Making money to escape the rat race, 5 ways to help quit your job

Life is for living right? So why is 90% of the world stuck working 40 - 60 hours a week, in a job they can bare - just to be living pay check to pay check not making enough money? It doesn't seem fair that we are given restrictions on when we can see our families, when and how much time we can have on holiday or be restricted to a pay rate that suits the company in making money - not so we can enjoy life!

5 options to mull over and weigh up which will be your vehicle out of the rat race:

PROPERTY - Yes, I can hear you say - property NOW? In this economy! To be honest, yes property is a great one. Do the research, look in the papers, talk to real estate agents, and your bank. There are many ways of making money in property - a fantastic book to read is "0 to 150 properties in 3.5 years" by Steve McKnight. It shows you many different ways in an easy to read format! Follow this and you will be on your way!

STOCKS - Now don't shake your head at me and think I am completely mad. Before you jump to any conclusions read the article "Buy American, I am" by Warren Buffet. Here is a man who has survived stock crashes previously, and is one of the wealthiest men in the world, from stocks. My suggestion is do the research, if you are passionate about stocks - you will find a way to make money, especially at this time! Speak to others who are making money in stocks at this time - and learn from them.

DEVELOP YOUR OWN BUSINESS - You may be sitting on an idea that the world is craving right now! Put a comprehensive business plan together and ask people what they think. This may be hard, as it is your "baby" they are talking about - but see if there is a recurring theme in their comments, if there is, adjust it so it becomes a positive attribute. A fantastic book to read is "The E-Myth" by Michael Gerber - he writes in laymen's terms on how to make a business work for you, not you work for the business. After all you are after freedom not working harder than you are now right?

FRANCHISES - If you feel that building your own business is too much of a risk, but still like the idea of having a business, Franchises are another great way to go! With proven systems that work and have proven profits, what more could you ask for. They often provide guidance and support through the whole way. One thing to keep in mind with franchises however is that you will need a substantial amount to invest with. Banks will probably lend you business loans for a franchise more so than an unproven business. Pick your franchise, check it aligns with your goals and also values & beliefs and you are on your way!

BUSINESS FROM HOME - With the internet so readily available anywhere, it is easy for certain business to run from home. If you want to be home for kids, want to be your own boss and earn what you put in, a home based business is one of the best options. There are thousands out there, so it is important to do your research, as the one that looks too good to be true may often be illegal. Find a home based business that interests you, check that it will give you the freedom you are looking for and also the income. A lot of home based businesses are quite cheap to start, so great if you don't have much to begin with.

What now? As you read the above options, one may have stood out more to you than the others. Begin your "escaping the rat race" journey with that one. If it doesn't work out, don't be discouraged move to the next. You will learn more about what you do and don't like as you go, enjoy the triumphs and learn from the mistakes. If you stay committed, it won't be long before you are living the lifestyle of your dreams.

3 Fast And Easy Ways To Make Money

Seems like everyone is looking for the fastest and easiest way to make money on the internet.

Over the last 5 years or so, I’ve tried literally every technique there is. Here are 3 quick and easy ways to make *some* money online.

Side note - because these are fast and easy methods, it means the amount of money to be made is somewhat limited. The most money you can make online will be from long term efforts requiring hard work (but who wants to do that?)

The following list is in no particular order as far as ease or money making potential

1) Write website articles and content.

I don’t mean just start a blog and write content that floats around the net like the billions of other websites. By writing content, I mean to get paid for writing content for others.

One thing website owners lack is time. Time to write good, entertaining, educational, and grammatically correct content for their websites. If you have decent writing skills, you can write for many different types of companies and individual website owners (ie - your clients).

A mistake I see a lot of writers make is choosing the WRONG clients. When you decide to become a paid content writer, pick your customers, don’t have them pick you. Don’t go to those freelance sites and beg for work bid for work. You’ll end up getting paid much less than you are worth and have annoying clients that expect you to work for peanuts from that point on.

Instead, contact existing websites that you want to write for. There is a trick to this however, if you want to be successful. Don’t have your first contact be an email asking if they will buy your articles or asking how much they will pay for your content. Those kinds of emails are viewed as spam and will get you nowhere.

Instead, take the higher road and sacrifice your early profits. First, read what their website or blog is about. Try to get a feel for their style of communication. Then, write the most amazing article you could possibly imagine that would blow away their readers. Finally, GIVE THE ARTICLE TO THE WEBSITE OWNER FOR FREE.

What? You mean go above and beyond what the other 75,000 freelance writers will do to get work?

