Hello Everyone,

Today we have an interview (podcast and transcript) with another personal hero and mentor of mine – Mr Yanik Silver – Internet Marketing Superstar.

I first met Yanik in 2006 when I attended his Underground Online Seminar 2 in Washington DC. I had never before been to such a FUN, business event and I was literally blown away with the amount of information Yanik and the speakers provided. (This was also the event were I first met Ryan Lee) Even cooler for me, Yanik awarded prizes to members of the audience – such as in my case winning a prize for being the youngest attendee. When Yanik presented me with his Internet Copywriting workshop course (value something like $1497) I really did not know just what a remarkable influence on my life Yanik was about to become. Even though I was just a 17yr old “kid entrepreneur” Yanik went out of his way to inspire me and encourage me as he still does today. Thank you Yanik.

Just a few of the things revealed in this interview are Yanik’s philosophy on business, his passion for helping young entrepreneurs, plus some insights he got from hanging out with Sir Richard Branson in Necker Island and running his newest Business Maverick Business Adventures.

Yanik also introduces us to the principle of creating “Fish” or “Done For You” products – something I am starting to apply myself these days.

Yanik is an all round Good Guy and his annual Underground Seminar is in my opinion a must attend event for anyone serious about making a living online. Next one is March 12th-14th, 2010 in DC – I hope to see you there

Enjoy the interview – I look forward to your comments

Very Best Wishes

Michael

PS: My Takeaway from this interview? Well as always with Yanik there are tons of Takeaways — but one that for me stands out a mile and which is also somewhat obvious is: Your questions dictate your Answers

So often in life and in business we ask ourselves the wrong questions – so next time you are looking for an answer – think “Am I asking the right question?”

Yanik Silver Interview

++ Yanik Silver and Michael Dunlop Enjoying The Casino Evening At Underground Seminar 5 ++

Interview Transcript

Michael Dunlop: Hello everyone, this is Michael Dunlop from Income Diary and today I’m with Yanik Silver, who has being mentioned in dozens of our interviews and top lists and posts throughout the last seven months we’ve had the site up so it’s great to have him here today in person. Welcome Yanik.

Yanik Silver: Thanks Michael, yeah I’m excited to be here.

Michael: Okay Yanik’s being mentioned for a good reason and today we’ll get to share some great advice from him. So I’ll jump straight in with my first question which is – a lot of my readers are starting off with their online business, or blog, or website and so many of them are trying to put together their big idea – so what advice would you give them to bring it together?
Yanik: Well there’s, two parts to it. One is, I really think that, your questions dictate your answers, When I first got started online, I literally was kinda scoping out the scene and this was back in ’99 and I didn’t even have an email address back then and looking at some people that were selling information online and digitally delivering it that I’m like thought that’s an interesting thing. I could probably do that and I’d literally like ask myself the question you know, how can I create a fully automatic website that makes me money while I sleep, is an incredible value for people, and, and is not just an e-book and I’ll explain why, why that was important in a moment, and so literally at 3 o’clock in the morning one night I woke up and tapped my wife on the shoulder- I’m like “Missy, Missy, wake up, wake up, I got this great idea” and she’s like “Oh, please go back to bed” and I’m like “No, no, this is gonna be, this is gonna be really good” and I jumped out of bed and, and took action and so that was one of the key points was, was jumping out of bed and, and taking action, and that’s you know, one of the things that, that I see so many people falling down on – as I think everyone has at least one million dollar idea in, in their head and they don’t, they don’t take that, that positive action to, to get it going. That first idea was a little site called ‘Instant Sales Letters’ and that has gone on now to be my first, that was my very first million dollar product at forty bucks a clip so we sold a bunch of those.

Michael: Yeah, that’s, that’s incredible.

Yanik: Yeah, and, and actually kinda relates to, you know, what, what you mentioned before, Michael, was, you know, how, that the idea stage in, for young entrepreneurs and for those getting started, um, I’m a, I’m a big believer in having that big idea or having a, a big hook which is a unique angle, so like remember in my questions I said it can’t be an e-book, I wanted to differentiate what I was doing from other things out there in the market place at that point, so ‘Instant Sales Letters’ was a series of, of download-able templates that people could use and, you know, the technology behind this is pretty damn crude right now and I probably should update it but I haven’t, I haven’t touched it in probably five or six years, but the, the big idea of that was something that I call it a “fish product” and everyone has heard this saying – “you hand a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish you feed him for life, well that’s kinda bullshit.

People want the fish handed to them you know, and you walk into a restaurant, you don’t want to go out back and go fishing for your dinner in most cases. You want it prepared really nicely by the chef and so that was what ‘Instant Sales Letters’ did and my wife even had a little bit of success kinda knocking me off with instant thank you letters, but you know, anytime you can give people a fish product I always think about okay, what, what can you do to make it push buttons simple for people – how do you give them something on a silver platter. Look at even like Matt Mullenweg and WordPress for example. I mean that, that really took off. I had the good fortune of meeting Matt Mullenweg, down in the British Virgin Islands actually along with your dad, and you know WordPress, I think what makes it so great, I mean there’s a lot of things, but part of it is that it’s so damn simple and it’s like, it’s like the fish product. It’s, it’s handing it to them on a platter for, for concept management, so there’s a lot of those out there and I’ve had good success with that and then the other really big point of the, the big idea is I always think about how can I go the opposite direction? I look at things like my underground online seminar which is a good example of that which stemmed out of me thinking about what’s in the market place right now? and this was five years ago and I’m like okay there’s a lot of internet seminars and there’s a lot of people doing it the exact same way, with pretty much the same speakers, so I thought, okay to really differentiate let’s go with really unknown speakers who are making a whole lot of money online, making millions of dollars but are doing it very quietly and most people never heard of and that was how the underground seminar was born so those are just two ways of coming up with a big idea.

Michael: That’s great advice, Yanik. I’m sure everyone could take something away from that, even myself, at the last MasterMind you had, my dad brought me along and I took away the idea of “done for you” which is sort of the same sort of principles, like, you know, give it to them done instead of teaching them how to do it.

Yanik: Yeah, some people are, are do it yourselfers and then a, a lot of us are, are kinda lazy and, and that’s not lazy in a bad way, but we’re all so busy. However if you present its as “done for you” and the give it to them on a silver platter it works much better. This stems through kinda everything that I try and do, everything from when we get our affiliates to help promote our products, for example you wanna provide your clients with all the tools that they need to do it, all the pre-done emails if possible, and banners, and so forth so they don’t have to think about it too much.

Michael: Yep, exactly and that’s probably touching on my next question- you, you mentioned that, uh, you were selling ‘Instant Sales Letters’ for just forty dollars, but like loads of my readers, um, you know, sending from twenty to a hundred dollars to sell over a million dollars worth you must of, uh, sold a lot, say what sort of, of tools or resources, or what was the idea that you used to sell so much?

Yanik: The biggest thing is partially what we covered is it had a good hook to it and so it got people excited, they could, as soon as they got the site or even heard the URL they, they kinda got what, what it was and that get the ball rolling. I really based a lot of my business on affiliate marketing, where we get other people to promote our products, drive traffic to our site, and right now we have about some forty some thousand affiliates which sounds impressing but the reality of affiliate marketing is that a tiny percentage actually produce business. It is not even like the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle, it’s more like a 97/3 rule or a 98/2 rule, so about two percent are, are driving ninety eight percent of your sales and traffic and, I mean, this is a total aside but I ran an affiliate program for, for one of my friends at one point and we had a hundred fifty affiliates only, and we generated about four million dollars in sales from, from those affiliates in one year, so you don’t need a ton of affiliates to do this right but, but affiliate marketing has always been one of my kinda arsenal weapons of choice because of the low risk involved, because of the fact that I only have to pay my employees once somebody that they referred has made a sale and so the very first thing that I did and it’s so simple and you can still today is, I started thinking about okay, well, where are my existing costumers already and at that point I went to AltaVista search engine which, I don’t even know if it’s still around? Obviously you would go to Google today and maybe a couple of other search engines, but just type in a couple of your keyword phrases and see who else is coming up on top, so who’s in the top ten, so I typed in ‘sales letters’ and I would see, okay, you know, one of the top ones was like a university, they’re not going to promote for me, obviously, or it would be pretty hard to get them to promote for me and then, you know, so I went through the list of top ten, top twenty sites and obviously those top ten, top twenty, had the traffic that I was looking for and so I just contacted them in a very personal way, not in a spam me sort of way, and, and just said ‘hey, you know, I created this site called “Instant Sales Letters” I think, the visitors coming to your site might be interested in this if you wanna come, go check it out here’s a password for it” and you know, I think I got like one or two of those people to, to respond and say “yeah, okay” and then they promoted it and then what I did was kinda of like a, a Chinese water torture where just, we just kept, uh, following up on the rest of those, those hot prospects with, with the results from, from the guys who promoted it so, I just kept them posted: “hey, you know, so and so just promoted this and they made this” and I think I got about thirty, nah, probably like forty percent of my top twenty people to sign up as affiliates pretty quickly and from there it just kinda, kinda grew where we’d advertised it a little bit, we still do some paperclip advertising, but, uh, to tell you the truth the affiliate program the affiliate network is probably the biggest thing that ever really runs it. Articles that I’ve done have helped, but the affiliate program, that is the big one.

Michael: Alright, great, great advice, Yanik. You have got more than just one product here, you got dozen of products and services and events now and you got hundreds of thousands of people following what you’re doing and contacting you, how do you sort of keep up with all of this and what advise would you give to other entrepreneurs with a lot on their plates right now?

Yanik: Ha, I don’t know, you got to figure out where your breaking point sort of is.  I mean I love having multiple things on the go and for some people they like having only one thing on the go. Instant Sales Letters was my very first thing and the funny thing is, uh, that’s probably the most entrenched thing I did because I focused solely on that and built that up and had a good foundation around it and then the other things kinda came as a, as a creative byproduct of, of ‘Instant Sales Letters’ I mean, within four months I was on track to do six figures a year and that’s when people started asking me “hey how did you do this and can you teach me how to do the same thing and that’s how I started creating internet marketing related products based on what I’ve done and so that was all just this weird, you know, side by-product that, well my original goal was to sell ‘Instant Sales Letter’ for half a million dollars to like stamps.com or something like that but, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that today for, just because it’s a great engine that drives a lot of the other things that we’re doing. I try and focus in on what I’m really good at and I’ve taken a lot of different self assessment tests throughout the years and I think any kind of time that you spend leaning about yourself, learning about your strengths, learning about where you fall down, what you suck at, is all, is all really good time that’s proactive. I mean I’ve literally done everything from like a two day test at the Johnson O’Connor Human Engineering Institute, which is, I think they have locations all around the US, I don’t, they probably have some internationally too, to things like now the Discover Your Strengths, Kolbe Profiling, which is a really good test which is online which is ‘Kolbe.com’ um, created by a woman named Kathy Kolbe which is your connotative ability which is like your natural inclination of how you work and I found that, that really fascinating and, you know, for me, my number which won’t mean anything to you right now, but it’s a 24 or 10-2 but the ten is the area called quick start, which mean how quickly do I initiate a project without knowing what the hell I’m doing and, so a lot of entrepreneurs are behind that quick start and just knowing, you know, knowing a lot of these things about yourself helps you to realize what, what you’re really good at, what, what gives you passion, and for me it’s, it’s definitely the ideas, it’s the start up phase, it’s the, um, it’s coming up with the, the big hook, the big ideas, and a lot of entrepreneurs are like that and, and you gotta, you gotta sometimes partner up with someone who’s, who’s the opposite. I mean, I just hired, a VP of operations – so now I’m in charge of figuring out where we’re going and the vision and the big ideas and then he’s in charge of how are we gonna get there and I’ve found that throughout the years that I’ve done this it’s been really helpful of me bringing my strengths to the table and then having a partner in a lot of cases who has different strengths. A lot of people bring a partner in for the wrong reasons, they bring him in for comradery, or just having somebody to commiserate with. I think it’s a good time to bring people in if they compliment your strengths, so they’re, you know, whatever you’re weak at is where they’re strengths are, hopefully.

Michael: No, that’s a, spot on, I’ve recently got somebody working with myself and I did it for exactly those reasons and it’s helped my business so much it’s, it’s great. Uh, okay, okay so, um, as you mentioned you’ve got so many different things going on like, uh, you have your physical book, e-books, you run seminars, you got your physical newsletter, MasterMind trips, and so on and what is your favorite business model and why?

Yanik: You said favorite business model or business?

Michael: Ah, business model, sorry. Which one of them would you…

Yanik: You know it’s kinda weird, and I would’ve answered this probably differently two years ago and I still love this business model because I think it’s probably one of the best for people that want to break into doing something on their own and, and want to create a nice lifestyle business and that is Information Marketing. I’m such a big believer in having these high margins, low cost produced products, whether it is an e-book, or a membership site, or, or a home-study course, or even a series of seminars or events. I think creating info-products and you can do really well with them and, and its also one of the easiest most lucrative, most fulfilling business models that you can come up with because you get to impact other people. I’ve worked with students from, you know, one guy, one of my favorites is this college kid that came to me and, and he knew how to take engines out of a Honda Accord and put it into a Honda Civic because uh, because they share the same engine or something like that and he, he put it out on a CD-rom and after I worked with him for a little bit he did a hundred thousand dollars a year selling that information to other, other you know mostly kids that wanted to mod their Hondas and, uh, his mom accused him of selling drugs out of his dorm room, he had that much money, yeah so, I, I got a good laugh out of that and I enjoyed that so, you know that’s just one example of selling information and I, I think, you know, we have students who’ve done everything from potty training, to guitar lessons, to financial related things, and I, so I love that model and even if you don’t think you’re an expert at something, I’ve taught repeatedly about taking public domain information and so information that has fallen out of copyright, for whatever reason, and, and just using that. We have, we have stuff that we created, about houseplants that, that sell and about for artists how to, uh, how to draw people better so we’ve done little, little projects like that just to show people how, how easy it is. Um, or I mean, you become almost like a publisher and like what you and I are doing right now, Michael, you’re interviewing me and there’s no reason that, that if you picked out a marketplace, like let’s say I don’t know training parrots how to do tricks, or something like that, you talk to a vet, you talk to, I don’t know, an animal trainer, and you just have a couple interviews and you package them up into a little course that teaches, uh, people how to, how to train their parrots, or whatever marketplace you decide. So I love, I love information and I think, you, um, there’s so many multiple ways they could deliver it now that gets really exciting, whether it’s via.. all the way up to iPhone, to the most simplistic, which is a regular book, which so many people are familiar with and delivering via kindle, delivering via online membership site, there’s just a ton of ways of doing that. Now, so like I said that would have been my answer two years ago, and I still love that, that business model. Um, today, I, you know, I’m evolved as an entrepreneur and part of what I really, what I really lean and get attracted to is passionate, passionate projects so, not only should there be a good solid business model or margin to it, but I, I think it should be something that hopefully gets you excited, that you can have fun with, and, and that yeah, just really revs you up.

Michael: Well hit. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that as well. Um, so, that sort of leads me to my next question, actually, you’re well known for the Internet Lifestyle, and I guess that’s sort of what you were just talking about, so what’s your favorite thing about the Internet Lifestyle?

Yanik: For me the Internet Lifestyle means: fun, freedom, financial independence funded by the internet (lot of F’s in there) maybe we could call it the, the F-bomb Internet Lifestyle My favorite thing is that internet is an amazing golden opportunity right now, a golden age where literally for a couple bucks and a semi-decent idea you can get started and see what happens and the coolest part is we can just grab our laptops. You can run our business from just about anywhere via Skype, via instant message, via gmail and that to me is the coolest part. I mean there’s got to be a balance to, to your entrepreneurship and to, to your whole life, I mean, really that’s where the fun part kicks in and I’m, you know, we could definitely talk about that for a while, but on, on ‘internetlifestyle.com’, which is, which is my blog, I have a whole running list called my ultimate big life list, and some of the things that, that I want to accomplish and, and so that, that keeps me motivated beyond any sort of monetary thing and, and just, uh, the, the freedom. That I think that’s probably the biggest driver for entrepreneurs, if you’re gonna kinda get down to what is the essence of entrepreneurship in, in a lot of cases, it was the freedom that, that drives them and you, you don’t want to get in a situation where, where you lose sight of that and your business really becomes a, a job for you, you wanna, and you have to, and it’s definitely a constant process of being vigilant because, you know, for me, I can keep taking more and more new projects and I’ll never leave my office even though my office is out of my house but still, you gotta have that, that balance and create that fun and the freedom for you and then another element that I kinda just added, like I said I’ve been evolving as an entrepreneur and I have this notion of, not just making more money, not just having more fun, but now it’s about giving, giving more back, so combining all this together I think becomes an optimal business bliss.

