFunnels, calls it Offer Stacking. My preferred perks that comes with a ClickFunnels is FunnelFlix. It’s like Netflix but with content made for developing yourself as an entrepreneur. Sales, Marketing, Funnel trainings from top-notch coaches are available to ClickFunnels users, as a bonus to their subscription. For example, there are hundreds of hours of video called “AdSkills” inside it. The Adskills course is made by the guy who runs ClickFunnels Ads. And if you ever went into Clickfunnels website, be ready to be “tracked” by clickfunnels everywhere you go on the internet

But there were more exciting things behind. As I digged deeper into the business models of some high-profile “influencers” on the internet, I started to see regular patterns. Think about Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki (the author of “Rich Dad, poor Dad”), Dean Graziosi, Peng Joon…They all apply funnel techniques so as to bring you to their world and sell you through their value-ladder.

As I dig deeper, I found out that Russel Brunson wrote few books describing the secrets for running those online businesses.

• “The Dot Com Secrets” book : this is the book that will show you how to setup, structure and run your online business. This book itself is a game changer, as it shows how you can increase your lifetime customer value (LCV), thereby allowing you to spend more $ for acquiring more customers,
• ” The Experts Secrets” Book. If you want to consider going to th coaching/mentoring business, or if you think you have a message to spread so as to impact the world through your entrepreneur journey, you should check this book. It will show you the right mindset, the frameworks as well as the tools that will transform your mission into a thriving business,
• “The Traffic Secrets” book. If you run a business and considered using the internet or social media as a mean for promoting it (even if you have a brick-and-mortar business), you should get this book. This describers secrets and techniques for finding and attracting your target customers to your offer,

All of those book are “sold” on a Free+shipping model. If you are in the US, I think the shipping fee is $9. For international readers, the shipping is $14.95, if I remember it well.

This clickfunnels community is a great and exciting community to join. As an entrepreneur, I highly recommend you join it. Start by the books I recommended. This probably is the A-Ha moment you’ve been waiting for too.

The A-Ha Moment

That discussion sparkled a lot of thinking from my side. Indeed, this must be a very common issue in the retail business. Since the retail business model highly relies on a very quick rotation of the inventory so as to make some nice results, any inventory that is not rotating is considered as money that is blocked. While sales people can do their best so as to promote the best selling items, there will always be a certain set of items that won’t sell as quickly. But how do you predict what items won’t have the expected success? What if the people who had a certain knowledge about what’s successful leave the company, thereby taking with them that competitive advantage. Worse, what if those key people goes to competition?

In fact, the top manager I dealt with was aware that he needed to setup another solution, another system, that can become an asset he can rely on. It would be a plus if that asset doesn’t rely too much on people. In fact, while he wanted to pump, so to speak, the key people’s knowledge into an information system, he had to be pragmatic: that knowledge is evolving all the time, and most of the time, asking people to document the information system will take some resource from the “productive time” of their key people, and will eventually demotivate those key people.

The options as well as the obstacles

While surfing on the internet and doing his benchmarking, that top manager knew that there must be some solution in the Artificial Intelligence field. That solutions should exist for helping him with prediction for his supply chain management. But few obstacles went on the way, for him to go further:

• the AI-based solutions came with pushy sales people that want to sell high-end solutions that may not fit with his issue. In fact, he first wanted to test-drive before deciding on the solution,
• while test-driving, he didn’t want to share his decade-long customer data history with the first AI-solution provider that come in. Indeed, that data are part of his competitive advantage asset

So how should the top manager approach the issue, and thereby give a test-drive without having to reveal his own data? And how can he “play” with the solutions without putting a huge investment upfront?

How to play with it without huge upfront investment

Big names are usualy mentioned when it comes to Supply Chain Predictive Analysis software that comes with some Artificial or Business Intelligence. His top-of-mind options were SAP Supply Chain Analytics Software , PeopleSoft Supply Chain analytics by Oracle, JDA Supply Chain Analytics. But he was afraid of the expected upfront investment. In fact, he didn’t want to deal with the back-and-forth discussions that would imply if he requested some information from those big names.

