The 4-Hour Workweek
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Its likely that you will have heard of Timothy Ferriss’ book called “The 4-Hour Workweek”. Its a book that has been around for a few years now and last year just before Christmas an updated version was released. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on this book and the topics that it deals with.
1. Quitting your job. For most people this is not an option. While there are people who are working in jobs they don’t like, the vast majority of people must have some type of enjoyment in their workplace otherwise they wouldn’t stick around. I can’t see how the majority of the world is wrong for such a crucial issue. Sure we all need to make money to survive but are we all just doing it so that we are stuck in some type of system? We all dream of working from home and making millions of dollars from our couch, but is it all really achievable and likely? Sure it does happen, but usually that scenario is the result of hours, weeks and if not even years, of hard work.
2. Starting your own business. This is the bulk of the book and what I really enjoyed. I don’t believe in just quitting your job and boating it around the world because its cheap in some countries to do so, I want to work in my own business and enjoy the benefits that can bring, as well as the challenges and learning.
I strongly agree with the principals of how Tim explains trialing your niche, area of focus, to see if it could be a business idea that you can develop to produce a sustaining and recurring income. In particular, I was interested in his thoughts on setting up online businesses to make money from. It is true of what I wanted to achieve when I created this website. A site that would be active on the web, for anyone to come by and read, to provide value, and in return it would be a source of income. Like anything, money doesn’t just grow on trees and takes time and hard work. As Tim sets out in his book, you may need to trial a few ideas before they stick. You won’t make money just like that from the get go.
The other important thing to remember is not to over commit yourself. Start small and dream to grow big. Don’t start big and find that the dream doesn’t come true. Its much easier to upscale if you put in the correct plans and processes from the start, rather than the other way around.
If you do wish to quit your job, live the 4 hour workweek then making money online is a great way of achieving this. Just remember that it does take a real lot of hard work. The competition is tough and everyone wants a piece of the billion dollar pie that the internet is. If you want to make money online I would suggest that you think outside of the square and do something that hasn’t been done before.
As Tim says in his book, its best to sell your product to 200 people who really want it, than it be shown to 200,000 people who couldn’t care less and simply clicked on your ad because they thought it was something else!
Overall, I would give it a 4 out of 5 and highly recommend to any budding business person or entrepreneur, even if you don’t find all of it useful, the aspects on internet marketing, making money on the web and outsourcing are well worth your time.
Make Money from Affiliate Products
It is true that one of the best ways to make money online is from selling your own products. These might be e-books, training audios, t-shirts or a unique mug! Whatever it is that your good at, chances are someone else will be interested in it as well.
But what about if you don’t have the time, skill or knowledge to create your own product? What do you do? Well you can sell other people’s products!
BUT…Isn’t that helping other people make money!? Thats a good question. It sure is helping other people make money, but what do you get out of it? Well, depending on the type of product you might find that your commission for selling the product is actually a large proportion of the product cost.
For example, most digital products that sell for $20 would provide a commission of at least $10. Now, if you don’t have the time to create your own product, and are able to sell 100 of someone else’s product each month then thats $1000 in your pocket. Of course you need to have the right avenue to sell it such as your blog or social networking site, however its a great place to start.
There have been many people who have successfully sold other people’s products to earn a significant amount of money online and all they are doing is promoting a product, the person buys through their link and they get their commission check each month. Simple!?
Well, it may sound simple however it really does depend on what your trying to sell. If its a product that everyone else is selling as well….then its going to be much harder for you to make a dint in the market. So do your research first, and only sell products that you are happy promoting. Its no good selling a product that isn’t going to actually benefit anyone as in my honest opinion these types of products should be shut down and only really valuable and honest products promoted.
You will find that most of the products getting pumped out there are digital products such as e-books. These are a perfect start as they don’t require you to have any stock on hand, can be instantly accessed by the customer and are usually cheap for people to buy.
There is nothing stopping you from making money from offline avenues as well, selling a company’s products. People have been doing it for many many years. Such examples tend to be related to network marketing and there are various companies that have stood the test of time and are well known brands, such as Tupperware, Herbalife and Freelife and will put money into your pocket for your hard work at promoting and building their business.
Like anything in life, you will often be rewarded for how much you put into it, so don’t expect to make truck loads of cash overnight without any work. If its your own product or not, the same obstacles are there that face any business.