Absolutely! Let the website use your article or blog post on their website WITHOUT giving you credit for it. When you submit the article to them, be sure you tell them it’s a completely original article that is exclusive for their website. Tell them you are a freelance writer looking for a couple extra clients, and this article was to demonstrate your skills which will hopefully lead to more articles for them. They will be amazed by your generosity, and that’s when reciprocity comes in. They’ll WANT TO HELP YOU because you helped them first.

Once they post your content to their website, you can follow up with them to see what they thought about your work. That’s when you can pitch your services to them. Do you see how this technique will get you much better results that shooting an email saying “I write website content, $25 per 800 words. Would you like to buy some articles?” (You laugh but I get emails like this everyday!)

Be sure to pick websites that a) have money to spend on content, and b) will need lots of fresh content to stay competitive in their market. If you do this simple technique, you can easily make $1,000 per month writing for one single website. (based on 40 articles per month at $25/article)

2) Be An Offline Affiliate Partner.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a part time income. The problem is, internet marketing as an affiliate is pretty competitive since there are so many people doing it.

Instead, try promoting affiliate programs offline. Here’s how you do it…

Search online for an affiliate program you want to be promoting. You’ll want to pick something that your local city/town would be interested in. For example, you can go to clickbank.com and search all the various products your can promote from their Marketplace.

Let’s pick weight loss for this example. In clickbank, you can open up their “Health & Fitness” category and see all the programs you can promote. They are sorted by popularity, so typically the first 10 products listed in each category are the best sellers.

This makes your job easy as an affiliate, because you won’t have to guess which products are best and easiest to sell.

Let’s say we decide to promote the first one, Fat Loss For Idiots. Clickbank says we will earn about $30 for each sale of this product as an affiliate. Not bad.

To promote this product offline, it’s pretty simple. All you do is go to godaddy.com and purchase a domain name. Preferably something short and easy to remember since we will be promoting this link offline and people will have to type it in.

Once you purchase the $8 domain name, you need to get your affiliate link. If you are using clickbank, you’ll need to sign up for an account with them and then click the “create hoplink” link to get your affiliate referral link.

Now that you have your affiliate link, you take that affiliate URL and go back into your godaddy account to find the domain name you bought. There will be an option there to do a “redirect”. Choose that option, and it will ask you which URL you would like people to be redirected to when they type in your domain name. Here, you simply enter your affiliate link.

That’s all there is to it. Now that you are officially an affiliate partner, you can begin promoting “your” new website.

You can print up a flier or business cards with your URL on them, and post them on those corkboard message boards in your local gyms or grocery stores, stick them in fitness magazines in your local bookstore, anywhere you think people who are interested in weight loss will find them.

You can place classified ads in you local paper or pay a flier distribution service to put fliers on people’s mailboxes.

Your income will depend on how many people find your marketing materials and how many of those people actually go to the website to learn more. There’s no reason why you couldn’t get 2-3 sales per week from this technique. So, 10 sales per month @ $30 each would put $300/month in your pocket and you can be up and running in about 3 hours from now.

3) Implement The Latest Internet Marketing Tricks For Others.

If you are like most people in the internet marketing niche, you have a hard drive full of ebooks teaching all the latest “tricks” to make money online. Many of these tricks actually do work, even if it’s for a short period of time. The problem is, a lot of these techniques require you to already have an existing website setup or have an existing email subscriber list, etc.

If you don’t have these previous requirements, it can be frustrating for you because you know you can use these tricks if you just had the existing website or just had a subscriber list to start with.

Well, I’ll be the first to tell you that I hardly ever get caught up in the latest tricks and fads of internet marketing. Not because I don’t think they work, but instead because I don’t have time to learn them and put them into use. I’m too busy running my businesses (like most website owners) to get sidetracked by these new ideas.

That’s where you step in. Let’s say you just bought an ebook teaching you how to use Youtube to generate lots of traffic to a website. You’ve read this ebook 2 or 3 times and know this stuff inside out. Guess what? Now, YOU’RE CONSIDERED AN EXPERT.

Becoming an expert is pretty easy. In fact, if you know more than someone else about a certain topic, you are an expert compared to that other person. So, you being the expert on a specialized topic such as generating traffic from Youtube, can come to me as a website owner and propose an offer.

You can word is something like this…

Hi website owner,

My name is Tom and I specialize in generating traffic to websites from Youtube. I think I can generate a substantial amount of traffic to your website from Youtube if you are interested in letting me try.