Being a bit techie, the top manager considered freemium or open source solutions for implementing a test drive. A few searches on the internet helped him identify some soutions that seemed to fit his needs. While the freemium option could be interesting, he was afraid that he won’t event have the time to get a glimpse of all the features and the trial period will be over. Moreover, since he’s not well-versed into all the techniques, he would have to go through some learning curve before being able to really appreciate the value provided by whatever solution he’ll be trying.

As a last resort, he considered going the open source way. Being a bit techie, he knew that going the open source way usually means that you are give the ingredients, and it’s up to you to make the neede assortment so as to get a nice food, so-to-speak. So he had to be psychologiclly prepared to doing a lot of research. As he moved along, he found out that H2O retail use case resonates with him. The logos that are listed under he use case gave him trust too. The issue he had was that he had no internal human resources that could work on the topic with him. He had to work it by himself.

Where do I find dataset

After rolling his sleeves, the top manager decided to go with H2O solution. While he was scroling through the documentations trying to understand where to start, one question still remained unanswered. Supposing he could find out how to make it work, how can he test without revealing his own company’s data? After all, he has no clue what would be done with his datas that will be manipulated by that open source project.

Here again, search on the internet got him covered. In fact, he found that some websites provide some open data sets that he can play with. In fact, on a website called Kaggle, he could find actual, but anonymized, dataset from actual retailers. The datas are distributed under the Creative Commons license, meaning he could use it without major licensing issues.

Is this the best solution?

The top manager I talked with have found an AI-based Supply Chain Management system. Moreover, he could find a data set to play with. He is fully aware that on of the key success factor to his project is his ability to put everything together. And this is where some specialisez help may come handy. In fact, on of the biggest challenges for implementing such project is the ability to implement all the specific need of the customer. While on this case, the open source solution is technically feasible, some people may not be willing to roll their sleeves and get their hand wet with the intricacies of setting up the system. But, even with paid solutions, one can’t ignore that integration step. Would it be a solution to specialise an in-house resource who would lead those kind of transformative technology? I would say yes. After all, that system addresses perfectly the initial issue: it transfers the majority of the knowledge from key people to the AI-based tool. Which means that the competitive advantage asset moves from people (who can go away), to a system that the company owns. And that’s a huge transformation. And I am not even talking about the awesome features that the machine learning powered solution is bringing to the table. So yes, the open source way may not be the best solution for everybody, but it’s a nice introduction path to AI. And it addresses one of the big issues retail companies face: supply chain analytics and forecast are addressed in a more structured manner.

In this article, I’m going to give you some illustrations that will, I hope so, make things simpler.

Artificial Intelligence

Simply put, this is a set of techniques that gives some kind of intelligence to machines. By intelligence, we mean the ability to analyze and take decisions or make predictions based on a set of data that have been provided to the “system”. I’m talking about “system” since, most of the time, the “machine” is a set of hardware and software. Sometimes, the hardware comes with some sensors that capture datas. Think about those self-driving cars that come with a lot of sensors and data so that it can take you from point A to point B without human interaction.

Historically, the term “artificial intelligence” first appeared in 1956. Not that new isn’t it? In fact, a lot of research has already been done in this field. If you discuss with some mathematicians, they’ll surely fool you with a lot of models and techniques that all converge into Artificial Intelligence, or at least the use case that we are now aware of.

But why did it take so long before Artificial Intelligence got some popularity? One of the reasons is that the computing power for treating all those datas wasn’t available, and it was still so costly to use. Moreover, it was hard to gather a lot of data. Now, with the popularity of cloud computing as well as big data, the ingredients are there so as to play with this artificial intelligence. The exponentantial adoption of social media also generates a lot of data to compute. Moreover, even single laptops are now so powerful that they can deliver astounding calculation power. Just check those gamer laptops that are available right now and you can see how realistic the rendering are.

In our daily lives, we have seen a lot of application of Artificial Intelligence: from the youtube video recommendation, to the GPS your car is using to suggest to you the best route. With all those self-driving cars, as well as drone-delivery, there’s a lot of image-processing algorithms working behind that appeals to AI techniques. The use cases are endless.