Michael: Alright, great. And is this the reason why you launched Maverick Business Adventures or what did inspire you to create that business?

Yanik: Yeah, partially that. It was partially around this, uh, idea, I was kinda, ah, a little burnt out on just the internet marketing thing that I was doing and it wasn’t totally fulfilling to me and I, I made a list of all the things that I would love to have in an ideal business and it was things like: adventure, unique experiences, hanging out with really smart entrepreneurs, brainstorming, um, helping the next generation of young entrepreneurs, and philanthropy, and, and giving back, and having an impact and, and so that was the impetus turn for Maverick Business Adventures. I don’t know where it’s gonna lead to, but I, but I got some, some pretty big ideas for it with, uh, not just this high, high level group of, of entrepreneurs that, that are million dollar plus businesses, but, but hopefully expanding to, to a whole, whole series of groups. I mean, my ultimate goal by 2020 is to have a million, a million young entrepreneurs ages 13-23 start their own businesses and based on mentorship, blueprints, strategies and the secrets that, that a lot of Maverick members would be sharing and creating that, that platform for, for the next generation.

Michael: Which, I mean, everything there just sounded so great to me as well. I mean, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs it’s hard to, sort of, talk about business to normal people so Maverick Business Adventures sounds like a, a great opportunity for everyone to, sort of, connect on a better level.

Yanik: Yeah definitely, I mean at the highest level it’s everything from hanging out at Sir Richard Branson’s Island and doing all sort of cool activities, and plus raising a lot of money for his charity to like next year we’re going to South Africa. That will be a great trip and we’re going to the finals of the Soccer World Cup, and the semi-finals, and cage diving with sharks, and going on a safari and at the same time while we’re there we’re teaching at the Branson School of Entrepreneurship some kids that we’ve actually already been mentoring with, so it, it combines those three things, those elements that, that I’ve always loved all throughout my life and now I’m just, I just have, uh, kind of, uh, a, I don’t know, a holder for all of them in, in one place.

Michael: Great Yanik. I mentioned at the beginning of the interview you are probably, you are the most mentioned person on this site. You come up all the time. Why do you think you’ve come across so well on the Internet? Is it because you just provide the best value or what do you think is the best way to be seen as the best, I think I just answered that myself, but…

Yanik: Well, I definitely appreciate that, it’s very uplifting and it’s great, maybe it’s just because I have a unique name, I think, uh…

Michael: We know that’s not the case.

Yanik: Well I’ve attempted to be really conscientious about focusing on the things that I expect from myself and I mean, literally if I look up my planner right now on October 6th 1998, (Which was when I felt like I was first getting out of this really big upward trajectory) and one of the big things that, that I wrote there was “I’m rich by enriching others ten times to a hundred times what they pay me in return” and I think that’s, that’s a big element of what, what I really, really, really try and , and focus on, whether it’s a product for forty dollars like the ‘Instant Sales Letters’, I wanna make sure that someone gets at least four hundred to four thousand dollars, and I return to our MasterMind, which is twenty thousand dollars so I wanna make sure that people get a tremendous ROI and I’m, I’m always, uh, attempting to do that, always looking for ways that we can, we can add value, we can provide, you know, some unexpected bonuses. Just, just really having that intention out there, I think helps a lot.

I’m rich by enriching others ten times to a hundred times what they pay me in return

Michael: Well that’s really powerful stuff and I’m not surprised you do so well after hearing that. So we have a lot of, we have lot different aged people on this site, but in particular we have a lot of young entrepreneurs and I thought we’d just quickly mention, you’re doing a pre-day at your underground event in March 2010 – so what would you say to any young entrepreneur out there who is starting an online business right now?

Yanik: I would tell them A) congratulations because I think it’s one of the most exciting things that you could do and, and I’m really excited about the recent statistics that I’ve seen, that say that, that kids coming out of high school, it’s about seventy percent now wanna, wanna start their own business or do their own thing and, and it used to be only maybe about twenty years ago that the statistics were completely opposite where seventy percent wanted to get a job and, and work for, work, work for a big company and have that security and, and I don’t think that there’s any security in that. I think the security in your life comes from having the self assurance and, and the knowledge of knowing that you can literally start from nothing and create something incredibly valuable that, that, that you know, essentially, that the career cash on demand, money, value, pretty much whatever you want. I would tell you another couple other pieces of advice that, that I would, that I’d like to share on that is, you know, a lot of time the, there’s, there’s thinking around, well, you know, if I, I need a lot of money to, to start this business and that’s all bullshit. You don’t, you don’t need a lot of money. On every Maverick Adventures multiday trip that we go on we spend time with a group of, of young kids, uh, in, in every location and I remember this pretty vividly from this last one that we did in San Francisco and we had, I don’t know, maybe like forty kids there or something and I had a panel of the Maverick members up there and I love asking them how much, how much money did you start your business with because it’s, it’s always revealing and a lot of them are like, you know, Tim Huston, from Internet Lifestyle, he said five dollars and, you know, that, that was cool. Um, some of the guys are a couple hundred dollars. One guy, um, who trains fitness trainers, he has a multimillion dollar business now, but his very first business that he started, he started with something like, I think he told me either two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars and that was the one that failed. The one that succeeded was the one that started with a couple hundred dollars and having a so called lack of capital, I think, it forces you to you get creative, it forces you to just not throw your money at, at a problem and cause you’re always gonna have either an excess of time or an excess of money and it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s where the creativity comes from and, and coming up with unique ways to market, uh, what you’re doing and, you know use the natural kinda gift that you got, the, the media is definitely fascinated by young entrepreneurship, but use, use the media to your advantage, that’s all free. Um, I mean, everyone has grown, grown up with, with all sorts of connection points around Facebook and Twitter now and, and, you know, a bunch of other social media sites, use those your advantage to, to build, build your, your marketplace up. So, so start, you know, just start, that, that’s probably the biggest thing and just get into motion and start thinking about what’s the best use of my time and I would also, you know, I, I definitely would stress something that I did really early on was, was learn about direct response marketing and that’s, that’s what I think when you break it all down is, is what the Internet comes down to and, and so I would study like from a hundred years ago to like all the best mail order practitioners because, you know, what, what we’re really trying to do is, in some way shape or form, influence peoples’ actions whether it’s a click whether it’s get them to buy just through the computer screen and, and now we have a lot of different tools that are at our disposals from video to, to live messaging and, and SMS, all sorts of stuff, but back then a hundred years ago, you know, people had to walk down to their mailbox or, or their local mail post and, and place that order. Uh, and, and it would be hard to get them to do that. So if you can learn and study what, what psychology went into that, you can apply that, and not in a, not in a deceptive way, not in a, not in a way that’s used for evil, but in a way, a way that gets people to, uh, gets them to see that you’re product or service is a real benefit to them and, and you gotta have that, this element of, of persuasion there in a good way. One of my favorite books that I’ve read nine times on that is by a guy named Robert Ciladini called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Michael: Brilliant, top advice, Yanik. Actually, been looking into that myself, so, cool. Uh, if you could go back in a time machine, if it was possible, uh, what would you do differently?

Yanik: That is a good question. You know what, the funny thing is I’ve asked this question of a lot of people too when I interview them and I always cringe when I answer this, because it comes out the same way as so many other people’s answers, that I’ve asked this of and it is that I wouldn’t change too much because I really think we all develop at the right time – you know, what is that saying- “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, or something like that?

I think you have to go through certain things to, to kinda, kinda come into your own, so I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really change too much, I mean, you know, maybe I would’ve got started with having more continuity in my business quicker. So that means some sort of ‘Of The Month’ kind of thing, whether it’s a newsletter or membership site or, you know, something that, so we know every single month in, month out, that there’s X amount of income coming in. Um, I probably would’ve got, got smarter around testing prices sooner, all the things where, you know, you realize that you’re leaving money on the table when you’re looking back at, at, at what you’ve done. You know, selling a bunch of those ‘Instant Sales Letters’, I mean, we had an up-sell originally, very quickly, but you know we never, we never added any sort of continuity to it or anything like that. Um, I don’t know, I mean, I think, definitely everything develops in the right time, so, so I don’t think I would change too much.

Michael: Yeah, cool. I mean, about ninety percent, probably, of people I interview, they sort of look at it the same way, you know, in the, they like the way, the route they’ve taken because, uh, they’ve learned from everything they’ve done wrong and if they didn’t have the opportunity to do things wrong then they probably wouldn’t have learned the lessons.

Yanik: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: Alright, cool. I’ve got a, a few quickfire questions for you to end the interview – The first is what do you like most about the Internet?

Yanik: I love the way that you can literally come up with an idea at, at 3o’clock in the morning and depending on how fast you are, what kinda skills you got, or what kinda skills you got on your team, that within a day or, or at most a couple weeks, you can have something out there and see what happens. I mean, you get that instant feedback, that’s what, that’s what’s so exciting, you get instant feedback around, around an email that you send or, or a twitter or, or, you know, whatever, and, and that’s exciting to me.

Michael: Wicked. And what do you like least about the Internet?

Yanik: What I like least about it is that it’s too easy to get wrapped up and sidetracked in a hundred different weird, random things that, that makes you think like you’re, you’re doing something productive but you’re really not.

Michael: Twitter.

Yanik: Well, possibly, yeah. If you’re in there for a strategic reason or, uh, you know like, like the other day I connected with the CMO of Kodak on Twitter so that was a strategic thing I wanted to do and go in there and set up this interview and that happened, but if you’re just kinda socializing, unless you got a plan for what you want to achieve it’s too easy to get sucked into your screen 24/7.

Michael: Cool. And, uh, who do you look up to? Um, who’s your role model for your business?

Yanik: As trite as it sounds, Sir Richard Branson is definitely my role model. I’ve been really fortunate and had the opportunity to hang out with him a couple times now and he’s one of the few kinda role model / inventors that I’ve met that once I’ve met them I’ve been even more inspired.

Michael: That’s always good.

Yanik: Yeah, I just love the fact that he’s not afraid to put himself out there. I mean, he runs multiple businesses, there is something like three hundred Virgin companies out there, that, that’s really inspiring to me because as, as an entrepreneur, with ADD (I haven’t been diagnosed with it, but I’m sure I got it) – you know, I love that, that aspect of it. I love the way that he’s created, he’s sort of imprinted his DNA on the companies and that cheeky sort of behavior, if I can steal a British term. He totally lives his life on his terms and that to me is the big inspiring point. You know there’s a lot of very wealthy, rich entrepreneurs that just seem pretty damn boring.

Michael: Yeah, well they say life is an adventure, so go live it.

Yanik: Yeah, make it one.

Michael: Yeah, wicked. And what is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Yanik: You know what, it’s not something that I’ve been given directly, but there are some audio and print programs by a guy named Earl Nightingale – one is called ‘Lead the Field’ and is the most popular one but, I really like ‘The Strangest Secret’. So I study a lot of his stuff, even like really random obscure stuff and one thing that, that I really took to heart from, from him was: if you wanna become an expert in any subject you have to read or study for one hour a day on that subject material for three years, and if you wanna become a world class expert you read or study for one hour a day for, for five years. In my formative kinda entrepreneurial years where I think I was about eighteen when I first got impacted by learning about stuff like direct response marketing and also because of what I learned from Earl Nightingale I said “Well, you know, what would happen if you study for two hours a day or three hours a day”? – so you know what I just really ramped up for my my success.

Michael: Cool. Alright, so thanks very much for, um, being here today, Yanik. We’re taking some great advice away from you. Is there anything, uh, any last things you’d like to tell us, any personal business plans you have, or would you like to quickly mention the underground?

Yanik: Sure, I’ll mention the underground – after all you’re gonna be facilitating the Young Mogul day, that we’re having this year as the pre-day to Underground. It takes place March 12th-14th, 2010 in DC, with the Young Mogul day on the 11th, and that’s going to be really exciting and we’ll be releasing that soon. I’m sure that they’ll hear about it from you and, um, yeah, I don’t know, I mean I have, uh, we got, we got a lot of great big plans in place for this new vision of, uh, like I, I mentioned the, the one million young entrepreneurs getting started and it’s going to be part of an association that we’re going to be calling the, uh, the ‘Maverick One Million Association’, so that’ll be at ‘maverickonemillion.org’ so look for, look for something there pretty soon.

Michael: Alright, thanks very much, Yanik.

Yanik: Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it.

Just some of Yanik’s Websites:

Underground Online Seminar

Internet Copywriting workshop

Yanik Silver

Maverick Business Adventures

Instant Sales Letters

Hello Everyone

As some of you who have been following me for a while know, I have done several “Top Young Entrepreneur Lists” including the highly successful Young Entrepreneurs Rich List over at RetireAt21.com

Today I have compiled a list of the Top Young Entrepreneurs Making Money Online – aged under 25 – these are really impressive individuals, both as business people and as human beings. Of course you will already know some of these names (Matt Mullenweg and Mark Zuckerberg for example) but there should be some that are NEW to you as well.

All of these young entrepreneurs are having a tremendous impact on the world – and we all have so much to learn from them.

Talking of impact, I am very pleased to announce that Yanik Silver is adding a “Young Mogul Day” to his now famous annual “Underground Internet Marketing Seminar”. What is more I will be working closely with Yanik to make this one of the best young entrepreneur events ever – with some of the world’s most incredible top young entrepreneurs already booked to speak. (Any of you young entrepreneurs who got attended Yaniks last UNDERGROUND back in February already know what a Top Notch event this is) Expect to hear more news about this soon.

Finally — watch out for a BIG UPDATE at RetireAt21.com in the near future – we are currently doing a huge redesign with some amazing new content, including profiles of some of the world’s best up and coming young entrepreneurs.

Enjoy the list – let me know what you think — and is there a Young Entrepreneur that you know / admire who I have missed of this list?

To Our Success

Michael

#1. Mark Zuckerberg (25 Years Old)

Website: http://www.facebook.com Why They Matter: Mark is at the top of our list for two HUGE reasons, he is the world’s youngest billionaire and he runs the world’s largest social networking website which is actually the second most visited site in the whole world, not bad for 25 years, is it?

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#2. Matt Mullenweg (25 Years Old)

Website: http://wordpress.com Why They Matter: Matthew Mullenweg is the founder of Wordpress, the software that runs this blog and millions of others out there. Without Matthew, you probably wouldn’t be at this website right now because I wouldn’t as fond with blogging without his genius, easy to use blogging software. He has been offered over $250,000,000 for his company which he turned down.

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#3. Pete Cashmore (24 Years Old)

Website: http://mashable.com Why They Matter: Pete Cashmore makes our list because he runs on of the world’s top blogs which is about all that is new on the web. With over 1,600,000 Twitter followers and 300,000 RSS readers, you know this guy is running something big!

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#4 & 5. Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith (23 & 22 Years Old)

Website: http://box.net Why They Matter: Box.net founded in 2005 was originally launched as a college project to share and store any type of file, and make it accessible from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. The company nearly has 2 million users on the service, and netted a $6 million in venture capital.

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#6. David Karp (22 Years Old)

Website: http://www.tumblr.com Why They Matter: Tumblr is a blogging platform that anyone can use. The service was built with customization and ease of use in mind. Karp invested money into the company from his previous job as a software consultant at a parenting website. Tumblr raised $5.25 million in funding from various investors, including 2 lead investors with the popular social network Twitter.

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#7 & 8. Catherine & David Cook (19 & 21 Years Old)

Website: http://myyearbook.com Why They Matter: Catherine and her brother, David started MyYearBook back in 2005 and have grown it to become America’s third largest social network and since raising $17.1 million in two rounds of investment has become profitable!

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#9. Sean Belnick (23 Years Old)

Website: http://www.bizchair.com Why They Matter: Sean is a real entrepreneur, at 14 years old, he locked himself in his bedroom and 3 days later, his business was born! Now he is earning over $50,000,000 a year selling business chairs online. Sean has been an inspiration to young people around the world trying to sell online!