I don’t charge any upfront fees or anything like that. If I’m not able to send you traffic, you don’t pay me a dime. If I do send new traffic to your site from Youtube, then I’d only charge $0.05 per visitor (about 1/4 what you would pay for pay per click traffic).

Let me know if you are interested in trying this cutting edge marketing strategy for your business.

- Tom

In this case, everyone wins. You get to earn money by implementing your new skills, and the website owner gets cheap traffic without doing any work.

If you can get just 10 clients to agree to your terms, and you send each client 500 visitors per month from Youtube, you’ll make $250/month.

So there you have it. Three simple ways of making some money from the net…

The REAL Secret To Making Money Online

I just got an email from a reader who asked a very good question. I’ll copy it below rather than summarize it:

Max - I’m really struggling here. It feels like I work so hard and nothing is working. I made a blog and have been adding lots of content. I’m trying to make money selling ads on my site, but it’s not doing much. I spent hundreds of dollars on search engine optimization ebooks and I am just starting to get some rankings. I spend a lot of money on other marketing ebooks to try to get an edge. I tried Adwords, but never made a profit. I tried the article submission thing and that didn’t do much either. I’m doing everything the gurus are telling me to do, but I’m not getting results anywhere near what the gurus are getting. What gives? You obviously know the secret to making lots of money online. Can you help?

- Richard

Richard’s not alone. Everytime I look at internet marketing forums, blog posts or comments left by readers, this same sort of topic comes up a lot. Most people don’t know where to start, so they just try to do everything at once, hoping *something* works.

Well, I didn’t want to give Richard a “Guru” type answer such as “Try to use the method. I’m sure it’s not the techniques he’s lacking. Maybe his niche topic sucks? Nope, based on the URL he sent me, it’s a pretty decent market.

So, I started thinking back to all of my successes (and huge failures) to see what it was exactly that made me the most money over the years. I thought back over all of my online businesses, and there was one thing that kept popping up over and over again.

I honestly feel this is THE SECRET for the average “little guy” to make a lot of money online. Ok, maybe the second secret to making lots of money (the first would be to sell your website)…

Here is the one thing you should do to make the most amount of money online:

** Develop your own product **

I don’t care if you decide to write an ebook, create a huge cookbook, make training videos, have software developed or make wire jewelry to sell, YOU NEED YOUR OWN PRODUCT.

There are hundreds of things to distract you online when it comes to internet marketing (search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, list building, blogging, link building, forum chatting, etc). Most people spend all their time trying to master these “things”, but these “things” really don’t put money in your pocket. They are simply pieces to the larger puzzle of making money.

I’ve said it many times before, blogging is not the way to make money. It’s a great way to “help” you make money, but blogging by itself just won’t do it. There are a few rare exceptions obviously, but for most people blogging is not the best way to make an income.

If you have your own unique product that nobody else in the world has, you have a great way to make money. Since you own the product, you have an incredible amount of flexibility to work with.

There are plenty of other people out there who are experts in getting traffic to websites or building email subscriber lists or search engine optimization. Let THEM focus on their area of expertise while you focus on creating the best possible product you can.

Once your product is made, you can then have all these other people sell your product for you (as an affiliate or by buying ads from these people). It’s called leveraging the assets of other people, and it’s probably the most important tip on making money there is.

Look at it this way. You could spend an entire year on your website trying to get its search engine rankings up, learning about Adwords and building a list of subscribers. At the end of 12 months, sure you have ONE website that is ranked in the search engines and you have SOME subscribers. Big deal.

What if you spent 6 months working on one product full time, making this product absolutely amazing. Then you spent 6 months building relationships with website owners who are ALREADY ranked high in the search engines, who ALREADY know Adwords and ALREADY have subscriber lists.

At the end of the year, rather than you having ONE “decent” website where you try to rely on making money from advertising, you can instead have your unique product selling on HUNDREDS of websites.

I think many people make the mistake in thinking they have to do everything the “gurus” tell them. There is no reason to master every single marketing technique out there. It’s impossible to do that anyway because you will be so distracted and confused, the results will be horrible. So stop wasting your time. You can’t possibly be good at everything.

It’s better to be a master of one thing (your product) than a jack of all trades, master of nothing.

Of all the online businesses I’ve started, bought or sold, the most profitable ones were those that had their own unique product. It makes perfect sense looking back on it.

You can spend all your time on one website, whether it’s a blog or a content site, doesn’t matter. Even if you get that site to become hugely popular, it’s still only one site out of the tens of billions of sites out there. There’s no way you can reach everyone who is interested in your topic.