How to Build a Successful Online Business
It is truly a great feeling running your own online business. I love the freedom that I have to work from where I want to. Usually this is home, but it can be the coffee shop as I sip a latte and write on my laptop, or even while traveling around the country and also overseas. It is great being able to set my own hours, work on those tasks that I want to and also enjoy the ability to make money online.
I started using the internet about 3 years ago to create income and as soon as I even think about income generating the internet is where my mind jumps to. Now, as you sit and read this, I need to immediately jump to that question in your head, ‘Is he really making any money online?”. Well, the truth is, initially I didn’t. I first got into the internet as a source of income 3 years ago as I said, and it was a real struggle to start generating that income that I desired. I was investigating every single way to make money, but no matter what I did, I never seemed to bring in more than a few hundred dollars a month. Now while this was better than nothing, with all of the hours I was investing into this new online business venture it was not enough to support a full time income and family.
Now, lets jump to today. The journey has been a very interesting experience. I have been able to learn a lot about myself. I have always called myself an entrepreneur. Right from the days of being 5 years old, I was selling my sweets to passers by outside my house for a profit. (Granted, these were my neighbors who were retired and thought I was more cute than them getting a good deal). The thing about the internet that I quickly learnt was that you can’t just jump in and expect to make money. Why? Well, there are so many people trying to do the same thing.
I quickly discovered that in order to be successful on the web, I would need to come up with my own niche and do things that other people weren’t doing yet. This of course is the difference between the types of entrepreneurs who come up with the ideas, and those that follow what others have done. I stopped copying everyone else and started coming up with my own strategies. And this is what you need to do if you want to be successful with an online business. You need to be different. Chances are there are already 1000 websites doing what you are doing, but if you can be different and offer some real value, then you will start to achieve and your goals for income generation will be on their way to fruition.
With any business comes responsibility and hard work. Whether it is a bricks and mortar business, or an online business, you need to work hard at it to be successful. With an online business you have a much lower entry level cost to startup. All you really need to do is pay for some hosting and domain charges and perhaps a website designer if you are prepared to fork out a bit of cash. Because it is such a lower cost to get started, you need to be even better than the rest. A bricks and mortar business will pay for a premises (rental or purchase), staff costs, inventory, equipment, advertising, utilities, etc etc. BUT, if it is run properly, and like a proper business, it can achieve great things and generate a real income to the owner. The key word here is that it needs to be run properly, like a business. This needs to also be applied to the world of online businesses. In order for your blog or website to be successful, you need to run it like a business. You need to manage your site, your posts, or orders and ensure that things are happening. Like a business, you will monitor your success and make tweaks here and there. The same applies for your online business.
There are however great differences between the online and the ‘real’ world. For instance, in the online world, if you make mistakes along the way thing usually can be fixed, or you just drop the idea and move on. In the real world, if you start a business you can potentially lose a lot of money if it fails. Whereas if your online business fails you probably lost a couple hundred dollars and a few weeks of work. I’m not saying that you can’t lose online, but the risk to you financially is greatly reduced. This of course does not take into account all types of online businesses, such as those that sell real products or services. Of whom, you may have larger startup costs such as website design, legal contracts and agreements and some physical space to store your inventory such as a warehouse.
The best thing about an online business is that you can start small and get bigger when you are ready. For instance, I started as a small timer, with my own personal blog and a few Adsense ads on it. I was doing this part time when I had a few minutes free from my full time job as an accountant. Over time, I have spent more time on my online businesses and have branched out into different marketing strategies and opportunities. This has resulted in a much more substantial income with much less hours involved per week than my previous employment as an accountant.
this income of course can only come through one thing, and that is traffic generation. Without people visiting my sites and purchasing my products and services, there is no way I would get exposure and make the income that I am today enjoying. This was my largest hurdle that I had to jump to take my online income from a small amount each month, to a 5 figure monthly income. The best way to reach your audience and generate traffic is through valuable content, and this was explained in an earlier post.