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#10. Matt Mickiewicz (25 Years Old)

Website: http://www.sitepoint.com http://www.99designs.com and http://www.flippa.com Why They Matter: Matt is an inspiration to thousands of webmasters around the world, whether it’s their first website or their 20th most people would have visited Sitepoint to learn how to improve their website. Sitepoint has evolved from the website to learn about web design to anything from selling your website for a million dollars, buying books on coding the perfect contact page, to hiring someone to create your twitter background.

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#11. Noah Everett (24 Years Old)

Website: http://twitpic.com Why They Matter: Noah is the founder of the popular image upload website, TwitPic. His website has grown with the growth of the social media website Twitter and is now one of the top 200 websites in the world according to Alexa. Surprisingly Noah works from home, which is also where he powers his servers that have to deal with millions of pages a day!

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#12. Ryan Allis (25 Years Old)

Website: http://www.icontact.com Why They Matter: Ryan who is just 25 years old runs iContact.com and email marketing service that expects to turn over $25,000,000 this year. With over 55,000 customers paying a monthly FREE, Ryan has build a membership program where he has been able to offer an unbelievable service and at the same time build a continuity program that should never end.

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#13. Jon Wheatley (22 Years Old)

Website: http://www.dailybooth.com Why They Matter: Jon runs a great social networking website called DailyBooth which basically lets you snap a picture every day and it puts it all together in a little video. The site has really evolved since launching earlier in the year has got over $1million in funding from big names such as Digg co-founder Kevin Rose and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

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#14. Neil Patel (24 Years Old)

Website: http://www.quicksprout.com & http://www.crazyegg.com Why They Matter: Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. The thing that really makes Neil stand out as a top young entrepreneur is how he got a lot of the top blogs in the world to permanently link to his site.

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#15. Kieran O’Neill (22 Years Old)

Website: http://www.psu.com and http://www.playfire.com Why They Matter: Kieran is 22 years old and is a serial internet entrepreneur with three huge successes online so far! Kieran sold his first website online for $1.25 Million at the age of 19 and now has launched a new gaming social network which he raised over $1 Million in venture capital investment for as well as still running one of the world’s largest PlayStation fan sites.

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#16. Blake Ross (24 Years Old)

Website: http://www.mozilla.com Why They Matter: Blake is an American software developer, who is probably best known for starting the Mozilla Firefox project. Firefox was released in 2004, when Ross was 19 years old. Firefox got over 100 Million downloads within its first year of being on the market!

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#17 & 18. Eric & Susan Gregg Koger (24 & 25 Years Old)

Website: http://www.modcloth.com Why They Matter: ModCloth started as a small clothing business that Eric and Susan started when they left high school. They continued the business at university, shipping clothing items from their dorm room. When they graduated from uni in 2006, they decided to pursue the business, and since then it has grown into a huge success.

* * * * *

#19. Anthony Volodkin (23 Years Old)

Website: http://hypem.com Why They Matter: The Hype Machine keeps track of music discussion on blogs around the world. It lets people discover, listen and buy music that bloggers are writing about.

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#20. Ashley Qualls (20 Years Old)

Website: http://www.whateverlife.com Why They Matter: Ashley Qualls who is already a multi-millionaire, and has taken the young entrepreneurs world by storm. Aged just 14, Ashley created WhatEverLife.com, a Myspace layouts site aimed at the female demographic, the site at its peak received over 250,000 visitors every single day, which is more than teen magazines such as Teen Vogue, Seventeen & Cosmogirl… combined. Ashley doesn’t charge users to use the site, instead, she strategically places ads on the site, and around 60% of her monthly income comes from Google Adsense.

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#21. Juliette Brindak (20 Years Old)

Website: http://www.missoandfriends.com Why They Matter: Juliette first came up with the idea of Miss O and Friends ten years ago when she was 10 years old. Her business is now worth over $19 Million, and is visited by millions of girls every month. In 2006, Juliette released a book, and since then has sold over 120,000 copies of it!

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#22 & 23. Sam Tarantino & Josh Greenberg (Both 23 Years Old)

Website: http://listen.grooveshark.com Why They Matter: GrooveShark was launched in private beta in early 2007, and is now a huge online music search engine and streaming service. GrooveShark employs 40 people (as of december 2007) and is part of the Escape Media Group which was formed in march 2006.

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#24, 25 & 26. Elliott Breece, Joshua Boltuch & Elias Roman (All 25 Years Old)

Website: http://amiestreet.com Why They Matter: Amie Street is a music website, where the community decided the price of the music. Every song on the website starts at a very low price, sometimes free, and then increases up to prices of 98 cents depending on how many people purchase it.

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#27. Richard Ludlow (22 Years Old)

Website: http://academicearth.org Why They Matter: Richard is the founder and CEO of Academic Earth, a website that provides full video courses from leading universities. Academic Earth was included in Time Magazines top 50 websites of 2009 list, along with companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.

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#28. Kristopher Tate (21 Years Old)

Website: http://www.zooomr.com Why They Matter: Kristopher is the co-founder of photo sharing website, Zooomr. The popular website service was created in 2005, and since then has grown and had many new features implemented into it.

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#29. Edmund Loh (23 Years Old)

Website: http://edmundloh.com Why They Matter: Edmund started his internet business back in March 2005. He achieved success after selling other peoples ebooks online (with resale rights), and then went on to write his very own ebook, titled Edmund Loh’s Guide To Private Resale Rights. Since then, Edmund has written over 212 PLR titles.

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#30. Shama Kabani (24 Years Old)

Website: http://clicktoclient.com Why They Matter: Shama is an online marketing master. She is the president of Click To Client, a full service web marketing firm. Shama travels the world speaking at many conferences about internet marketing.

Hello Everyone,

Today it is my great honor to introduce one of my personal mentors – Mr Andy Miller, discussing something that Andy and I are equally passionate about – Making Your Life An Adventure.

Andy is also one of the most modest, highly successful people I have ever met – he doesn’t beat a drum about being a Guru or anything but I promise you he is. Andy is at the very top of his Niche and today is one of the top 15 sales management consultants in the world. Check out Andy’s corporate site at: AndyMillerInternational.com

Mind you, as you will soon discover, this Interview is not about Corporate America or Sales Management — rather it is about something much more important: Making Life An Adventure.

I first met Andy way back in 2006 at a Yanik Silver Mastermind group meeting. I was only aged 17 and frankly I was well out of my depth when it came to business but Andy in particular always made time for me, encouraged me and was always happy to share his considerable knowledge.

Maybe I should also mention I was only 17 at the time and having difficulty holding on to my newly acquired Driving License. (Driving cars too fast and one or two unfortunate meeting with Traffic Cops). Turns out Andy had similar issues as a young man (actually said he was worse — but I doubt it) so many times we ‘bonded’ over that.

Andy quotes one of my favorite quotes in this interview:

Will the boy of yesterday respect the man of tomorrow?

But as you will see, Andy thought about this a little differently. You see when you were a kid, you have a hero but the amazing fact is that can actually grow up and become that hero, yet so many people don’t get that. I hope that with this interview, no matter what your age, you feel inspired to make life the Great Adventure it should be.

Enjoy this podcast – a Transcript is also available below.

I look forward to your comments and your inspiration.

Make Life An Adventure!

Michael

PS: This interview is a little less structured than some – in part because Andy and I are such good friends and also because it just flowed better that way. I would really love for people to share some of the things on their Bucket List – come on, let us inspire each other.

Andy Miller Interview

Transcript:

Michael Dunlop: Hello everybody this is Michael Dunlop from Incomediary.com, and today I am with a really good friend of mine – Mr Andy Miller.  Andy has always been a really good guy and I have really enjoyed all the things he has been doing.  But I was particularly impressed by something he was talking to me about back last month.

Andy was talking about doing the things you really want to do – about making life an adventure, about having a bucket list. Welcome Andy.

Andy Miller: Thanks Michael, welcome to everybody.

Michael Dunlop: OK, I will jump straight to the point Andy -  we want to talk to everyone today about creating a bucket list and doing the things they want to do before they die. As I put it, about making life your adventure. Can you explain the Bucket List and share your thoughts please.

Andy Miller: Okay. First Michael does everybody even know what a bucket list is?  Bucket is probably an American slang term of “kick the bucket” before you die.  There was a movie that came out with Morgan Freeman and it was called Bucket List and Jack Nicholson was in it.  So anyhow, it’s a great movie worth watching but the more important part is the theme of the movie and the theme is, what do you want to do before you die. I prefer to view this a little differently, which is make your life an adventure and adventure doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, elephant tracking in Thailand, its whatever you define as an adventure.  Life is too short, and you can speak from this from experience.  I have always been somewhat of an adventurer ever since I was, I don’t know somewhere between twelve, thirteen or fourteen and somehow, somewhere I don’t know where I learned it from. Wish I did because I would call that person back and thank them, but I learned you know, make a list of dreams that you want to have happen in your life and then pursue them.

Now you know some of that may have been my mother, she was a very dynamic person and made a lot of things happen and she died at an early age of thirty-six but people referred to her as somebody who ran through life. And ran through life meaning getting a lot things accomplished and that made an impression on me.  So I made a list of things that I want to do at a very young age and started making them happen. So you know for example, when I was a kid I was a big bicycler and I rode at fourteen from Chicago, Illinois to Washington, DC on a bicycle with a couple of friends and no adult supervision.  There was just six of us and then when I was sixteen I rode coast to coast from Washington DC to Fresno California, wasn’t quite the pacific ocean but it was pretty close, but you know, make things happen and do things that fire you up and life is to short. What you don’t know is, How much life do you have? Right? You don’t know if you going to live till 80 or a 104 or 30. and I will talk about that in a second but one of the things on my list was I was going to hike the continental divide in the U. S. that’s the Rocky Mountains with two friends, we were going to hike from Mexico to Canada.  Through New Mexico, through the Rocky Mountains it was going to be nine months trip about five months of that was going to be in snow.  And we had written all these companies for sponsorship and gotten sponsors and equipment and at the same time, so that was on my list.  And at the same time I had an opportunity to move to Europe and start a software company and I ended up moving to Europe and starting the software company instead of doing the trip my friends went and they still did the trip but it is because I had my list and I kind of prioritized what was important to me, that I went to Europe and you know what I am glad I did.  I spent three years there, had the time of my life and grew a company and sold it, so I hope people are starting to get excited about what is possible. Lets talk about that. You have any questions Michael before I keep going?

Michael Dunlop: No its perfect I would just love to know, and I’m sure everyone would love to know, which is – how do they work out what they really want to do?

Andy Miller: Well that’s a great question and so lets talk about that.  So its funny as we get older we forget how to dream and you can notice this in little kids.  If you take a little kid and you give him a balloon and everybody knows what a balloon is right? So you give him a balloon, what happens, their eyes get all big and bright and they get all excited over something as simple as a balloon and yet as we get older we forget about that simple passion, simple excitement, you know you give an adult a balloon and they look at you and go what the heck is this why are you giving me a balloon and its like dude there is nothing behind its just a balloon get excited about it right?  So somehow we suppress our passion at least that’s my opinion and its like, I don’t care how old you are, I still think you should have the excitement and joy of a child.  And I really think what life is about I think its about excitement, I think its about joy, I think its about passion and if that’s not what you have in your life, then you definitely need to make a bucket list.  Lets talk about how to do that and by the way I don’t mean to be polyanish and say that you should be joyful and passionate and excited every minute of the day.  If you are trying to get some big internet project done sometimes its just a grind and you gotta  grind it out right and its not always fun.  But thats temporarily, I am talking about what’s more your constant state of being seven days a week, twelve months a year. Overall, I would expect that you would more passion, excitement and joy.  More than you would have dreadedness and feeling laborious, painful, hating life kind of thing.  So lets talk about how you make a bucket list.  So the first thing I would encourage you to do is just keep a little journal and what I did was I just grabbed a couple of pieces of paper and a pen and I kept in my pocket and for a weekend I just went around and I wrote down every dream, every fantasy I ever had, no matter what those were and I did not edit it.  So I didn’t say I would like to be a brain surgeon, no no thats too many years of school.  Forget about whether it is possible or not.  I just want you to write it down. So it could be simple things.  Some of the things on my list were that I wanted to make wine, I don’t know, I have been curious, what does it really take to make wine?  So that went down on my list. I did make it and it turned out horribly and I will never make it again but you gave it a shot right. Nobody says its got to turn out great, you just have to try it.  Another thing I had down is, I like to own a florist, I like flowers. I’m color blind so I can’t do arrangements but that went down on my list and you know what I will probably never turn that into a reality. But I just want you to take things and put it down and take a weekend and just write down on a piece of paper everything you ever dreamed about. That could be scuba-diving, it could be, making your own cheese, it could be spending the weekend taking your parents somewhere you know they would never go on their own.  It could be volunteering in a school with helping children who have a problem reading read better. It could be writing a book, I mean it could be going to some country you want to go to, It could be having a personal trainer.  It could be going to medical school.  I’m just trying to things of all the things I had on my list.  I wanted to own a cheesecake bakery cause I am a good baker but I don’t like getting up early in the morning so that will never happen.  But I had made a whole list, I had marshal arts on there, I had to see the great wall of China, I had go to Machu Picchu.  I had to, you know, tell my parents I love them more often.  I had to write a book, I failed English in sixth grade, so writing a book would be a major feat for me or accomplishment.  You know what, for a kid who couldn’t pass English in the sixth grade, hey look at me, I wrote a book, right.  So you know, all kinds of things, anything that really get you excited but its about dreaming.

So how do you build that list?

One of things that I did was, that I looked at the books or magazines that I used to keep around as a kid.  There is an expression that says, “Will the boy of yesterday respect the man of tomorrow?”.  I always thought it a little differently. When you were a kid, you had a hero and the fact is you can actually grow up and become your hero and why wouldn’t you?  You know, a hero was somebody who excited you and inspired you and why don’t you grow up and become your own hero.  If that makes any sense at all.

Michael Dunlop: That sounds great.

Andy Miller: Hey, its like why not?  So I don’t know Michael, who’s the hero that you had? Maybe I shouldn’t ask you this and put you on the spot but who was the hero that you had?

Michael Dunlop: Oh like a proper person?

Andy Miller: Oh no a cartoon person or whatever. Who was somebody that was a hero to you?

Michael Dunlop: I liked just about all the super-heros when I was a kid. I liked to dream I could be him, I could be anyone.

Andy Miller: Yeah and what was it that attracted you to them or the qualities?

Michael Dunlop: That they could do things no one else would go out and do themselves. They were just they were their own person.

Andy Miller: Okay, so you are kind of doing that now.

Michael Dunlop: Yeah I am aren’t I?

Andy Miller: Think about it or you know. One guy that I really admire is Richard Branson.
Here’s a guy who has done it his own way, making his dreams reality and yet doing a lot of charity and having an impact on the world but also having lots of adventure. And he is kind of a modern day superhero or if you ever saw the movie Indiana Jones.

Michael Dunlop: Oh Yeah. Thats on my bucket list.

Andy Miller: Okay so there is a real life Indiana Jones and I found his book and I Iooked him up and I actually called him on the phone and John Gottered is his name and he invited me to come out and he’s like, hey I’m having my 65thbirthday party, its next week, why don’t you come on out and see me? So you its amazing what is  possible when you decide, hey lets make some of these dreams come true. So other things you could have on your list, scuba diving, it could be long.  So here is how I made it, as I started off to say, yeah look at the books and things I admired as a kid.  We had a TV show when I was a kid called Kung Fu. David Carradine, he’s like this martial arts guy and I respected his ability as a martial artist but I also respected how even keel his mentality was.  He didn’t really like to get into fights, it was always the last resort, he was always kind of a peaceful warrior kind of thing and almost like a zen. Well he was a monk. So I looked at things I admired when I was a kid, TV  shows, cartoons, superheroes, I looked at books. One of the things I wanted to do as a kid, I read books about how to build log cabins.  So that went down on my list. Hey, build a log cabin, now as I said, you don’t have to make this come true right now.  Lets just get your fantasies and your dreams down on paper. The other thing I did, I went to the bookstore, where they had all the books and all the magazines and I just walked through different sections.  Hey look at all the magazines they have got there.  Okay they had car and driver or a hot rod and I’m like, I always wanted to own a race car or so I wrote that down. And you know, that’s one thing that was on my list and I went out and bought a race car. So yeah, look at the magazines and let the magazines inspire you and help you remember of what you used to dream about.  So thats one way I did it.  Magazines, books, I also went through the yellow pages at the time ‘cause we did’nt have the internet.  Now you could go through the internet and you could just type in all kinds of things and see what comes up.  Adventure travel comes up, charity causes come up, anything you want, but allow yourself two to three days of doing nothing but dreaming and you know what, ask your friends. I’ve some friends and one of their fantasies, they want to learn how the play guitar. Yeah, you know what, thats very doable.  But like I said, right now just make a list of things that you would like to have, of dreams and fantasies. Make the list don’t filter it.  Once you do that, then I want you to take it to the next level. The next level is I want you to look at different categories.

