How Would You Like 5 Million Dollars?

Here’s the scenario:

You have a business idea that you could build up and sell in 3 years for $5 million – guaranteed. However, during those 3 years, you will be required to work an average of 75-80 hours a week.

Would you do it? Why or Why not?

I had asked this question to my fans yesterday on my Facebook Page, and the response was incredible. Within a few hours, over 25 people responded with various reasons why they would or wouldn’t go through with it. All had very valid, but different reasons.

What’s the purpose of this exercise?

The purpose of this thought exercise is to get you to really think about what’s important in your life. Thinking about this may put things into perspective as far as the lifestyle that you live now, the lifestyle you’d live while working 80 hours a week, and the lifestyle you’d have after you sold your business 3 years later. What’s important to you? It may have an effect on what you end up doing now.

Please assume that the $5 million is totally guaranteed (don’t ask me how, it just is. This is a hypothetical thought exercise people!), and you must do all of the work yourself (i.e., you can’t outsource any part of it).

Finally, I still have a few new versions of The 4-Hour Workweek to give away. I’ll select one random commenter (I’ll email the winner on Friday, 1/29) to send it to free of charge, so long as you answer the entire question:

Would you do it? Why or Why not?

Help Me Name My eBook and I’ll Send You The (NEW!) 4-Hour Workweek!

When I heard that Tim Ferriss was releasing an expanded and updated version of The 4-Hour Workweek (with 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content), I was super stoked. The original was one of the most inspirational books I’ve ever read, and I’d like to partly credit my lifestyle as it is now to Tim and the words in his book. So, I pre-ordered a copy of the new one.

Oh, and I also pre-ordered 9 other copies for all of you!

All 10 books were delivered to my front door this morning, and I’m so excited to announce that from now until after the new year, I’ll be giving away 9 copies of The 4-Hour Workweek for free! I’ll be giving them away here on the blog, to my fans on my Facebook Page, and I also have a special giveaway that is only for those of you who have subscribed to the RSS Feed, so make sure you subscribe to get more details about that later.

See, even Gizmo enjoys Tim Ferriss…

Before we get to any giveaways, I need your help…

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Do You Pass the Test? An Online Entrepreneur Mindset Exercise

Imagine you’re in this scenario:

You have an online business as a graphic designer coach, which means you teach other graphic designers how to make money with their talent. You have a coaching program that has videos and tutorials about how to contact potential clients and really expand their own freelance graphic design business.

To promote your $497 coaching program, you decide to hold a free webinar where you’ll be giving a short presentation and then pitching your course to whoever is watching. 300 people come online to watch your presentation. At the end of your extremely helpful and convincing webinar, you tell your audience about your coaching program, why it will sky-rocket their graphic design business, and where to get it. You also tell them that if they have any questions, to shoot you an email. You go to bed with dreams of seeing an inbox full of transactions in the morning.

You wake up to see that you have 75 unread messages in your inbox! Payday baby! But wait…

You open your inbox to see that you’ve only sold 4 programs, and the other 71 messages are questions from the webinar. 71 emails that you have to go through, some of which are a bit lengthy.

At this moment, how you would feel?

Go ahead, really think about it for a second…

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A Reader Asks: “Why Can’t I Make Good Money Online?”

Yesterday, I received an email in my inbox from an SPI reader asking for some help. He said it was cool if I posted our conversation on the blog for others to read, but he wanted to remain anonymous for some reason. I respect his request, so for this post – let’s just call him Joe.

(I’ve condensed and edited the conversation below to get the point across)

Joe: Pat, I need some help. I’ve been a blogger for a couple of years now. I’m a fantastic writer and I believe I have premium content on my blog, but for some reason I’m only making a few dollars a month from my advertisements. I see that just your Adsense Advertisements alone on your monthly reports pull in upwards of $2000 and more. What am I doing wrong? Why Can’t I Make Good Money Online? Any advice? Please be honest. I want to succeed.

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What Would Happen if Google Shut Down? Would TSHTF?

Here’s the story:

I remember back when I was in middle school, my dad would sometimes come home from work and talk about how he “Googled” something. I had no idea what he meant,  so I looked up “Googol” in the dictionary (from the bookshelf in my room) and found that my Dad was doing something related to “The number 1 followed by 100 zeros.” I still didn’t know what he meant. This was before Google really became what we know Google to be today.

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6 Months of Passive Income Polls From You – The Results

Each month since the beginning of The Smart Passive Income Blog, I’ve put a different poll in the sidebar. I’m sure many of you repeat visitors know this, and I thank you all for your quick input. There’s a new poll in the sidebar, so feel free to answer that if you have a few seconds to spare.

Today I’m showing you the results of all of the previous polls on SPI. Here are 6 pie charts with information about all of you. Please know that these are just from readers of my blog and the sample size for each poll is an average of about 130 people.

Comments are welcome. Enjoy!

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So What Projects Are You Working On?

Today I made a list. It’s a list of things I’m currently working on and projects that I could potentially work on in the future to earn more money. As you know, I have my LEED exam prep website, my iPhone app company, the Smart Passive Income Blog, and 5 other things that I’ve mapped out and have actually done some research on how much I would have to invest to execute them. I have 8 things on my plate that could potentially help me get to retirement sooner.

It’s tough to think about all 8 “projects” at the same time – I think that’s the problem I’ve had ever since middle school when we were first introduced to attending more than one class per day. I knew I had homework for Math, Science, English and Band, so I had difficultly choosing which one to work on and when. Yes, I would get everything done, but not one at a time. Usually, it was by working little by little on each.

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How Well Do These Descriptions Stand Out From The Crowd?

In my last post, titled Know What Makes You Stand Our From The Crowd and “Milk it“, I asked anyone who had a website to give me a description of why people should visit their website, for a little exercise we’ll go through today. I was a little surprised to see only 25 comments, and I know there are a few of you who have websites who didn’t submit. Oh well…

25 will definitely be enough to create a “crowd”. So, here is your task. As you read (or scan) through these, notice which descriptions catch your eye or make you think twice, and why. We’ll do a little assessment at the end.

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Ask the Readers: How to Motivate the Unmotivated

It can be hard to stay motivated – not just with Internet Business, but with life in general. At one point in our lives, we’ve all said to ourselves: “I can’t do this”, “it’s not worth it”, and “I feel like giving up.”

Whatever “it” is that we feel like giving up on, whether it’s a project, a goal we’re trying to achieve, or something else – realize that all of those negative feelings are just a test. I view it as the Universe’s way of “weeding out” who can do what – putting these thoughts in our heads and only letting those who can overcome them succeed. You can succeed in whatever you want to do, you just have to find out how you best can overcome those “anti-success” feelings. Find out what motivates you, and let that be your way out.

What motivates is different from person to person. Maybe it’s a quotation. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s just knowing that there are better things to come.

For me, it’s my family. I work hard everyday to make sure I can be with my family and support them not only financially, but physically (being present) and spiritually as well.

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Niche Blog vs. eHOW: A New Game Plan

With all of the people commenting and watching my every move on eHow, you’d think I was possibly running for president or something! Anywho, I just wanted to say thanks for all of your responses to my “I Need Your Help” post. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many comments come through on a single post in such a short period of time.

I’m glad to see that I’ve started a kind of debate over the benefits of writing on eHow vs. writing for yourself on your own blog. I’m glad this is happening because I’m hoping I will be able to answer people’s questions as to which one is better for them.

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