Machine Learning

As Artificial Intelligence got more mature and got hold of more computing power as well as enormous data, researchers logically went into imitating human brain. Indeed, as human, we always learn new things: from baby steps to becoming olympic athletes. We also get better at some activities. The question was, what’s the mathematical model that allows “something” to have the ability to learn and get better at one activity. As humans, we call it experience. But what about machines?

With Machine Learning, the system gets better as it is fed with new data. All along the way, the system keeps track of thousands (if not millions) of properties (or variables). As the user adds more input, those properties got reevaluated. Then some algorithm tries to find a meaning, some correlations with all those datas, thereby identifying some patterns or trends. This allows the system to give some recommendations or predictions.

You have surely been faced with “recommendation” services. Think about your shopify or deezer music service recommendation. Have you seen how accurate it becomes as you keep on using the service. Unconsciously, we are using online services that have this machine learning feature embedded into it. Think about your social media feed algorithm, whether it is facebook, twitter, instagram or whatever social media platform you may be using. From whatever input you feed the platform (likes, retweet, comments, …), the algorithm is learning about your preferences, and then, in return, it shows you more content that is more relevant to you.

Getting back to our music recommendation system: in fact, the first time you create your account, the system doesn’t know anything about your music preferences. As you start following some artists, creating some playlist and listening to music, that system creates some kind of attributes of music you like: the tempo, the year the music aired, your friends’ music taste, the time you’re listening to your music, … In fact, that same system collects thousands of attributes about you and your tastes. Then comes the big data analysis (and learning). So the more you interact with the system, or reacts to the recommendation it makes, the more it is accurate.

Usually, Machine Learning have found its way to our daily lives as most apps and web-based applications are now leveraging the pozer of our smartphones and laptops to bring tailored experience to us. One of the biggest users of this Machine Learning technique is the online advertisement industry. But the same can also be applied to other business aspects: let’s think about the inventory process for example: based on different variables (market, trend, internal use, weather, market prices, …), a Machine-Learning based system can recommend the buyer on what items need to be restocked at some period of time, thereby helping for a better and optimized buying planning.

Deep Learning

As we dig deeper into the techniques of Artificial Intelligence, we get into more conceptual approach. The deep learning approach is an exercise where we teach the AI some things we take for granted. For example: once we’re shown a square compared to a circle, instinctively, we know how to differentiate them. But it takes a lot of learning and exception handling so as to help an AI-powered system to differentiate them. Apart from removing the noises that may exist around the forms, we need to teach the system to identify angles. This is an explanation at its basic level, but this kind of processing is the same when it comes to differentiating a zebra from a cow.

One of the most used techniques in this field is the neural network. Simply put, it’s a technique that tries to refer to our brain’s neuronal network. Each neurons is “attached” to some properties/values. Those nurons are then interconnected and interact with each other, changing status depending on the input that external datas will feed them. Imagine a sea that will react differently depending on the different external stimuli: boats, wind, seism, high tide/low tide, whales, pollution, …

Usually, as opposed to Machine Learning, Deep Learning is more efficient when applied to large amount of datas. Moreover, Deep Learning usually referes to the Neuron Network. This usually means there are a certain number of layers that interact each other with each other, and that at the simplest form, a neuron has some attribute. The “interaction” between these neurons will help make informed decision. But clearly, the learning phase of Deep Learning is way longer compared to the “simpler” Machine Learning technique.

Topics that evolves around this AI topic easily gets very technical. In this article, I tried to explain the core fundamentals in simple terms, by using analogies. Most of the times, all the technicalities are handled by software editors, as a user (business user or simple user), you can consider integrating those solutions with the business-end in mind. Think about what you need to achieve, those AI solutions will be on eternal learning mode so as to deliver the best experience. But remember: the more you feed the system with data, the more accurate it can be. Feel free to share in the comments, or in the social network posts where this article is shared, the insights you have gotten from this article. Or even better, suggest some more topics you’d be interested in reading, wile using that same easy-to reand and understand format.

As you may already know, I did the One Funnel Away Challenge by Clickfunnels. The challenge was quite intense. For 30 days, I had to learn and do some exercises. I spent around two hours and a half on a daily basis, doing the challenge. Since I still have my 9-to-5 job (actually, it’s 9-to-6), I had to wake-up at 4 AM, do the challenge, then start preparing my kids for school around 5:30 AM. I’ll then resume the challenge in the evening, once everybody’s at home slept.