Now, there is a lot of goal setting programs out there and I don’t know I have always felt like that was kind of a futile exercise  because somebody is telling you to set some goals and I have always felt like it was missing a little extra kick behind it.

This changes goal setting.  When you can take a dream and turn it into a reality your goal setting becomes totally different.  Now am not here to necessarily talk about goal setting cause this was something you and I talked about over dinner you know just between two buddies.  So I just wanting to share with everybody what fires me up. The way to take it to the next level is, I broke it down into categories and zig ziglar did a program on goal setting that I thought was really good and I kind of copied his categories.  And its, once you have done your dream list, now I want you to put the next section on it which is, how about some financial dreams?  I’m going to actually give you some structure now.  How about some financial dreams, social dreams in terms of contributions to society or maybe friends are under that.  Then I have a section on family.  Things you might want to do for your parents or your spouse or your kids or your siblings.  Another one I had was spiritual, you know if you have any spiritual goals, some people that matters to, some people it doesn’t. Another one I had was health.  Just health overall you know you mentioned getting a personal trainer.  Or if you are overweight you know maybe pick a goal of losing ten pounds. I put different categories because in my dreaming you know, there is certain categories that were void in my dreams and I realized I needed to add some dreams to that, so that’s what I did. And once that’s done, once you have gone through all those categories.  Then this is real simple.  I pick one to three dreams that I want to turn into reality every year and I make them come true. So you got this bit long list, my list is eight pages long literally single spaced. Eight pages long of things that I want to do.  One thing on there was, I want to build a helicopter. You can buy these kits where you can build a helicopter and its big enough for you and another person and luggage to fly in. And at time it was forty thousand dollars and quite frankly, if I made it a longer term goal and say hey I want to save eight thousands of dollars a year for five years. You know what I would have the forty-thousand set aside to buy the helicopter and then you need to take  a year to build it.  But that was then am sure now its more expensive now. But you know what that was on my dream list, I’d probably never make that a reality, but thats okay.  So take your list and look at one to three thing that you want to become a reality and make it happen.   I don’ t know Michael I have just been talking nonstop.  I have certainly got more to say but I want to take a breadth for a sec and see if you have any questions.

Michael Dunlop: One thing I hear from a lot of people who want to create a businesses or make money online, is I cant do it.

Andy Miller: Right

Michael Dunlop: You know and even when I wrote my list and you know you look at your list and you are like, why haven’t I done this already?  I have been wanting to do this for ages.  It is just as simple as going out and doing it and what would you say to those people who say I cant do this right now or I can’t do it full stop?

Andy Miller:  You know there may be some things that you cant do right now but then pick something you can. Do you guys have the storybook when you were a kid about the little engine that couldn’t.  Do you know that story?

Michael Dunlop: No I have never heard of that sorry.

Andy Miller: That’s okay, so its probably an American storybook.  But its about a train that has to go up a hill and has a lot of cars on the back of it and the big engine is saying, that’s too many cars I can’t do it and the little engine am sorry its the little engine that could, that’s the name of the book, so the little engine goes up to the big engine and says hey I think I can do that so step aside let me give it a shot and its really interesting right because it is a metaphor for people in life. A lot of people are like I can’t, I can’t, I can’t if that’s what you tell yourself thats absolutely true you can’t.  And if you can or you think you can, you will at least try and most of the time you can get a whole lot more done or you can make it happen when you didn’t.  So I liked to be the little engine that can versus the little engine that cannot.  So I think part of is to develop I can do it attitude.  That’s one thing and the other thing is how do you want to live your life.  I mean you must have zombie movies in the UK right?

Michael Dunlop: Oh Yeah!

Andy Miller: Okay so what’s interesting is I think thats a lot of society.  I think a lot of society are zombies.  I think they died when they were somewhere around 21 to 25. They just happen to be living in the shell of a body why. Because I think they got into a routine, they get up in the morning, they go to work, they do their thing, they come home, they open up a beer, they turn on a soccer game, they scratch themselves, and thats what they do seven days a week for the rest of their lives.  I am being a little sarcastic here so please forgive me.  I hope that’s not too off color but in essence thats what they do, they go down to the pub but they just fall into a routine and you know hey how are you doing? What going on in life? Same old Same old. Well, yeah, it is same old, same old for another fifty years. I am sorry I don’t want to live that way.  They are walking zombies and its like don’t let yourself live that life. So in answering your question of what do you say to the folks who are like I can’t do this right now. Well that’s your choice but I will tell you what, you may think you’ve got a nice long life and you don’t know that.  You don’t know how long you are going to live. You don’t know when you going die. I mean I was, when I was living in Amsterdam and I just sold the software company and I wasn’t feeling very well and I went to doctor because I said hey doc am not feeling well something’s wrong and they did some tests and I was terminally ill and he’s like go home make up out your will, if you have people you have done wrong in your life, which is wise advise, make a list of all the people you have done wrong and call them and clean it all up. and I went home and made out my will and i made up my list of people and I called them and tried to clean up all I could possible could but I was also not saying hey I am dead. I am like, na I am going to beat this thing and it took me a year and I beat it.  But you know, thats at 30 years old and you don’t know how long you got to live.  Now three four years later, I moved back to the US and was in an elevator or lift depending on what you call it and it fell six floors and fell to the bottom with me in it and I was paralyzed on my right side for a couple of months and they said you will never walk again, you will never run and I was a marathon runner at the time,  and again that was the doctors saying this is the way its going to be and you know what Michael, you met me four years ago, do I look like a guy who was an invalid?

Michael Dunlop: No

Andy Miller: I’m an avid runner, am an avid weight lifter and I built my body back about 99.5% , but my point is that is twice now that I probably should have dead and that was two times before the age of 35.   So you don’t know how much time you have and I am going  to encourage you to know what, go out and make some things happen. but hey things that are important to you because if something happens and you are in a lift that falls or a car accident, you know wouldn’t it be nice to be sitting there going, hey there’s some things I have always wanted to do in my life and I did them?

Michael Dunlop: Yeah

Andy Miller: The funny thing is at least for me I can’t speak for everybody, the funny thing is most of those things are experiences for me so I doubt if I will look back and say hey am really glad I bought that couch for my house or and I will probably look back and say am really glad I bought that Porsche, but its not the possession of the Porsche its the driving experience that I get when I am in it.  But to me its the experiences that I would look back at and in another one of my ways that I make decisions is if I have an opportunity to do something and I am debating whether I should do it or not, I sit there and I go you know five years from now if I don’t do this will I look back and say I wish I had. Because If I am going to look back and regret that I didn’t do it and wish I had, it tells me I should just go do it and if I look back and go and you know, five years from now I am looking back and go no, not a big deal, then I got my answer,  but that’s kinda some of my philosophy but its make that dream list and pick one thing, two things three things on it that you can turn into reality for this year.

Michael Dunlop: Brilliant idea

Andy Miller: That’s what I do and some of the thing on that list Michael are easy like you said going hey gosh I have always wanted to do that look at this its so simple. Why haven’t I done it.  Mean it could be as simple as have you ever been to bath? Have you ever seen the Roman ruins there?

Michael Dunlop: Yeah, I have yeah.

Andy Miller: Okay so, for some folks who aren’t that far away from it, it could be as simple as jumping in a car and going up and spending the weekend there right or you know have you been to Lake District, have you been to Hadrian’s wall or you know, there are so many simple things that we could do that its been on our list of going you know I’d like to do that some day, I’d like to do that some day and then ten years later its like I’d like to do that some day and its real simple. Put it on your list and go freaking do it. But don’t let time pass you by cause you just don’t know how much time you have. I mean that’s really it.

Michael Dunlop: Now, one last sort of thing I would like to touch on the whole thing is sort of the financial sides to those things.  Cause a lot of people you know, its not just I can’t do because you know I am scared or because I don’t have the time, and sometimes its the whole fact that some people don’t want to spend the money to do the things they really want and lot of the times like I have things on my list and I am thinking to myself I have the money to do this why I am saving for something I have no idea why  I need the money for?  Why don’t I just go and do it? What would you say to those people who are sort of thinking why,  said that ?

Andy Miller: Well, elaborate on your question a little bit more cause I am not sure what you are asking. I think I know, but give me a little more.

Michael Dunlop:  Well like, people are scared to spend money a lot of the time and you know they save money and they don’t want to spend it. They don’t know exactly what they are saving for but they are saving it because they know they are going to need it someday and some people, somethings don’t cost that much money like one of my things on my list is, I used to play drums and I wasn’t too bad at it and this was when I was probably about thirteen or fourteen and I sort of made school in the way and I gave up but I was recently in America when I visited you I went to a Best Buy and they had this audio section and I have never seen this sort of thing before because none of that we have PC World over here and we don’t have a whole musical area and they had this musical drum kit area and everything and I played it and I was like wow I really miss this and I put it on my list and I am thinking to myself its like if I get a good one, it wouldn’t be anything more than a thousand pounds and that’s something I can afford to do but so many people you know, they can afford to do it but they just don’t want to spend the money and so thats something a lot of people have to come over. Its just saying, this will give me a much better return than the money I have spent on it.

Andy Miller: Gotcha

Michael Dunlop: So that’s the thing I wanted to touch upon, only because a lot of people don’t let it click that what they going to get in return is so much better.

Andy Miller: Yeah got it. Okay so I think there’s multiple answers to your question. I mean there’s striking a balance and I don’t know what the balance is. But there is striking a balance between what you spend today and saving for the future, and so thats part of why that section on your dream list. I mean do the dreams first but then start to categorize it and lets face it, you want to save for tomorrow, you don’t want to get to retirement age which I will never retire.  If you get to retirement age and you want the option to retire, it would be nice if you had enough money to do that and you need to plan for that.  And some of the statistics I have seen which I don’t remember the exact statistics now but I was stunned at least in the U. S. of how many people are going to reach retirement age and not have enough money that they are going to have more life then they are money.  You know what happens then.  Thats happened with my parents and I am taking care of them from now financially. So I think the statistic I saw was something like that’s going to happen to 40%  of Americans.  You can’t quote me on that number but it was a huge number and I was stunned and appalled by that number. So part of it is you do need to do some financial planning on what kind of lifestyle you want to live when you get to retirement age. So you do have to save for that but you know what the flip side of that is, I think about my grandparents who were farmers and they saved their whole life to be able to go on trips, they wanted to travel. But as a farmer you know you never get a sick day, you never get a holiday. Cause the animals still have to be fed.  The cows still have to be milked, the crops still have to be taken care of.  So there is no time off and yet when they got to the age where they could retire and they sold the animals, so that then they could have a relative check on the crops,  physically they weren’t able to travel.  So there is a balance between living for today and making sure they plan for tomorrow.  But then again you don’t know how much tomorrow you have. So am not saying purely live for today, what I don’t have the answer to is. What’s the proper balance. So that’s one part of the answer to your question.  The other part of the question is, you know we don’t spend money as you were talking about drums its like you know I think there’s a piece of there’s something we really love to do when we were younger and we got away from it.  And you know, the question is why did we get away from it, well here are lots of reasons why.   But when you saw that electronic drum set. It sparked some passion back in you correct?

Michael Dunlop: Oh yeah. I got excited.

Andy Miller: Exactly, it’s like what are the things. I think thats what its about, its about doing things that excite you and things that you used to do and we got away from. Me as a kid I used to a lot of camping.  I haven’t been camping in years and I am dying to go.  It’s like wait I just need to put it on my calendar and go camping cause I love camping.  Or same with the bicycling you know I mentioned earlier I was a big bicycler and every time I get on a bike, its like man I love this. How come I’m not out doing this every weekend.  So I mean there is taking care of your business and there is taking care of your family and sometimes other things get in the way but generally speaking, are you doing things you are passionate about. Now me, I love weight lifting and I like weight lifting more than I like bicycling at this point and so its easy.  I go to the gym like probably six days a week.  You know what, thats something that I really enjoy. So maybe you are replacing one passion with another thats kind of a higher passion.  So I don’t know is this answering your question?

Michael Dunlop: No this is great. This is what I need to hear.

Andy Miller: Yeah, so you know its, I think the theme overall really of our conversation is make your life an adventure. Whatever that adventure is. For some people their dream is they want to get married have kids and they want to stay home and become a housewife and you know what, there is nothing wrong with that.  Quite frankly, that’s an adventure. Having kids, taking care of kids, raising kids thats an adventure and you know kids are just funny as heck as far as I am concerned. So you know, you decide what the adventure is. The adventure is not trekking in Nepal necessarily.  Its whatever is the adventure for you and I am probably defining adventure a little different than most. But its your life, you get to live it according to your rules and maybe thats the other thing I need to talk about. That there is lots of what society says you should do or should not do and I think thats a bunch of BS.  You know, its your life, I think you make the rules, quite frankly if Richard Branson lived by societies rules none of us would ever have even heard of him.

Michael Dunlop: No

Andy Miller: Right? If Donald Trump lived by society’s rules none of us would have ever heard of Donald Trump.  So I think its you decide the rules, you decide how you want to live your life. Hey lets take Hugh Hefner, founder of playboy.  Here’s the guy who broke the rules, everyone knows him for playboy.  Here’s something they don’t know him for.  He’s the first guy who did interracial television.  So at the time he wanted to do this TV show called playboy after dark and I remember as a kid.  I remember seeing this on late night and he wanted to have a black singer, a very good singer, named Sammy Davis Junior on the show and the producers were like, no we can’t have any blacks on the show and he said well, then forget it you can’t have my show. But they wanted his show badly enough.  It was a television show that where they just had famous people on it and Sammy Davis would play the piano and he was kind of like the cohost and they wanted the show badly enough, that they said okay you can have Sammy Davis Junior on the show. He was the first guy in America to have a interracial television show.  So he is breaking the race barrier and again the point of my story is, you decide how you want to live your life, you decide your rules, you decide what excites you.  You decide what is your adventure and what is your passion and then go live it and we know you can do everything right.  So just pick. Listen if you do one or two things a year ten years from know you have done ten or twenty things.  My big thing is I like adventure travel to other countries and I like to do one trip of a lifetime every year.  So this year my trip of a lifetime was to Morocco.  That was good.  I did another trip a couple of months ago to Cuba and I want to do one trip of a l lifetime a year because I don’t know how much lifetime I have and I can go wow that was an incredible trip and I had a great time and I have got two other friends that I do this with. I’ve been doing this for sixteen years now, every September October we take three weeks and we go somewhere in the world. We have been to Thailand, we have been to Cambodia, we have been to Brazil. The list goes on and on and this is something that we love to do.  Its three weeks with really close friends going to exotic places that we have always wanted to go to and we go make it happen and you know what, if I am on my Harley tomorrow and I get hit by a truck and I am dead.  You know what, I know I lived my life to about the fullest I possibly could have and I will have no regrets. I’ll have no regrets.  So maybe thats the last thing, I mentioned this earlier about what the doctor said.  Make out your will and make up your clean up list. I would encourage you to make a list of people you need to clean it up with and you know, go have a clean up conversation and life is too short to… Lots of people get into fights with their best friends or they lost touch or they are pissed of with their sister or brother, they haven’t talked to for ten or twenty years and its like you know what, thats a shame.  Am not saying that they are wrong for doing that but you know if you are on your death bed and you are awake and you’ve got a week to sit there and contemplate.  You’re gonna to look back and say man I really wish I had cleaned that up.  Then I would say, you know what, put that on your list and go clean it up because life again is just too short. Just too short.  So Michael what else?

