The purpose of this 3 or 4 post series is to save you time and money. I’ll take you though the steps you can use to determine if your new idea or product that you want to create will be worth your time and effort.
Which guy would you rather be?
Jim, who spends a year creating a membership website for a certain niche that he believes would love his product;
Or Jeff, who spends a month testing his niche market, only to find out his idea for a product would have totally bombed.
I choose Jeff. Why?
Because when doing any kind of business, there’s a HUGE difference between what you believe, and what you know. And here’s the ugly truth – what you believe means nothing. Your gut feeling can only take you so far. Jim’s beliefs may or may not turn out to be profitable for him. Jeff knows his idea is not going to work, so he’ll move on to the next until he finds one that does.
So how do you know for sure if your idea will be successful or not, before you begin investing a significant amount of time creating your product? Click to continue…
When I was attending architecture school at Cal, I took a class called Environmental Design 11A: Intro To Drawing. It was four hours of class on Monday and Wednesday, and a meetup for an hour on Friday as well. The crazy part was that this didn’t include the time that was needed to complete our weekly projects. In total, I was averaging about 35 -40 hours a week just for this one class out of my entire schedule. Ah, the life of an architecture student.
During the semester, we were taught that one technique to make our drawings look more realistic is to not focus on the object that you’re drawing, but to focus on the shadows on and around the object instead. Why? Because shadows are everywhere, we just don’t realize it.
If you take a quick glance around the environment you’re in right now, whether your inside a home or office, or outside in a cafe – you’ll begin to notice that shadows are everywhere. Even in and around the keys of your keyboard lie a very precise pattern of shadows.
If you try to draw something, it will not look realistic without shadows.
After I learned this lesson, I began to look at the world in a different way. I noticed shadows everywhere, and I became a better artist as a result. Some of my non-architecture friends thought I was weird, because I would point out certain shadows that looked really fancy or interesting to me. Ah, the life of an architecture student. Click to continue…
I Give You Permission to Succeed, By Pat Flynn
You might be wondering to yourself, “Who are you, to give me permission to succeed?”
“Who are you, to tell me when I can do things?”
“Who are you, to grant me any kind of permission to do anything?” Click to continue…
Last night, I was watching an episode of the Tonight Show with Conan O’ Brien with my wife. We often catch the beginning to laugh at his jokes and how he makes fun of himself and his goofy hair, but we rarely sit to watch the interviews. Seth Green, however, was the first guest, so we decided to keep the TV on. We love Seth Green.
In the middle of the interview, Seth talked a little bit about a video he put up on YouTube and Conan had asked him if he ever goes online to read comments or see what people on the Internet are saying about him. Seth’s response was:
“Never. That stuff is poison.” Click to continue…
“Hello, my name is Pat.”
“Hi Pat. Nice to meet you!”
“Would you like to buy my eBook? It’s only $29 dollars, and I promise it will tell you everything you need to know. Hello…HELLO?!”
(insert obnoxious game show “incorrect answer” sound effect here)
Cold selling, similar to “cold calling”, is when someone tries to sell something to a prospective customer who does not know that person and was not expecting such an interaction. It does not work. You may be able to get a sale here and there, but if you want to create a successful business online, especially one that you can be proud to say you own, you cannot cold sell.
Do you like to get calls from a telemarketer? Do you like to sign up for email newsletters, only to get bombarded with emails that say “buy this” and “buy that”? Do you click links for products in tweets from people you’ve never heard of?
It might sound obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times a day I’m shown some kind of cold offer. In emails, in tweets, on websites – it’s ridiculous. Not only will cold selling leave you wondering why you don’t make any sales, but you’ll lose the respect of people who may have eventually bought something from you, and maybe even help you promote and sell more products.
So the question is, how can we as internet marketers, bloggers and entrepreneurs sell something to people online, without cold selling? Click to continue…
Using a custom blog theme or website design is not necessary to succeed online.
In fact, when I started doing business online, I used a free wordpress theme and was still able to generate a great income from both Adsense and selling information products. So, if you’re worried about how much money it takes to get something started online, don’t – because it doesn’t cost much at all. Find a niche, get a domain and a host, and start creating content and building authority for yourself.
Free themes are great, but there two major drawbacks:
- Their features can be very limited.
- They are not unique.
Everyone has access to them, so it’s not very uncommon to come across a website that uses the same free themes, even in the same niche. Although content is what really matters, I have to be honest and say that if I came across two websites that had the exact same design, it would bother me. Maybe it’s just me. Click to continue…
Every once and a while, I like to post something about me and my family here to keep you updated on what’s been going on lately. Not only is it a nice break from a long string of hardcore blog posts about online marketing and blogging, but I just like to get personal and show you a little of what I’m about sometimes beyond what I do online.
If you don’t know already, my wife and I are having a baby boy in January. This weekend is our baby shower, and we’re totally excited! It might sound crazy to you, but there should be around 80 to 90 people attending. We’re a Filipino family (my wife is full, and I am half), and there are two things to understand about the Filipino culture: Click to continue…
Yesterday, on my Facebook page, I had asked the following question:
Which of these book titles do you think would sell better? “How to Be Happy With Your Dog”, or “How to Stop Your Dog From Biting You”? And why?
26 interesting and intriguing comments later, I decided to write a blog post about it because I think we could all benefit from the conversation.
Before I begin, I’d like to mention that seeing this conversation unfold directly on my Facebook page was really amazing. I honestly don’t think interactions like this, involving this many people and being so useful for everyone (even people not directly involved in the conversation) can happen on a platform such as Twitter. Google wave…maybe. If I only had an invite 
Click to continue…
How much money would you need in a year to live a comfortable lifestyle, one where you know your bills will be paid, you’ll have a roof over your head and there will be food on your plate, plus a little extra for fun? $50,000? $75,000? Let’s just say you need $100,000 a year, just to be generous. To put it into perspective, the mean household income in the U.S. (the last time the survey was taken in 2005) was $60,528 USD.
If you sell something online for $30.00, how many units would you need to sell in order to support a $100k lifestyle?
The answer: 3,333 units Click to continue…
Over th
e last month, I’ve been trying to figure out how to best utilize Facebook as a blogger. To be more specific, I wanted to focus on what Facebook could offer me as far as:
- Getting traffic to my blog
- Interacting and building relationships with my target audience
- Helping to establishing myself as an authority
These three things are all important aspects of becoming a successful blogger, as you probably already know.
I tried to look for posts from the big time bloggers specifically about Facebook and how one could utilize it for their blog, and if it was even worth it. Well, I couldn’t find any definite answers, so I figured I’d just do it myself, see what happens, and report my findings back here for you. That’s kind of what I usually do on this blog.
Anyways, the following is a compilation of what I’ve learned, which I hope many of you can use as a guide if you’re at all interested in using Facebook for something useful other than poking your old high school friends, or showing off your latest Bejeweled Blitz scores and Farmville achievements.
Click to continue…
No, I'm not a millionaire, but I am living off of passive income made online. I'm here to show 
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