I can definitely say that it’s one of the most complete training I could have (and I’ve been through few ones) – especially in the field of Making Money Online.

I bought the physical version of the challenge, thereby I could get the OFA challenge kit (although, due to postal constraints, it only arrive two months after I ordered it). Anyway, I had access to all the digital versions while doing the challenge.

Check my unboxing of the kit on this video

And if you’re brave enough and want to learn the foundations for your next online business, join the next challenge here: https://bit.ly/OFAChangesLife

How does those schemes work?

The idea is that we need to identify what are the programs that are actually working; what are the ones that lay a good foundations for a business; and what are the other programs that are scams that will fade away. Definitely, you need to be able separate the ones that you can lay a foundation for your business on top of. You’ll definitely want to identify those programs that are just temporary offers that may or may not work.

Like most of the online business entrepreneurs I know, I fell into that get-rich-quick-scheme. You will probably do to (if you haven’t yet). So most of the time it happens like this: you follow a lot of people that show what they are doing so as to make money online. Eventually, you join some groups or some forums. Those guys play the showoff game. Most of the time they take photos with some Lamborghinis or big mansions. They show you different pictures depicting what success looks like. And then they pretend that they can achieve that kind of goals because they applied the training or they have found a hidden secret, or, in the jargon, a loophole. And now, they feel the need to share that secret with you.

Some examples

Like most of the people who tried (and failed) in the Make Money Online field, I also fell into this trap. In fact, the story they tell make you fantasize about the goals you can achieve. They make you believe that you can become successful overnight. The convince you that “anyone can do it” and that you can earn thousands, dollars, six figures, seven figures, or even eight figures in a very short period of time.

I haven’t tested them all but I’ve tried a few. You know I’ve subscribed to some of them only to discover that they only scratch the surface because strategically they don’t have the system in place. For example, it’s very popular that you need to drive traffic to your offer so as to get some sales: they may sell you something that goes along this way “Look I found a loophole in Google that can generate some traffic”. They don’t tell you that if your offer sucks it’s not going to work or if you don’t target it well then it’s not working. The same goes for those people telling you what being at the first page of Google can do to your business. They don’t tell you that there is a very specific keyword that you can get into the first page of Google and that on that specific keyword there may not be much traffic. So those are the kind of scams that you may encounter when you’re trying to run an online business.

My recommendations

So what I just want to remind us all as Parents Raising a Different Kid is that I don’t believe in get-rich- quick-scheme. I think that it takes a lot of hard work to run an online business. But if you do it strategically and if you have the good foundations, then you can make it work. I can refer to you at a podcast episode I recorded where I’m talking about figures that can be achieved where Russell Brunson (the guy I’m learning from this online business) said that you can generate one million dollar in sales in one year. Well, he doesn’t mention for example that out of that one million dollars you’ll make 30 percent 40 percent 70 percent profit. But you can do it, and to back it up, you’ve got hundreds of people who can testify they made it, just check the list of the Two Comma Club Award (people who made a million dollars in sales from one funnel they developed)

So that’s the point of today. Don’t fall into those get-rich-quick scheme.

Be prepared to do some hard work and be also prepared to have some team to help you out because one of the core foundations of the program that I am promoting is: “it’s about the Who not the How”. You don’t have to be good at everything to run this business. You have to identify people who are good at it, and work with them. You have to be the master of strategy and do this all the time and then identify people you can work with who can do better than you.

If you want to do the training I’ve taken for laying the foundations of my online business (and that thousand of people did too), join the One Funnel Away Challenge program, I promise you, this will definitely change you life, businesswise.

Stuck in a 9 to 5 trying to make ends meet? Dreaming of having your own business while having enough spare time for other topics that matter? I guess at some stage of our own life, we’ve been into this situation. So we start surfing the internet trying to find out the most promising model that can help us thrive. Truth is: the internet is full of well-written landing pages selling you a lot of promising future. Offer vary from get-rich scheme, to multi-level-marketing. Serious and proven business model are aligned with scam offers that promise you the moon.