Michael Dunlop: That’s just a great night to probably to end this recording on our thing you’ve, you know, hit the nail and I think that’s just perfect.  Is there anything you really want to add, any last advice? Or anywhere people can find out more about you or contact you?

Andy Miller:  Well if they want to they can go to AndyMillerInternational.com if they want to contact me.  I mean you know me really as a sales consultant and sales trainer. But I will tell you what, its a real interesting exercise to do when you make your dream come list and I have done this with groups before and you had people share their dream list.  Now there are some things on my dream list that are a little x-rated so I really wouldn’t want to share that part of my list but if you want to do a group call sometime where people share their list or what would be interesting is to have people share a partial list on your website. I don’t know if that’s even possible.

Michael Dunlop: Yeah, though we have a comment section for the whole. The interview will be transcribed and we will able to read it and everyone can comment and share their list.  I’m sure a lot of people will over latent and a lot of people will have the same goals.

Andy Miller: Well, thats what I found when I have had a group.  If I am doing sales training and trying to help them set some goals,  I have them take an hour and do a dream list and then we go around the room and I just have them share two or three things on that list that they are comfortable sharing with the group and you would be surprised. Someone will go, yeah I want to learn how to play guitar and somebody goes oh I forgot about that, I have always wanted to learn how to do that.  You know what, put it down on your list.  So if people are willing to share their list on your site, that would be a great place to go for other people to take a look at it and get ideas for them because you know there are a lot things we’ve wanted to do.  That we have even forgotten about.  I mean thats how.  You know I mention earlier about people being zombies.  I think a lot of people have numbed out in life.  Do you guys use that term? No. You’ve kinda of gone numb.

Michael  Dunlop: Yeah definitely.

Andy Miller: So a lot people have just gone numb in life and they are getting through the day and they are not getting from the day.   I mean you are supposed to get something out of each day not just get through it and survive.  So you know what, quit being numb make your dream list and start living with some passion.  Living by your rules that’s what it is about.

Michael Dunlop:  Alright thanks very much Andy that was a great interview and a great insight into the bucket list and getting the adventure out of life you really should have.

More About Andy Miller:

Andy Miller is recognized as one of the top 15 sales management consultants in the world. He has worked with over 2000 CEO’s – Sales VP’s, 14,000 sales people and 16 of the Fortune 500. His clients include high tech companies, manufacturers, financial services, entrepreneurs and venture capitalist throughout Europe, Asia and Australia. He has been featured on CNN and in Newsweek, Sales and Marketing Management, Selling Power, Success, Your Company and Human Resource Executive Magazines. He has been on stage with speaking greats Jay Abraham, Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy, John Assaraf, Mark Victor Hansen, Tony Robbins, Robert Allen, Zig Zigler and Chet Holmes.

And online at: AndyMillerInternational.com

Every single day over 8,000 people start a new Internet business and it is said 90% of them fail / never really take off! There are a lot of reasons why a business fails but in the end it comes down to one main thing – it isn’t making money!

It doesn’t matter if you get 100,000 visitors a day, if you can’t monetize your site, then you will lose money and fail like most other people. Most Internet Marketers suggest you put up adverts on your site to make money. OK, that appears an easy option, but if you don’t have much traffic you will fail to sell the advertising and frankly in my experience there are many better ways to make money.

So today I have decided to go through some of my own sites and also some my favorite bookmarks and show you how and why some sites (even with the same traffic) make a lot more money than other sites in their niche. And, I’m not just talking about an extra $1000 a month – in many cases it is significantly more.

Why Typical Blog Monetization Doesn’t Work

The main reason it doesn’t work is because you can only make so much. If you only have 8 advertising spots on your site, that will Net you a total of $600 at an average of $75 per spot. Truth is that in many cases unless you have significant traffic you will struggle to get even $75 per spot.

Now if you use some of the monetization techniques I will cover below, instead of making say $600 for the month you could make $3000 or even more! (I estimate you need around 20000 visitors per month in most niches to achieve this) Banner advertising to some degree isn’t scalable and therefore isn’t a good long term solution. That said, if you are ‘lazy” (as I sometimes am) then the one good thing about banner advertising is it’s guaranteed money most of the time, provided you can keep selling those spots!

But to give you some comparison, if I had decided to go with only offering banner advertising when I launched IncomeDiary, I would of been lucky to earn $300 from advertisers in the first month, instead of the $5000 that I did.

Selling eBooks

This is something that has been increasingly more popular over the last couple years for a bunch of reasons. The main reason obviously is money, selling an eBook to your readers is easier then selling someone else’s product because your readers know who you are, what your about and you should have a good track record for offering good content. One of the big benefits of launching an eBook on your blog is traffic. I have seen blog’s traffic saw once they launch an eBook because they set up an affiliate program, so even if they don’t buy your eBook, they still look around your blog and can make you money in other ways and the best thing, you don’t have to pay the affiliate for it.

How To Sell eBooks On Your Blog

On some levels, most blogs do the whole selling an eBook thing completely wrong. Having a eBook on your blog will mean a lot of leakage because they can go off in a million different directions such as check out your about page, past posts, advertisers etc. Typically sales page give you the option to either buy the eBook or leave the website which keeps the buyer more concentrated as they won’t get distracted by other things on your blog. Here are a few rules I would encourage you to abide by:

• Have an affiliate program (via E-Junkie)
• Offer Testimonials from people who have read your eBook. Including names, website URL’s, country and picture will help reinforce the fact that these are real people giving real opinions on your eBook.
• Offer a sample page or chapter so potential buyers can get a good feel for who you are and what you have to offer.
• Have a eCover to symbolize some physical value to the product. I recommend either Minisite Studios or searching for someone on Digital Point webmaster forums.

Membership Websites

I have seen a lot of blog adding membership areas to their blogs recently, probably because of the demand for even better content and the fact that it’s so easy to set up. Think about it, would you be happy paying $10 a month (or even $100) to have access to content that will change your life or business in some way, of course you would! The real benefit of having a membership website over a eBook is that with a membership website, you don’t just bill them once but you bill them every month. Let me show you the maths then you will get really excited:

Option 1: Sell 1 eBook a day at $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will make $1200 this month as well. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $14,600!

Option 2: Sell 1 Membership Website a day for $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will bring in $1200 of additional membership but you will also have the recurring revenue from last month, making it $2400 that month. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $105,600! I will leave you to pick which one sounds best to you.

One small thing I should note about my maths above, some people will obviously cancel there membership, the amount of people who cancel depends on the value you provide them. For those who have already went with Option 1, don’t worry, here is what I would do; take your eBook that you are selling for $40 and charge $1 for it, you will now probably sell 20 or 30 copies a day instead of one. Now when they order, add them to a membership program for $39 a month and give them the first 30 days to try it for FREE. This approach will get a lot more people buying and convert more people into staying for your recurring program. For those of you think this is to much work, you could simple change your eBook into a membership program by time releasing the content.

I always find inspiration the best way to start something new on my site, so here are my favourite membership websites that have been added to blogs.

If you would like to know more about recurring revenue and building membership websites, check out the great interview I did with Ryan Lee! He also has just released the videos and audios from his continuity seminar earlier in the year, I went to it and it honestly made a big difference to my online business and I don’t even have my own continuity program (YET!)

How To Add A Membership Website To Your Blog

From my research and recommendations from a lot of friends, there are 2 main ways to go about setting up your own membership website for wordpress. Them being:

1. Wishlist Member – Very customizable plugin with lots of features to make your membership website stand out from the crowd! (My personal recommendation)
2. aMember with Wordpress Plugin – Gives a simple yet effective membership area allowing users to download and see files easily.

FREE eBooks and eCourses

As I mentioned in a past post, building your list is one of the most important things to do and the best way to attract people to sign up for your list is to offer them something for FREE! Now the benefit of having a good mailing list is, so that you can email out about new content and promotions which could make you more money. I know some people that have such great lists, that when they email out promoting a new online course, they can bring in as much as $300,000! Not bad for writing a few emails. Now this is great but sending emails can become a bit of a pain and some readers will be turned off by them. What I have done is built a really strong eCourse and eBooks sharing lots of great secrets, tips and tools on how I make money online and then monetized it with affiliate links. Now this took me around 2 days to write (partly because I’m dyslexic and writing isn’t my forty) but since then it’s made me tens of thousands of dollars with no additional effort. My advise to you is to create a eBook or course that you could sell and then give it away for free and make your money through affiliate commissions. Remember to check out my past post on making money with email marketing to make sure you approach it using my no leakage rule.

Adding an eBook/Course to your Website:

Adding your eBook to your website can be done in a variety of ways, personally I recommend my funnel system to work the best. This is how it works:

• Offer a sign up on your blog for a FREE eBook. I highly recommend using Aweber for your auto-responder as it’s what I use and most other Internet marketers. The best way to draw attract to your opt-in box is by placing a eCover of your eBook, this also gives it some physical value.
• Once they sign up for your eBook or Course, send them to a thank you page where you promote a few of your best selling affiliate programs. Also give them a personal thank you and remind them to check there emails and confirm that they want to be on the list.
• Now automatically dispatch an email using your auto-responder with your first email from your eCourse or a link to your eBook.
• Now build in several follow up emails promoting content on your blog and affiliate offers.

Web Directories

This method isn’t so common but looking from the examples I could find online, it is one of the most profitable! FreelanceSwitch has one of my favorite examples of a web directory, how it works is web designers who need work can pay monthly to have themselves listed in there web designers directory so people who are looking for web designers, can browse the directory and pick there favorite. What’s great about this approach is they have made the deal even better for web designers, they have included access to the website job board, where they can apply for jobs that are posted which has allowed them to make it free for people to submit jobs.

How To Add A Web Directory To Your Blog

Although there are dozens of free web directory plugins for Wordpress, not many let you charge people to submit links to them. The first directory I created was for WebDesignDev which was a directory of all the resources web designers and developers would need such as hosting, scripts, domains, coding etc. I allowed people to submit for free but gave a premium option which for a price they would be posted at the top of the directory with a special border and made to stand out from the crowd. The software I used was PHPLinkDirectory which seems to be bringing out more and more Wordpress friendly additions to it’s software and would be my pick for anyone trying to achieve a successful directory.

Job Board

The great thing about offering a job board is that it’s offering a needed service to your users. Take for example you are visiting a web design blog because you wanted someone to design your blog. Now this blog has a job board and it was free for you submit a job, that’s a great additional service the blog is providing. But where is the money you are probably asking, what you do is you charge the designers who are looking to do the work, possibly a $50 monthly charge to reply to any design jobs. For any designer looking for work, this is a no brainer because these are the best leads you can get, people who are saying they want to give you work. This really is a no brainer and something I really am thinking about adding to IncomeDiary as it will solve the problem of people looking to hire people and the problem that WebDesignDev is over flowing with web designers looking for work.

How To Add A Job Board To Your Blog

There are two main Wordpress plugins that will allow you to add a Job Board to your blog, those being WPJobBoard and JobPress. Pricing strategy is most important here, either deciding to charge people to post job or to reply to jobs. Personally I think charging people to post jobs works best because then you can focus on getting people to respond to work, which will be easier when its FREE for them although it seems it seems to be a mixed opinion between bloggers on which way is best to charge.

Done For You

Done for you is something new I’m working on but have seen some really great examples of some very clever Internet entrepreneurs using it. “Done For You” is basically a service you offer on your blog that is all done for you, one great example is Done For You Meal Plans, something that I have seen very popular in the fitness niche. So if you want to lose weight you need to create a meal plan but the problem is, you got to spend days researching to make sure you get it right and then put it together. Instead fitness marketers put together the plan for you at a price. Now a lot of the time they can use the same plan for a lot of people so the work is minimal or they could even outsource it to someone else for the fraction of the price.

How To Add A Done For You Section To Your Blog

This is one of easiest things to do, find a problem, supply the solution, bill them! All you need to do now is create a page on your blog with your offer, add a PayPal link to purchase and then outsource the work at a very small fraction of the price paid.

Affiliate Marketing

All of IncomeDiary’s income comes from affiliate commissions and I’m getting quite good at it, this has actually be my best month ever online by far! Now the best advise I could give you is testing, work as hard as you can to test everything possible. So IncomeDiary has been online for around 6 months and I have a lot of really popular content driving good traffic to affiliate offers but I knew I could do better so what I did was I used Google Analytics to find out which pages got the most visits and then used CrazyEgg to see what parts of a post are seen more and which links they clicked.  To a surprise, my most popular page in two days had no clicks on my affiliate links so what I did was included a green stop sign (something tested by Internet marketers) and I added it to the paragraph with my links. Over night I got a few clicks, although it wasn’t many, comparing it to zero, it meant a big difference.

How To Monetize Your Blog Using Affiliate Marketing

A couple tips that I really recommend you take advantage of when doing affiliate marketing are, ask for a better commission rate and also ask for a coupon code to give your readers a discount. Doing these two things will greatly increase your success at making money online with affiliate marketing because you will be able to convert more readers with a coupon code and with a higher payout then other affiliates, you will be able to invest more to get more conversions. The most important thing is how you display your affiliate links, there are a few different ways to offer affiliate links on your website, the ones I suggest are:

• Comparison charts, this way you make the reader choose which one is the best choice. This works really well because you give them all the options and which ever one they take, you collect a commission on.
• Recommendations, this converts better for me because the reader gets to see you using the product in action and so know you are not promoting it just to make money but because it actually works!

Simply linking to an affiliate link and hoping people will buy it isn’t enough!

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To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Which one of these do you think would work well on your blog?

PPS. If you haven’t started your own blog yet, remember to check out my FREE Blogging eCourse so you can start making money online!

WordPress e-Commerce

This plugin makes WordPress into a really neat online store. Most online stores are bulky, expensive and complicated, not this one, it’s simple and free, just like Wordpress itself!

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WishList Member

WishList Member is the fastest way to turn a WordPress site into a full Membership Site. And if you buy now, you get a free copy of “Crush It”.

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WP Review Site

This plugin enables you to turn your WordPress website into a fully functional review site. At the moment there is a special introductory price of only $97.

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BB Press

This is a WordPress forum plugin from the creators of WordPress. Its free to download, and handles any task you throw at it.

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WordPress Wiki

WordPress Wiki is a theme for WordPress that turns it into a lightweight wiki without all the complications. It also has a FAQ plugin built into it.

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Portfolio Blog

This is an extraordinary WordPress theme that enables you to have a full single page portfolio layout that runs entirely on WordPress. And its only $25.

Another recommended portfolio theme plugin is YourFolio and Modern Portfolio.

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WordPress Gallery

There are so many galleries out on the internet. Gallery Pro is a WordPress Theme that allows you to change your blog into a gallery. Another cool gallery theme for WordPress is Showcase Theme.

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JobPress

JobPress integrates a job board into your WordPress website. It comes with all the features you would expect from a professional job board software, but half the price. This plug-in could be used as a standalone website or as a great additional way to monetize your blog, I will be using this plug-in on one of my sites very soon!

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WP Contact Manager

WP Contact Manager is a low priced WordPress theme that turns your site into a contact book.

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OneNews

OneNews is a WordPress theme that allows you to easily create a single-page news aggregator such as PpoURL’s or Alltop within a few clicks.

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Classipress

This is a WordPress theme that turns your WordPress website into a classified ads site. They call it Craigslist for WordPress.

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Article Directory

Here is a neat WordPress build for an article directory website. This article directory plugin has many different features, and is free to download!

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Video Site

Ever wanted to have your own video trailer site? Video Flick is a low priced video trailer theme for WordPress.

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WordPress Multi-User

WordPress Multi-User (MU for short) is a blog tool and publishing platform that allows you to run thousands of WordPress blogs with one single install of WordPress. A great way to built your own Blogspot/Wordpress.com style website, I personally have used this to build a niche travel site, offering all customers a blog so they can share their experiences with friends and family back home.

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BuddyPress

BuddyPress is a huge mix of WordPress plugins and themes, to run a social network based on WordPress MU.

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WordPress CMS

With the Arthemia theme, you can run it like a content management system, rather than a blog.

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P2 Theme

The P2 theme is like twitter in a box. Great theme for companys or organisations to stay up to date with what everyone is doing, all in one place.