So to reach other people in your market, how can you do that if you just have a content based website? You can ask for a link exchange from other websites in your market (good luck on that one). You can pay for links on other sites (doesn’t make financial sense if you have nothing to sell). You can leave comments on other blogs hoping others will follow your link and become a loyal follower (not likely).

When you have your own product, it’s much easier to get exposure on other sites. Related sites will WANT to promote your site (to earn money as an affiliate). You can afford to buy ads because you can directly see income coming in as a result of that ad.

Let’s run some numbers (I’m a numbers guy if you couldn’t tell)…

Option 1 - Build one content website

After one year, you have a website getting 20,000 visitors per month.

You sell 10 advertising blocks at $40/month = $400

You have an email list / RSS readership of 1500 people.

You make $150/month from Adsense

You make $450/month from affiliate promotions.

After one year of hard work, you are up to $1,000 per month in income. Yippee!

Option 2 - Create your own product - in this case an ebook

After one year, your ebook is selling on 300 different websites.

The price of the ebook is only $20 (to be conservative in this example). You pay your affiliates $10 per sale and you keep $10 as profit.

Of the 300 websites that are promoting your ebook, lets say each one only makes 1 sale per week (again being extremely conservative, some affiliates can make 5+ sales per day easily).

So, 300 sales per week x 4 weeks per month = 1200 sales per month.

1200 sales x $10 profit per sale after paying affiliates = $12,000 per month.

Which one makes more sense?

Think this example isn’t realistic? Guess again. Imagine if you spent all of your time for 6 months ONLY promoting your ebook, trying to get affiliates, etc rather than what you are doing now. No more fussing with SEO, wasting money with adwords, struggling to build a subscriber list, all that stuff.

6 months of nothing but promotion is pretty powerful. Getting 300 websites on board over 6 months is less than 2 new affiliates/website partners per day. If you had nothing else to do but try to find affiliates and websites to partner with, do you think you could find just TWO per day?

I’ll tell you right now, creating your own product and marketing that one product is LESS work than trying to build a massive content site. Hmm, less work and more profitable too? What a concept…

So, to answer Richard’s question, I think there are two things he is doing wrong, maybe you are too?

First, he’s not doing things that will directly put money in his pocket. He’s spinning his wheels trying to do everything at once, and while he is getting ok results, it’s nothing to get excited about. He needs to develop his own product first, then spend his time promoting that product.

Second, he has to stop buying the latest “fad” techniques that come out. Yes, perhaps you can make $500 per day making silly Youtube videos this week, but next week that technique will stop working (it always does). So, you gotta buy the next groundbreaking trick and repeat the process over and over.

It’s no wonder people get frustrated trying to make money online…

What do you think about this “Secret”?

6 Ways to Increase Email Subscriptions

Having a large subscriber list can be highly beneficial in any online endeavor. This is because you will be able to send marketing materials to your target audience directly to their inbox. Some people worry about the technical aspects of setting up the subscription form on their webpage but this process is actually quite simple; e-mail management services will give the HTML needed for the subscription form. The real concern is related to marketing.

1. Premium placement – it is recommended for you to put the sign-up form prominently on the home page. It should be visible to the reader before the break (towards the top of the page without the need to scroll down). You can also use graphics or even animation or rotating images to draw their eyes to the registration form.
2. Use multiple forms – you can put the subscription form on most of your web pages. Putting the form at the end of the article after the reader has read the content has been proven to be effective. Not only will the added reminder help your subscription rate, but if you place forms after your content there’s a good chance prospects have already been exposed to your information and enjoyed it (otherwise why would they keep reading?).
3. Provide incentives – you hear this tip all over the internet but I will repeat it here because it works. You should offer something for free such as free articles, free e-books, and free contests. You can even offer discount coupons to your products if you are selling something.
4. Provide rationale – information overload is an inevitable part of being an internet user. Realize that your readers suffer from information overload as well so take time to explain why they will benefit from subscribing to your site.
5. Offline methods – exhibits are a great way to solicit subscriptions. When people visit your booth, you can ask them to sign up personally. Many of the methods I discussed in Take Blog Promotion Offline can also be effectively applied to list building.
6. Co-registration – this is a great way to get subscriptions from other websites. You need to have partners who will place your form at their “thank you page” when their readers have already subscribed to their newsletters. Take note that you will need to return the favor.

What other methods have you used for list building? Have you tried any of these that I listed? If so, please feel free to share your experiences with us in the comment section below!