The digital nomad fantasy

Tim Ferris’s in his 4 hour Workweek book,describes a way-of-life that couldn’t even be imagined by most people. Hasn’t he benefited from a lot of press coverage and praise, we could think that he is just another get-rich-scheme seller trying to get our money in exchange of a book full of content we could have grabbed, for free, from the internet. But, that’s not the case. So we start listening. As most internet users do before buying, we check for reviews about the concept, we look for other successful people who implemented the concept. And then we start thinking: why not me? What if I tried?

One of the key elements of this 4 hour Workweek concept is the fact that he runs a business that doesn’t need his physical presence all the time. While the business is based somewhere, most of the repetitive work is delegated to virtual assistants.

The rise of new business models

Coming from a bureaucratic world, most employees, or employers, try to bring some kind of work-life balance by allowing remote working. Indeed, the mass adoption of internet have allowed people to work remotely. But the limit of “remote” have soon become very fuzzy. A lot of platform now allows freelancers from Madagascar, Philippines or India to provide services to companies or individuals around the world. Going the freelance way have become an interesting approach for getting some side-revenue for bureaucrats.

But there’s more to it than just challenging the 9-to-5 rat race. More business models emerge as serious alternatives helping those digital nomad wanna-be. While the intent of this artice isn’t about exhaustively listing those business model, we can highlight two business models that are getting traction:

• Print-On-Demand. This is a business model where one designs an interesting work of art, then go to one of the print-on-demand service providers so as to make the work of art available for print on different support(Tshirts, aprons, phone cases, clocks,…). The beauty of print-on-demand model is that there’s no stock to handle. The item is only printed after the customer puts the order.
• Dropshipping: a bit similar to print-on-demand model, Dropshipping goes even further. Simply put, one can have a business without even holding/managing inventory. A customer places an order on your e-commerce website, then you transfer that order to your supplier (who can be anywhere in the world), that supplier then ships the order, on your behalf, to the enduser/customer.

While the above list isn’t exhaustive, I guess these two are the business models that attract the majority of wanna-be e-commerce entrepreneurs who want to live the digital nomad lifestyle.

On the next instalment, I’ll be talking about few options for incorporating your e-commerce business, while allowing to manage everything online, without even having to physically move to your official business address. Stay tuned.

So during the first season of this blog (ante 2009), I mainly talked about combining web2.0 and travel (see, “social media” wasn’t as popular back then), this season, I’m going to talk about…about what? Frankly I’m not quite sure yet.

The very few who read me know that I like showcasing positive things happening in Madagascar. Few years down the lane, I now manage a company called Nelli Studio (www.nelli-studio.com), we’re trying to put Madagascar on the international map when it comes to anime movies, video games while trying to get some piece of the cake when it comes to augmented reality and virtual reality. As the saying goes “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
So here’s the deal:

– get back to blogging again (checked once I hit the publish button)

– rant about topics that matter to me (as of today, I’m attracted by entrepreneurship, startup and all the related topics, it may change later on)

– nevermind about being consistent on the topics (as of today, blogging just help me get my ideas clear sometimes… While I once used blogging for personal branding before)

For those of you who were patient enough to read up to here, feel free to challenge me on the stands (or questioning) I put here…

But since you want your video to be pushed to all the video communities that you are part of (does the following sounds familiar to you: youtube.com, dailymotion.com, blip.tv, …): up to now, the only solution I am aware of is to upload to each of those sites, but, hey, uploading one is already a pain so why would you bother uploading to multiple accounts? But there is a solution that you may want to consider: tubemogul.com that defines itself as:

TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed. TubeMogul tracks rich, standardized analytics far beyond “views,” including per-second audience dropoff, audience geography and much more.

Yes, uploading a video from Madagascar is painful. But, hey, video is a buzz-generator and should be considered, especially if you are working in the travel-field.Moreover, you may have a different set of friends and communities at youtube and dailymotion, … and the tracking feature is awesome as you know which channel works most for your campaign.

Sounds nice? Do you consider using this service? Have you used this service? If so, I’d be happy to hear about your experience