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Digg Clone

This plugin adds voting functionality for posts. This function is similar to Reddit or Digg, in that visitors can vote for and against.

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When I began to research for different ways to using Wordpress, I soon realised that I could be doing a lot more to improve my website. For example I could use the Wiki theme for a Wikipedia area on any blogging FAQ people have and I could add a job board for those looking for web design work to be done for their blog.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post.

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. What’s your goal for your blog? is it to share knowledge or are you using it in a different way to most others?

I live in the UK and while it is far from perfect it is a good place to start a business – registering a new business is pretty straight forward and easy.

That said, many of us like to dream of one day living in a much more Entrepreneur friendly country — not just for business reasons but also for lifestyle reasons (Better weather appears to be one of the top reasons) So for this post I had my VA do some research on Cool Places For Entrepreneurs To Live — I have to say, I was surprised by some of her suggestions. (For Example, the Falklands Islands is a bit too cold for me — but I’m sure the scenery is great)

Let me have you thoughts on the views and suggestions, in particular:

1) Is there a particular country you would like to move to? (if it is not listed, please suggest it)
and
2) What would be your reasons for moving there? Lifestyle? Friendlier Taxation rules for entrepreneurs? Better Climate?
or
3) Are you really happy where you currently live?

On a side note: One question I get asked over and over is for my thoughts on Business Structure? Should you set up a company or trade as an individual for example? Also do I have any views or suggestions on setting up businesses ‘offshore”?

I am quite clear on this — I do not and will not give any advice on Legal or Accounting Matters. For a start I have no professional qualification and therefore I am not qualified and secondly the rules and regulations vary so much from country to country that frankly I would be getting into a minefield if I ever attempted to do this.

Therefore – please contact a relevant Professional in your country and seek advice from them.

Finally — please note, the list below is not exhaustive – clearly you should do your own Due Diligence before moving to another country — not matter how good the weather or taxation rules are

To Our Success

Michael

1. Andorra – Tax Haven

Andorra is a well-known European tax haven, and people who claim residency here have no income tax and inheritance tax. However, the country recently introduced a capital gains tax making it less popular amongst the world’s richest people. That said when compared with the price of purchasing property in other popular tax havens, Andorra is still a wise move for some.

Source: ArticlePro and independent.co.uk

2. Bahrain – Tax Haven

Bahrain has a highly favorable tax environment, with no taxes on personal or corporate income, and no withholding or VAT. Unlike some other tax havens, Bahrain allows 100% foreign ownership of companies. And as a result thousands of global corporations have made Bahrain the location of their Middle East headquarters.

Source: BahrainGateway

3. Gibraltar

Gibraltar was once a very popular tax haven for British business. As a self governing territory Gibraltar offered its “residents” and domiciled businesses no capital gain tax, no wealth tax, no sales tax and no VAT. But as of 2006 Gibraltar has agreed not to issue any more Exempt Company certificates.

Source: ShelterOffshore

4. The Bahamas

The Bahamas takes pride in offering part-time “residents” and wealthy retirees a break from taxes. This island nation has no corporate income tax, no capital gains tax, no personal income tax, no sales tax, and no inheritance tax. Businesses domiciled in the Bahamas do pay payroll taxes and a few other minor levies.

Source: GloriousBahamas

5. Switzerland

Switzerland is made up of 26 Cantons, member states that were entirely sovereign until 1648. This historical legacy of independence has created an amazing tax haven.  Wealthy foreigners who gain resident status can negotiate the amount of their income that is subject to taxation with the canton where they purchase property!

Source: Wikipedia

6. Monaco – Tax Haven

Under Monegasque law, there is no income tax imposed in this country. There is also no withholding tax. Its rental properties are taxed at 1% plus a service charges. This tax is payable by the tenant. There are no capital gains. Monaco does not levy wealth taxes.

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide

7. Cayman Islands – Tax Haven

The Cayman Islands are a British overseas territory, a group of three islands located in the Caribbean between Cuba and Central America. They are one of the largest offshore banking centres in the world with over 600 banks. There is no property tax, income tax, corporate tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, or any other kind of direct taxation in the Caymans. They only impose tax for the following: Departure tax, which is CI$10 or US$12.50 for travelers aged 12 and above and a one-time “stamp duty” which is charged on real estate purchases at a range of between 7.5% and 9%.

Source: Expatfocus

8. Cook Islands

There is a moderate income tax in Cook Islands. Non-residents are taxed only on their income from sources in Cook Islands. Income and capital gains earned by non-residents is taxed at progressive rates, from 20% to 30%. Income tax is payable by those residing and working in the Cook Islands and is charged on a maximum rate payable set at 30% and a personal allowance of NZ$6,000. Any earnings over NZ$30,000 are taxed at 30%. There are no property tax, capital gains tax, estate tax and property tax.

Source: MyDeltaQuest

9. Hong Kong

Rates of personal taxation in Hong Kong are amongst the lowest in the Asia Pacific. There are no sales tax, capital gains tax, no VAT, a maximum salary tax of 20% and a profit tax maximum of 16%.

Source: About

10. American Anguilla(British West indies)

Anguilla is a Caribbean tax haven. It is an ideal tax-free haven for foreign and American investors. There are no personal income tax imposed and no tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) signed with IRS/US Treasury.

Source: EndTaxes

11. Mariana Islands

Independent but politically linked to the US, it is a tax haven. Residents’ tax rates peak at 9%. The income tax is generally charged at progressive rates. Its taxable income is computed by deducting income-generating expenses and depreciation costs from the gross income. All of the income from the islands produced by non-residents which are not effectively connected with a business is charged at a flat rate of 30%. Although if the taxpayer files an income tax return in the islands, he is entitled to 100% rebate on this tax. This country is a tax haven and a tourist heaven.

Source: CNMI Department of Finance

12. Brunei

A tiny yet oil-rich sultanate on the northern coast of Borneo — has aspirations as an offshore financial centre. Brunei has no personal income tax. What you earn is all yours. Though, Chinese, who make up an estimated 16% of the population, are excluded from citizenship, and these benefits. They are either stateless or hold British protected persons passports. Only corporations are subject to taxation. Companies pay 30% tax on earnings. Depending on the size of the capital investment, companies with Pioneer Certificate are exempted from 30% tax for two to five years.

Source: NationsEncyclopedia

13. Malta

Tax here is moderate. Non-residents are liable to tax on all their income sourced in Malta. There is no property rate; its remittances of a capital nature are not taxable. Though, temporary residents, who extend their stay in Malta beyond six months in any one calendar year, will be subject to Malta tax on remittances of income made to the Island during the period of stay. Non-resident individuals are subject to a withholding tax of 25%. Capital Gains Tax is generally levied at a flat rate of 12% on the transfer value or the selling price.

Source: FirstGozo

14. Isle of Man

The Isle of Man is a low tax area with a standard rate of income tax of 18% and a higher rate of 20% depending on the level of income. There are no general capital gains tax, turnover tax or stamp duties.

Source: LowTax

15. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

This is also one of the world’s tax havens. There is no capital gains tax. The individual income tax is contributions for the national insurance plan (social security) which is 5% of income per year. Its corporate income tax is 10% to 35%. This tax haven is considered to be low to moderate.

Source: ExpatIntelligence

16. Grenada

The tax in this country for residential properties is levied at 0.1% on land value and 0.15% on the structure/building value. The income that is earned by non-resident individuals is subject to a flat rate of 15% withheld at source. The property tax is charged on all real property in Grenada. The tax is levied on the market value of the property and a taxable rate is applied based on the classification of the property.

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide

17. Mauritius

Mauritius, as of 01 July 2008, a flat tax rate of 15% will be applied on all taxable income. All rental income of non-residents is taxed at a flat rate of 15%, withheld by the tenant. Income-generating expenses are deductible when computing for the taxable income. The royalties paid by offshore companies to non-residents, and dividends from Mauritius by nonresident companies are tax free.

Source: IntercontinentalTrust

18. Nauru

Nauru does not impose any taxes; it did not also sign any income tax treaties with any nation. To provide for a secure economic future, the government has invested much of the phosphate revenue overseas in projects ranging from a skyscraper in Melbourne to phosphate plants in the Philippines and India.

Source: Offshore Manual

19. Dutch Antilles (Netherlands Antilles)

Those that derive all their income from outside the Netherlands Antilles are liable to tax rates of between 2.4% and 6%, dependent upon activity. Local workers pay 2 % with the income of $3,300. There are no withholding taxes on dividends interest and royalties, capital taxes, exchange control restrictions and no required debt-to-equity ratio.

Source: EscapeArtist

20. United Arab Emirates

There are no income taxes on UAE. Rental income earned on residential properties located in Dubai leased to foreign nationals is taxed at 10%. There are no capital gains and property tax in UAE.

Source: KPMG

21. Solomon Islands

For Individual taxation, depending on their income peaks at 40% that is if the income is up to $60,000 and up. $15,000 is charged at 11%. Residents are taxed on their worldwide income. Non Residents are taxed on income sourced from the Solomon Islands.

Source: IMF

22. Antigua and Barbuda

The income tax in this country is at its progressive rates. It is categorized in three which is: employment, self-employment and other income. For Income up to $4,444, it is charged 10% and for over $53,333, it is charged 25%, this is on all income over US$53,333. Also, each taxpayer is entitled to a personal tax-free allowance of $13,333.

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide

23. Aruba

Aruba’s law of Imputation payment System and Dividend withholding tax is levied at 11.8%. Aruba is considered as a dormant tax haven compared to other tax haven. The tax haven companies located in Aruba are exempt from tax.

Source: LowTax

24. Cyprus

The corporate tax rate in Cyprus is the lowest in EU. The tax regime provides many exemptions. Cyprus is more than just an attractive holding company jurisdiction. There is no personal income tax if the income is at £ 0-10.000. But Chargeable Income which is greater than £ 20.000 is charged at 30%. Individuals who are not tax residents of Cyprus are taxed on income accrued or derived from sources in Cyprus. An individual is tax resident in Cyprus if he spends in Cyprus more than 183 days in any one year.

Source: BDO

25. Fiji

Income is taxed in progressive rates in Fiji. The taxable income is gross rent less income-generating expenses. Non-residents are entitled to the following allowances: Wife allowance of $658, provided that the wife does not elect for a separate assessment; Widow or widower allowance of $548.

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide

26. Ukraine

Non-residents in this country are generally taxed in 15% on all their income. Same is for the gross rental income earned by the residents. The Value added Tax, leasing and sales of buildings are subject to 20% VAT. The property tax is levied on Ukrainian land and property at 1% payable by the owners or users of the property. For corporate tax it is taxed at a rate of 25%. A 1% tax is levied on the capital gains.

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide

27. Islands of Guernsey and Jersey (Channel Islands)

The individual taxation here is normally 20%. There are no capital gains, no gifts or wealth tax, no real estate and VAT. Social security is levied at a rate of 12.5%

Source: KPMG

28. Falkland Islands

This is another moderate tax haven. The individual income tax is free for the first £12,000. The next £12,000 is charged at 20% and any amount thereafter is charged at 25%. The tricky system of individual deductions and allowances previously in place has been removed.

Source: Falklands

29. Jamaica

Income tax in Jamaica is 25%. For residential tax, a person’s company payroll system is not required to file an income tax.

Source: KPMG

30. Montserrat

The tax rates for this tax haven are not low, but fair. For the nonresidents who’s earning rental income in Montserrat is taxed at a flat rate of 10%. For the residential properties, taxes are charged at 1.65% land tax on market value of land, 0.3% house tax market value of the building infrastructure. No tax for capital gain. For Non-resident companies (lending money for “approved development) it is charged 20%. Resident companies are also charged 20%. There are no other taxes on the income of a corporation resident in Montserrat.

Source:
http://www.devunit.gov.ms/taxes.html
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Caribbean/Montserrat/Taxes-and-Costs