Remember, no matter how hard it may seem, don’t give up. I could have easily given up when I started. It took me 5 months to make any money online at all, and that was a hard part of my life. I was learning a lot about business, about the internet and about myself. But I stuck with it and I have no regrets. Most people will fail, and I see it all the time. The enthusiasm is so high when they start. The chance of getting ahead in life, of making some extra money to allow them to get out of debt, or pay for a new car, or holiday. They see the end result, but don’t really think about the in between bit. They don’t map our their plan to reach their destination, so their journey is full of trouble, wrong turns and dead ends.
At the end of the day. You can do it if you have the right motivation, commitment and eagerness to learn something new. If you aren’t internet savy, then I would recommend that you get some professional help, or do some research. It is so important to make sure you are following the correct process from the start, as a technical problem could cause a larger problem down the track, such as reducing your possible traffic, simply because of the structure of your website design and backend coding. While things may take awhile to get going, if you have a great site, fantastic content and a strategy for traffic, success and realistic targets don’t let anything get in your way of achieving success as you build a successful online business and ultimatily make money online.
How to quit your job and make money online!
Now, before I begin I must start with saying that this post isn’t for everyone. There are a lot of people that love having a job. They enjoy the fact that they go to work, they do their time, get paid and then leave at the end of the day. If that is you, then that is fine, but what I’m about to say is quit your job and never work for someone else again. Now is the time to make money online! Lets get into it!
I worked for a number of years for a large accounting and finance company. This was a great experience but I knew it wasn’t for me for the long term and I was getting burnt out. Like most salaried jobs, even with over time you don’t get paid extra, but as it was a large company, overtime was expected and demanded from you. While I was young I could sustain this but after starting a family I didn’t want my work to control me, so I started to look around for other alternatives, hence writing this blog.
The main issue that I had with working for other people is that, regardless of how much I worked I still got paid the same amount. I also realised that if i did not work then I didn’t get paid. This is something that people struggle to understand sometimes. Why would one expect to get paid when they aren’t working? Isn’t that basically demanding income for no work? I could see that i had a problem. I wanted to continue to ‘work’ while I was at home relaxing. I wanted to continue earning an income while I was sleeping. I saw my bosses. They would come in late, have long lunches and then take extra weeks of vacation. I knew that every extra hour of work I put in, they could take off, and they were still getting paid for not being at work.
Some would argue that they might deserve this, that they have worked their way up the corporate ladder, and can now enjoy the fruits of their labor. I totally agree. The difference is, I didn’t want to wait another 20 years to receive the same benefit. The benefit of income while not being at work.
When I studied at university, I took some personal financial management classes and it was obvious that to have financial freedom you had to establish a passive income. A system that would continue to provide an income on an ongoing basis. This is typically done through financial instrument structures such as shares, managed funds or rental properties.
So with this experience, I knew that to achieve my personal goals of financial freedom and live the life that I wanted to, I would need to setup systems that generate income 24 hours of the day, 365 days of the year. These systems can be anything from creating a product that you sell on the web, to a creative work that earns you royalties from each sale. The key is that the system needs to provide value to people and generate an income for you.
Remember, this step is not for the faint hearted. It does take some initial investment in time and some finances. You need to define your income generating system, design it and then implement. The main thing is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you can use systems that are already working and simply modify them to your own needs. Also there are plenty of products that you can sell for others, including affiliate programs. Just remember, that after you get going, it is easy to maintain and soon you will be working much less hours than you ever did.
Of course, you could just ignore all of this, and keep working those long hours, especially if you enjoy it. Feel free to continue. I would however rather have a few extra days a week to pursue my other interests such as spending time with family, traveling, extra study purely for interest sake, photography and volunteer programs in my community. I was soon earning a few hundred dollars a month and that has simply continued to grow as my systems have become more established and I continue to add content. If you can earn $10 a month, you can easily take that up to $1000 a month, then $5000 a month. It may take 2 years, but once its in place, you can expect to earn a steady income for the future.
Another thing that I hated about working for someone was that I could not easily negotiate an increase in my salary. Why should I have to wait 12 months before my next pay rise? I know the business is doing extra well, why I can’t get the benefit now? Well, when you work for yourself, you basically contribute directly to how much of an increase you have. When you work for yourself, you control how much you want to get paid. At the end of the day you need to do what is right, but having experienced the freedom of working for myself I wouldn’t want to go back.
I’m now enjoying working from home, sharing my experience, knowledge and expertise and enjoying a large income via my make money online principles, processes and websites. If I can do it, so can you!