#1 Gary Vaynerchuk
	Why Gary Made The List Gary has shown the blogging world that anyone can be successful at blogging as long as they are passionate about what they are talking about. Gary is one of the world’s best video bloggers and has set a high standard for everyone else who wants to make it in video blogging. He has just released his first book “Crush It” where he shares how to cash in on your passion which no doubt will inspire thousands of new starts ups around the world. Websites http://garyvaynerchuk.com http://tv.winelibrary.com
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#2 Collis Ta’eed
	Why Collis Made The List In 3 years has gone from living in his wife’s parent’s garage to running one of the largest and most successful blog networks. Thousands of blogs have started with the aim to have a fraction of the success Collis has had in the blogging world. Collis’s network boasts over 430,000 twitter and RSS readers earning his company several million dollars a year! Websites http://envato.com http://thenetsetter.com/blog/
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#3 Darren Rowse
	Why Darren Made The List Darren in the past year has gone from strength to strength, now with 3 super successful blogs and 100,000’s of RSS readers, he really does know what he is doing. Darren has monetized his Problogger website in two new ways this year, by adding a paid forum and an eBook which has influenced a lot of other bloggers to follow suit. Websites http://www.problogger.net http://digital-photography-school.com http://www.twitip.com
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#4 Timothy Sykes
	Why Timothy Made The List Timothy is doing things the way they should be, you don’t have to just monetize your website with banner adverts, and you want to diversify your income so it comes in multiple streams. Timothy has earned over $150,000 in one month from his blog and makes it look so easy, check out one of his monthly blogging reports to see how he does it! Websites http://timothysykes.com
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#5 Tim Ferris
	Why Tim Made The List Tim is a angel investor and blogger. He was nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007, and is the author of The 4-Hour workweek which has been written and sold in 35 different languages. The book hit #1 in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and was also a BusinessWeek bestseller. Websites http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ http://www.timferriss.com
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#6 Pete Cashmore
	Why Pete Made The List Pete deserves to be on our list because he started the most popular social networking blog online to date, Mashable. Mashable has then acquired many authors to write daily content on the social side of the internet, including news, reviews and new web startups. Pete is an inspiration to everyone in the blogosphere. Websites http://mashable.com
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#7 Michael Arrington
	Why Michael Made The List He is a corporate attorney who left law to become a Web entrepreneur. When he took a year off, and returned to the work world, he started blogging as a way to understand the new Web start-ups that had arisen in his absence. TechCrunch took off, and he soon found himself an accidental power broker. Another success story for those who blog about their passion and the money and success follow. Websites http://www.techcrunch.com
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#8 Vitaly Friedman
	Why Vitaly Made The List Vitaly made our list because he started up one of the most popular design blogs on the internet that teaches thousands of people daily principles of design. Smashing Magazine is known in every corner of the internet. The content served up on this blog daily is amazing. Designers can head over to Smashing Magazine and expect to find something new, original and juicy each and every day. Websites http://www.alvit.de/blog/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com
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#9 Brian Clark
	Why Brian Made The List Brian Clark most well known for CopyBlogger and Thesis Theme is one of my favorite bloggers because he keeps everything clean and hasn’t sold his soul to get to where he has today. His theme has been a huge hit among bloggers making it easy for those who want to customize their blog to do so. Can’t wait to see what 2010 brings… Websites http://www.copyblogger.com
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#10 Alborz Fallah
	Why Alborz Made The List Alborz made our top 50 list because he is the creator / founder of Australia’s fastest growing automotive editorial site, caradvice.com.au. Their posts, reviews, news and photos they put up on the site makes it stand out from the competition. Alborz is a big influence to many car lovers. Websites http://www.caradvice.com.au http://www.alborzfallah.com
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#11 Lisa Stone
	Why Lisa Made The List Lisa made our list for her compassion and work she has done on her web statup, blogher. Lisa co-founded blogher.com (the woman’s blog network). Blogher reaches more than 15 million woman each month, via the website and conferences. Keep up the great work Lisa! Websites http://www.blogher.com
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#12 Yaro Starak
	Why Yaro Made The List Yaro known in my circle of friends as the nice guy in blogging who lets his products and blogging speak for themselves. I have interviewed him twice and both times the wealth of information he has shared for FREE has been astonishing. For those who are new or advanced with blogging, check out his course’s as he has something for everyone. Websites http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com http://www.blogmastermind.com Become A Blogger
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#13 Adii Rockstar
	Why Adii Made The List Adii Rockstar is a remarkable man, which is why he has scored so high up in our list. Adii renamed himself just for marketing purposes, that’s how passionate he is. He owns one of the biggest theme websites, WooThemes, and blogs on his personal blog Adii.co.za. He has recently started video-blogging, which has been a huge success. Adii’s posts are very genuine, plus he started one of the biggest blog theme websites, that’s why he is a big influence in the blogging world. Websites http://www.adii.co.za http://www.woothemes.com http://radiiate.com
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#14 Arianna Huffington
	Why Arianna Made The List Arianna made it to our list because she is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the famous Huffington Post. The Huffington post is an online styled newspaper / blog that writes about politics, business and entertainment. Arianna’s website is read by hundreds of thousands of people. Websites http://www.huffingtonpost.com
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#15 Matthew Mullenweg
	Why Matthew Made The List Without Matthew half of the people on this list wouldn’t be doing what they are today. Matt is the founder of the world’s best and most well known blogging software, WordPress. The reason he is on the list is because without all the new features Matt and his company release each month, we wouldn’t be having the results we are having today. Websites http://ma.tt http://wordpress.com http://automattic.com http://wordpress.org
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#16 James Schramko
	Why James Made The List Another person I met at the Underground in 2009, James has really set a new standard for affiliate blogging. If you took James’s site and put it along side some of the top blogs in our list and looked at the traffic, James would only have a small fraction of their traffic but would most likely be earning more! Check out James’s website and learn how to create a affiliate funnel to bring in a lot more money from your blog! Websites http://www.internetmarketingspeed.com/about/ http://www.jamesschramko.com
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#17 Pawan Agrawal
	Why Pawan Made The List Pawan first came to my notice back in 2007 when he launched MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad which is a stripe advert along the top of a blog which can still be seen on some of the blogs that made this list. Since then he has released multiple new products including Wordpress Wizard, an eBook teaching you how to create a successful blog and also a Wordpress plugin convert text into affiliates links. Websites http://www.maxblogpress.com
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#18 Brian Gardner
	Why Brian Made The List Brian made our list because he has come so far in so little time. Around 2 years ago he had never owned a domain name or touched a piece of WordPress code. Today, he has a nice blog, and offers services alongside his blogging which include WordPress theme design, Website Strategy and Internet Marketing. Websites http://www.briangardner.com
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#19 Gina Trapani
	Why Gina Made The List Gina is a Technophile, writer, and coder. She has her own podcast named TWIg, blogs on smarterware.org and also blogs about tech, is a programmer and also is a book author of “Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better”. She is also a Sun certified Java programmer who builds Firefox extensions and web applications. Websites http://www.ginatrapani.org http://smarterware.org
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#20 Jeremy Schoemaker
	Why Jeremy Made The List Jeremy made our list because of the content he publishes on Shoemoney.com Shoemoney teaches people how to make money online, something Jeremy is very good at, and passionate about. He is a very clever man, and his website gets thousands of daily readers. Jeremy is a big player in the blogosphere, and there is much to learn from himself and his website. Websites http://www.shoemoney.com
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#21 Chris Brogan
	Why Chris Made The List Chris teaches entrepreneurs and bloggers how to use social media to build their business and brand. Chris can be seen speaking at some of the biggest events around the world and tweeting tips to his 100,000 twitter following. Websites http://www.chrisbrogan.com
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#22 John Chow
	Why John Made The List John Chow, also known as the dot com mongol blogs about his life, and the miscellaneous ramblings of the dot com lifestyle. John influences many people, and teaches them how to make money online. All of Johns posts are original, fresh and interesting, not just your standard stuff. That’s why he shines over many competitors in the blogosphere. I have read Johns blog since a very early age when I was in school, back when he had just over 1,000 RSS Readers. Since then his blog has grown dramatically along with the internet. Keep up the good work John! Websites http://www.johnchow.com
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#23 David Risley
	Why David Made The List David launched two blogging products this year, 3 day money and blog masters club which were both a big hit in the blogging world. David is most well known for being a 6 figure blogger in the tech industry but has recently been looked at as more of a guru to the bloggers. Look out in the coming months for the relaunch of his blogging membership website. Websites http://www.davidrisley.com
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#24 Andy Beard
	Why Andy Made The List I always have know about Andy but never spent much time reading his content but earlier in the year I contacted him for a review and the wealth of knowledge he sent back in an email was just remarkable, a guy every blogger should be speaking with! Websites http://andybeard.eu
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#25 Mario Lavandeira
	Why Mario Made The List Mario made our top 50 list because he is the founder of perezhilton.com, one of the biggest celebrity blogs. The notorious gossip columnist brands himself as queen of all media. The website has thousands of daily readers, and attracts alot of attention. Mario inspires many with his daily articles about news, celeb and gossip. Websites http://perezhilton.com
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#26 Steve Pavlina
	Why Steve Made The List Steve writes a blog about personal development for smart people. Although his site has a plain design, its booming with traffic, so it just goes to show content is king. Steve has his own podcast and also speaks at many events. His blog attracts more than 2 millions readers every month! His book “Personal Development for Smart People” was published back in 2008, and since then been translated in to several languages. Websites http://www.stevepavlina.com
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#27 Heather B. Armstrong
	Why Heather Made The List Heather, the founder of dooce.com made our list because of her compassion as a blogger and writer. Her website makes enough money to support her family, and enabled her husband to quit his day job. Heather has wrote books which include “It Sucked and Then I Cried” and “Things I Lenard About My Dad In Therapy”. Websites http://dooce.com
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#28 Jake and Amir
	Why Jake and Amir Made The List When I think of funny videos, I think of college humor. Jake and Amir created this awesome website that attracts tens of thousands of daily readers. They have inspired thousands with their network of funny humorous videos, awesome images and funny ramblings. Websites http://www.collegehumor.com http://www.jakeandamir.com
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#29 Al Carlton
	Why Al Made The List I first met Al by accident in 2006 on Digital Point forums and somehow I got him on MSN, after a random chat I realized he was one of top earning bloggers I knew but had one of the best business models. Simply blog about what you love and the money followed, TOP bloke, making blogging a more fun place. Websites http://www.coolest-gadgets.com http://selfmademinds.com
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#30 Robb Sutton
	Why Robb Made The List Anyone who can get given over $100,000 worth of products to review for their blog in under 18 months is someone to be watching. I have been really impressed with what Robb has done in such a short time from his first blog, anyone who wants to make money reviewing products should check out his eBook. Websites http://robbsutton.com Ramped Reviews eBook
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#31 Nick La
	Why Nick Made The List Nick made the list because he has influenced so many individuals including myself from a very young age. I remember reading his first blog ndesign-studio when I was in school. Nicks artwork, blog posts and overall designs influenced so many people and his site grew very fast. He then went on to launch bestwebgallery, webdesignerwall and recently icondock. Nick is a true inspiration to the art & design side of blogging. Websites http://www.ndesign-studio.com http://www.webdesignerwall.com http://bestwebgallery.com http://icondock.com
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#32 Daniel Scocco
	Why Daniel Made The List Daniel made this list for a couple reasons, he has a small popular blog network know as “Daily” which he earns a full time living from but the really great thing about his blogs is his following, so many people have 10,000s of subscribers but they don’t seem to take action, care what you write about or share their point of view. This is not the case with Daniel’s blog, he has a strong community built around him that everyone should aspire to have. Websites http://www.dailyblogtips.com
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#33 Ewdison Then
	Why Ewdison Made The List Ewdison contacted me earlier in the year when he saw me publish a post of the top earning bloggers, he mentioned he saw me it on Twitter and that he was earning over $60,000 a month from his tech blog. Ewdison has a great network of blogs where he uses several monetization techniques to make sure he doesn’t keep all his eggs in one basket. Websites http://www.ewdisonthen.com http://www.slashgear.com
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#34 Hongkiat Lim
	Why Hongkiat Made The List Hongkiat Lim blogs on his very well known site hongkiat.com. He teaches people daily how to design, by providing tutorials, inspirational showcases and huge sets of resources for bloggers and designers. Hongkiat is a true inspiration to now only bloggers, but web designers. Websites http://www.hongkiat.com
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#35 Alvin Phang
	Why Alvin Made The List Alvin is most well known for being the author of his eBook “Atomic Blogging” which teaches new bloggers how to make money from a blog. Alvin has made over $300,000 from blogging in the last 3 years and when asked if he would take twice that to work a 9 – 5 job again, would he take it? Phang replies, “Of course not, I will never do it, even if I am broke because I treasure and love the freedom of being my own boss”. Websites http://www.alvinphang.com http://www.gathersuccess.com Atomic Blogging
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#36 Fabio Sasso
	Why Fabio Made The List Fabio started one of the most inspirational design blogs ever made, called Abduzeedo. There are some outstanding design showcases posted on there every month. His blog is all over search engine results, and he teaches thousands of people Photoshop every day. An inspirational person for sure, and that’s why he deserves to be on our Inspirational bloggers 2009 list. Websites http://fabiosasso.com http://abduzeedo.com
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#37 Leo Babauta
	Why Leo Made The List Leo runs one of the top blogs in the world with over 140,000 subscribers he sure knows what people want out of a blog, CONTENT! Recently Leo has released a new blog teaching people how to write great content for there blog and how to create better blog posts. Leo proves to us all that you don’t need no $5000 design job, just a really clean, simple theme will do the job if your writing is up to scratch! Websites http://zenhabits.net
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#38 Walter Apai
	Why Walter Made The List Walter made our list for sure with his website WebDesignerDepot. WDD has a large twitter base of over 60,000 people. Walter writes daily articles for WebDesignerDepot, including inspirational showcases and galleries, tutorials, tips and tricks, and ramblings. Walter has inspired many with his extremely creative, original and colorful website. Websites http://www.webdesignerdepot.com
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#39 Ted Murphy
	Why Ted Made The List Ted Matters because he has created two great companies to help bloggers monetize their websites, them being IZEA and PayPerPost. IZEA represents over 250,000 bloggers and 25,000 advertisers worldwide. Put simply, they help advertisers identify people who will promote their products and services on their blog. Websites http://www.ted.me
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#40 David Leggett
	Why David Made The List I first met David back in March after convincing him to come to Yanik Silver’s underground event. We both sat down in the lobby with other attendees giving out blogging advise and setting up there blogs. When I returned home to England he took my idea for IncomeDiary and brought it to a whole new level. Leggett adds the wow factor to every site he gets his hands on, if you ever get the chance to work with him, take it! Websites http://www.theleggett.com http://www.tutorial9.net http://www.uxbooth.com
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#41 Skellie
	Why Skellie Made The List We think Skellie deserves to be on the list, because she manages all of the Tuts+ network which is owned by Envato. That Tuts+ network consists of many different tutorial blog sites including the famous PSDTuts that started it all out, NetTuts, AETuts and so many more. Its the biggest tutorial networks on the internet today and every day teaches thousands of people about design and programming. Websites http://www.skelliewag.org http://tutsplus.com
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#42 Rosalind Gardner
	Why Rosalind Made The List Rosalind made our list because she is a truly inspirational person. When she first started blogging, she received a first check for $10.99, and by the end of the year was turning over $5,000 a month. Rosalind blogs about affiliate marketing, blogging, content development, traffic generation, business strategy and many more topics. Websites http://www.netprofitstoday.com
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#43 Michael Martine
	Why Michael Made The List Michael has been exploring the web and making websites since 1997. He created his first blog in the year 2000, and since then has come a long way. Michael runs remarkablogger.com where he blogs about marketing, and also coaches individuals and large groups about blogging. Websites http://remarkablogger.com
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#44 Rob Benwell
	Why Rob Made The List I first met Rob back in 2006 when he spoke at Yanik Silver’s underground seminar and he shared a wealth of information about blogging, some stuff people haven’t even heard of yet! When it comes to blogging, this guy knows his stuff! 3 years old and he has made over a million dollars from blogging and from selling his best selling eBook on blogging! Websites http://bloggingtothebank.com/bttb/
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#45 Lorelle VanFossen
	Why Lorelle Made The List Lorelle is most well known for helping people learn more about blogging and Wordpress. On her personal blog which is surprisingly still hosted on the Wordpress.com domain she gives out tips, advice and techniques for blogging and using Wordpress. Websites http://lorelle.wordpress.com
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#46 Chris Garrett
	Why Chris Made The List Chris co-authored the ProBlogger book with Darren Rowse which shares secrets for blogging your way to a Six-Figure Income. As well as his the book and his personal blog, Chris writes for some of the biggest blogs on the internet including Blog Herald, FreelanceSwitch and CopyBlogger. Websites http://www.chrisg.com
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#47 Carl Ocab
	Why Carl Made The List I first found out about Carl when he was 13 years old and he had launched his first main blog about making money online. Carl has made this list because he has set a standard for ALL young bloggers who want to make money blogging. He has inspired and shown that anyone young can get online blogging and make it big. Although Carl hasn’t blogged much this year, he released a premium blog theme which has been really popular among some of the top bloggers. Websites http://www.carlocab.com http://www.ultimatebloggingtheme.com
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#48 Joost de Valk
	Why Joost Made The List Joost is well known for his search engine marketing and speed to user experience, the things a lot of people forget, yet are really important. On his personal blog and at live events,  he shares tips and tricks for Wordpress users to get more out of there blogs. Websites http://yoast.com
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#49 Jack Humphrey
	Why Jack Made The List Jack runs the Friday traffic report, which is a blog on blog marketing tips. Jack talks about blog promotion, social marketing, interviews people, link building tips and many more. He also has his own radio show. Jack has influenced many bloggers, and has a huge reader audience. Websites http://www.fridaytrafficreport.com
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#50 Lisa Irby
	Why Lisa Made The List LIsa Irby deserves to be on our list, because she created the website 2createawebsite.com where all beginners can go to find out how to create a blog from start to finish. The brainstorming process, design process and finishing result all included. Lisa has influenced many new people into creating their own blog using her forever growing guide. Also included in her free online guide are video tutorials, free blog creation software / builders and many more tips and tricks. Websites http://www.2createawebsite.com

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. To have your chance of being on this list next year, check out my FREE eCourse to making money blogging by clicking here!

PPS. Who has made the biggest impact in the way you do blogging?

Something a little different today.

A little while ago my Father, Barry Dunlop introduced me to a good friend of his : Clinton Lee (Clinton is the guy on the left in the above picture)

Clinton is a remarkable online business owner and web business investor. Initially I was hoping Clinton would do an interview for us but Clinton is one of those Internet guys who likes to keep a low profile. Indeed many people only know him by his Forum ID’s so doing a public interview and plastering his photo across this website was not an option. (lucky that he posed with my Dad above)

So I suppose you could say Clinton is a real Non-Guru – the kind of guy who implements rather than talks about what he knows.

Clinton’s area of expertise is the buying and selling of businesses and in particular, online businesses. Clinton discusses this subject in great detail at one of his websites: experienced-people.co.uk and I have to say I feel very fortunate in the end that Clinton has very generously provided us with a post on this subject.

I know many of you are really just starting out online, but one day when you have a successful site Clinton is someone you are going to want to know – an expert who can guide you through the process of selling your website. Alternatively another way to start online is to buy an existing online business – this is something more and more people are doing according to Clinton.

Either way, this article is one you will want to bookmark and come back to.

Enjoy – I look forward to your comments.

Michael

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Buying And Selling Websites – An Introduction

An article by Clinton Lee

80% of new businesses fail.

It’s easy to dismiss the number as driven by a lot of inexperienced, unskilled wanna-be-entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. Many businesses started by seasoned business professionals still don’t make it past the first year.

Why?

Simply put, a business is always a gamble but a new business is even riskier. You may crunch the numbers, have fancy projections, conduct impressive looking financial viability studies and enjoy the advantage of big name backers … and could still fail. That’s just the nature of the beast, you may take steps to mitigate but there’s always more uncertainty and risk in a new business than an established, thriving one.

That’s why there’s a huge market in selling going concerns . Numerous companies such as Businesses For Sale , Daltons , Sunbelt network etc., have, at any given time, tens of thousands of profitable, successful businesses looking for new owners. And they do a roaring trade selling these firms to experienced entrepreneurs and novices alike. There are thousands of less well known business brokers across the world acting on a smaller scale. All together, it’s a market of several billion dollars a year.

The same thing applies to websites.

Anyone wanting to make money on the Internet has two options: starting from scratch or buying an established Internet business with a proven record.

There is often suspicion in the market that if a business or website is really that profitable then it wouldn’t be for sale. The thinking goes along these lines: if I wouldn’t sell my thriving business then others wouldn’t either.

That fails to take account of the fact that there are often very valid reasons for sale.

Sometimes owners die, others need capital in a hurry to meet a big personal tax bill or the costs of a divorce, need to meet non-compete agreements for some new venture they’ve joined… the list of legitimate reasons is long.

Acquisition has one primary drawback over launching: the entry price. An existing business with a fairly guaranteed future earning stream is going to have a higher dollar cost to compensate for the sweat of the founder and the fact that the business model is profit-proven. However, getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of the business, its idiosyncrasies and culture, staff, technology, suppliers and customers takes a while and requires a fair bit of effort.

Is there a middle ground?

Yes, it’s in duplicating an already successful business. Let’s say you’ve found a well-run, highly profitable business. Let’s also say that the owner invited you in, explained the ins and outs of the business, let you browse around and ask questions and taught you his secrets to keeping it profitable. Would that be worth some money to you? Bear in mind it could save you the financial cost, heartbreak and lost time of starting a venture yourself and having it fail. Of course, it would be worth some money. It offers all the advantages of proven model without the baggage of existing operations. It offers all the low-cost benefits of a new venture without anywhere near the same Mount Everest sized risk.

This is where I sell you a program showing you just how to do that. This is where I tell you that for $99 I can open the doors to my business, teach you the ropes and show you how setup a copycat operation to make millions. That’s what many Internet marketers do.

But I’m not going to do that.

I’m going to tell you how you can help yourself. Many of you are aware of one or two website listing locations such as Flippa.com but here is a list of all the main locations to buy a website. Start with a plan. You are going to begin by browsing the listings and ruthlessly ignoring those sites that are too new, aren’t making a profit or are blatantly exaggerating their merits (the tone of the seller’s description often gives this away). Of the others, you’ll eliminate those that aren’t in your areas of interest, perhaps because you are ideologically opposed to promoting gambling … or because you know nothing about the plus size ladies’ fashions they specialise in. It’s important to find a subject that you like and can see yourself commissioning material for or promoting/managing.

You’ll then do a bit of due diligence (the hows are explained here). You can often eliminate sites just from doing a few checks on the information provided in public. Eliminate them. You now come to a core of websites with widely different business models but all seemingly good, solid businesses. This is your shortlist.

Then comes the interesting bit: learning about them for free. When a seller lists a site, he has to provide information that he wouldn’t normally dream of disclosing. He puts into the public domain intimate details about the finances of his business, he gives people access to his traffic stats, he even downloads Adsense CSVs and provides them for free to interested buyers. He goes further. He’ll discuss the running and management of the site, explain what’s required, address concerns, answer questions and generally be very helpful. He’ll practically teach you what makes the business tick. He gives you all the ammunition you need to set up a competing website!

But it’s a dirty trick to play on the seller if you have no intention of purchasing the business for sale. Pretending to be buying when you’re not is deceiving the seller and it’s bad karma to dupe people. That’s why I suggest you add one more criteria to the shortlist: examine only those sites which fall within your budget. Because no matter how much you learn about the business, you will make more money if you hit the ground running and when you find a good business going at a good rate, it’s generally in your own best interest to grab it before someone else does. It beats starting from scratch. If that good business is going at a bad rate, though, you’re well-armed to go create one yourself.

After all that effort should you end up neither buying nor starting a business I can guarantee that all is not lost. You’ll come out much smarter; you’ll have learnt an awful lot about managing websites, tweaking them, what SEO works, new techniques to monetise sites and much, much more.

Happy Hunting.

I am very excited about todays interviewee – a personal hero of mine – Mike Geary of TruthAboutAbs.com

Mike is I believe the Ultimate Internet Lifestyle Entrepreneur – generating a substantial 7 Figure Income each year while hanging out on the Ski Slopes or sailing in the Caribbean.

But it was not always this way – as Mike reveals in this interview (Podcast, Video or Transcript) it took him over 2 years to break through, quit the day job and make that 7 figure income.

In a way I find Mike’s story even more inspiring than the so called ‘over night successes” that went from nothing to Millionaires in 90 days.

Mike is now a best selling author -selling circ 500000 copies of an eBook about ABS – in English, Spanish, German and French – but as you will see in this interview, Mike was almost ready to give up not so long ago.

Props to my Dad (Barry Dunlop) for grabbing this interview with Mike when they were both in the Banff Gondola taking a ride to the top of the Canadian Rockies for the best views in Banff National Park Alberta Canada. Also I note that Mike Geary gives my friend Ryan Lee a nice thumbs up and word of thanks in the video.

Enjoy – I look forward to your comments.

To Our Success

Michael

PS: Make sure to watch the Bonus Video at the end, only 40 seconds, but it sums up rather neatly I think, what Mike Geary and the Internet Lifestyle is all about

PPS: The other voice / face on the video is Zach Johnson from http://www.imeffect.com I am also hoping to have an interview Zach in near future (Zach is not to be confused with Zac Johnson who I interviewed a few weeks ago)

Confessions Of An Internet Marketing Superstar

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Transcript:
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Barry Dunlop: How did you get online? What was your first effort online in business?

Mike Geary: I had a fitness background; I was a personal trainer. I was researching just some training articles online back in 2004, and I saw an advertisement on how to make money on the Internet as a fitness professional, and publishing online and doing all this Internet marketing.

So I thought about it for a while and finally bought the product. It was about a $300 product. And I’ve got to give props, it was a Ryan Lee product. Ryan Lee is a great guy, I’m good friends with him now. That’s what started it all.

That was the basic stuff of learning how to publish online and make websites and info products and build newsletter lists. All that stuff. That’s what started it, that’s what got the wheels spinning. And I immediately started writing my first product, “The Truth About Six-Pack Abs, ” which I just knew there was a demand for that because I was a personal trainer and that was 90% of the questions I would get would be about abs and weight loss.

So it didn’t work for a couple of years. I got the product done, and that was the easiest part. It took a couple of years to learn the marketing; that was the challenging part. But then it was definitely once you get over this hump and learn the marketing, then it gets easier, and that’s when my business exploded a few years ago.

Barry: So the key there, Mike, was not to give up.

Mike: Exactly.

Barry: You still had a day job then, I assume?

Mike: I had a day job for about two or three years while I was trying to build up the Internet business, and I was finally able to quit that day job when the Internet business sort of exploded.

Barry: If you were to go back to where you were at the beginning, what was the thing that made the big difference from year two to three? What was the thing that eventually made the big breakthrough? What item of knowledge did it take?

Mike: I can be honest and say that I was about to give up, after about a year. I had made the product, made the website, and I kind of had these false hopes that I would just build it and they would come. I had built the website and I would just start getting these massive amounts of sale and everything would take off.

I didn’t realize that actually you had to work really hard to drive traffic and get exposure for your site. So it took a while to learn that. And because I didn’t give up, a couple of years later things started taking off.

I think the biggest shift for me was changing my mindset. I’d love to say that is was a specific miracle technique that I learned that just exploded everything. To be honest, there were a few things, like search engine optimization, pay-per-click. There were some individual tactics that I learned, that really did take things to the next level.

But what started all that was changing my mindset about I can do this, and really thinking a lot bigger and getting that shift from thinking small and thinking about exchanging dollars for hours and thinking big and selling my product to the entire world.

Barry: And as we said earlier, something like a half a million copies have been downloaded?

Mike: Yeah. Between my English version, probably 300,000 copies. And now I have Spanish, German, and French versions too. I haven’t kept exact tabs on it, but probably close to 500,000 copies now of my product. For a self-published product.

Barry: Wow. And an important distinction to make there is – and it’s very gracious of you to say – you were almost ready to give up.

Mike: Yeah. It’s a little frustrating after a year and you’ve only made like two sales. [laughs]

Zach Johnson: How many things did you try that didn’t work? How many products did you learn about search engine optimization and you’re trying to get out there and things didn’t work? Probably took some perseverance to go through.

Mike: For that first year, year and a half, I was trying article marketing and trying a little bit of pay-per-click, and I couldn’t get it to work. Trying to get some search engine optimization. But that takes time, especially search engine optimization. And it just took some time to really learn how to get it to all come together. Make the sales copy work, get the traffic, and make it all come together and make it a success.

Because you’ve got to have every piece of the puzzle. If you can get traffic but you can’t convert it, then you’re missing a piece. If you have great conversions but you don’t know how to get traffic, you’re missing a piece. Partnerships.

Barry: Was there anybody in particular who taught you what you needed to do? Was there any material that you bought, or mentors or masterminds?

Mike: Well, for me, for the first few years, to be honest, I never went to any high-priced events, I never bought any high-priced products. I bought dozens of individual low-priced e-books to learn a lot of different skills. And a lot of those $37 or $47 e-books, I learned a lot of really cool marketing techniques. And eventually I was able to kind of put them all together and start driving a lot of traffic.

Barry: It’s a good one, Mike, because so many people talk about the Internet lifestyle and they say things like, “Hey, six weeks later I’m a millionaire!” Or this happened or that happened. So I think it’s great.

And obviously, I think there’s more encouragement for people realizing that it took longer than a few weeks to get this to work. Because sometimes it does take a year or two. But the important to persevere.

And one very important distinction that I make to people is that having a day job is still a good bet. You don’t give that up until you’re ready to give it up, because it’s important as well.

Mike: But I can say that probably the best thing I ever did was quitting my day job.

[laughter]

Mike: Once I was confident enough that I was pretty consistent and making a good income online, the day that I quit my day job was probably the best day of my life. And I can say that the next month after I quit my day job was when I finally exploded my business. My business doubled the next month after I quit.

Barry: So some people, when they’re just at that point, getting both to work. If really want to take the Internet work further, they have to give up their day job.

Mike: That’s the point. I have a friend right now who started a website and has started to do pretty well with it in the water filter business. He told me he was finally at the point where he was making as much with the website and he was with his day job.

And I told him the best thing I ever did was when I got to that point was quitting my day job, because now you’re going to have 100% mental energy on what you want to do.

Barry: And focus.

Mike: And focus. So he’s doing that right now, he’s quitting his day job and going to focus on the online business.

Zach: Tell them now much money you invested in yourself the first year, two years, in failed attempts and failed pay-per-click campaigns before you made it.

Mike: I didn’t have much money to invest.

Zach: Most people don’t.

Mike: But like I say, I did make a small investments at a time, buying a lot of $50 e-books. I wanted to keep learning. And I can say there probably wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t learning more, that I didn’t buy a book or….

Barry: That is an important point, which often is – you have to keep learning. The biggest and best Internet marketers that I know – you think about Mike Koenigs, Frank Kern etc – those guys are learning all the time.

Mike: They’re still learning.

Barry: They don’t give up. And that’s why they’re at the top of what they’re doing.

Mike: Even though my business does well now, I haven’t stopped and just trying to ride the coattails and never work. I’m still learning every day.

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BONUS VIDEO
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Mike Geary – enjoying the Internet Lifestyle and a Powder Day in the Canadian Rockies (Banff)

Hello Everyone,

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being in New York and getting to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and interview him about his new book:Crush It

Meeting a hero is always a slightly awkward situation (or at least it is for me) — but never in my life have I met an individual who made you feel so comfortable and at ease, so quickly as Gary did.

Today I am pleased to release not only a Podcast (Player is above) of that meeting / interview but also a video of it and a transcript. Gary delivers and Gary delivers quickly – this interview is literally riddled with Wisdom and Inspiration. I am just going to high-lite a couple of points that grabbed my attention personally:

1) There are a lot of social media experts out there that talk about making money, but have never made money outside of talking about making money

2) If you are playing Wii (XBOX etc) for four hours a day, or if you are watching football for 10 hours a day, you’re not entitled to complain about your job. You’re not.

Maybe my biggest “take away” from Gary was his work rate — no one can out work me says Gary, no one can out-hustle Gary.

The other bit Take Away was how passionate Gary is about Caring for his website visitors and how important it is for all of us to CARE about our customers.

Michael’s Strongest Recommendation:

Now occasionally on this blog I recommend a product – some of them can even cost $100’s of Dollars and I am fully aware that not everyone can afford that kind of investment – so today I want to give my strongest recommendation ever of a “Must Buy” product if you are serious about becoming a successful blogger / website owner — Gary’s new Book: Crush It Right now I am seeing CRUSH IT available to pre-order on Amazon.com for $10.79 and on Amazon.co.uk for £8.44. All this information for around the cost of registering a Domain Name — Amazing Value! Official release date is: October 13, 2009 – so BUY IT today.

Buy Crush It at Amazon.com

Buy Crush It at Amazon.co.uk

Also, if you would like to have a bit more of a Crush It Experience, check out: Crush It! – The Experience — options include: Buy 250 Books and you get to meet Gary on December 2nd for a full day of business advice followed by a wine tasting on the top of the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC, but there are also options like getting Crush It Wrist Bands or getting a personal video from Gary.

I know you will enjoy this interview – and I look forward to reading your comments

To Our Success

Michael

Gary Vaynerchuk Interview – CASH In On Your Passion – The Video

Transcript:

Michael Dunlop: Today I’m with Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s from “Wine Library TV” and we’re doing an interview today about his new book and passion. Welcome, Gary.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Thanks for having me.

Michael: Great. Would you like firstly just to tell everyone who are you are and describe yourself?

Gary: Sure. I’m going to assume the far majority of people here don’t know who I am. My name’s Gary Vaynerchuk. I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union. I immigrated to the U.S. in ‘78.

I’m a serial entrepreneur, not the kind that you eat, just like lemonade stands, baseball cards. I was making thousands of dollars a weekend selling baseball cards when I was 13.

I got involved in my family business when I was 15, a liquor store, Shopper’s Discount Liquors, and re-branded it to Wine Library in my college years.

I took over the family business in 1998 and renamed it to Wine Library. From ‘98 to 2005, I grew sales from a couple million dollars a year to 45, which was a big deal. It made everybody in my family very happy.

In 2006, what’s probably led to a lot of people, the few that do know me on this video, is a show called “Wine Library TV,” a show where I taste wine five days a week, three or four wines in front of me.

It became really big here in the States. I’m actually going to the UK and taping the “Paul O’Grady Show,” so it’s made a lot of attention throughout the whole…

Michael: You’ll enjoy that.

Gary: Well, I’m excited about it. I saw some clips on YouTube. I think it’s going to be pretty radical.

Anyway, in 2007 I started talking about business on GaryVaynerchuk.com, which really led to an explosion of my brand – 850,000 followers on Twitter.

I get tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of views on my business videos. I’ve spoken at tons of conferences. I’m in the UK once every year to speak at FOWA, the Future of Web Apps.

Now I’m now writing this book called “Crush It” – CrushItBook.com, check it – because I really think that for $14, I have something to say and something that people can get out of it.

I like that I’m not full of baloney. There are a lot of social media experts out there that talk about making money, but have never made money outside of talking about making money, and I think that separates me in a lot of ways.

I think it’s powerful, and I think it changes the dynamic a little bit. It doesn’t come from the intellectual standpoint. It comes from – not that I’m a dummy, but maybe I am. It comes from actually feeling it.

It comes from this: 15 hours a day, grinding, hustling, understanding that this new media is about listening and not talking. That’s been able to separate myself.

Michael: Wicked. Thanks. All right, so you have the “Crush It” book, which is about cashing in on your passion, is that right? Do you want to just tell us a little bit more about the book and why people should check it out?

Gary: It’s my thesis. It’s my thesis on, hey, everything has changed. I mean, look what we’re doing right now.

Let me tell you something. If 10 years ago, you would go up to somebody – 10 years is not a long time – and said there’s going to be a computer that’s movable, that’s connected to the Internet, that’s fast, there are going to be two little devices that are more powerful than the thing that’s like this, and costs $5,000, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people have the chance to see it, and you don’t have to spend any money to buy commercials or newspaper ads to get them to see it.

Do you know what that means?

Michael: That would be great.

Gary: It would not be understood two decades ago. That is what I’m excited about. People back then thought CDs were the greatest invention ever, and they changed the world, right?

Michael: Yes.

Gary: Well, now they’re obsolete, and one day this will be too. I talk about why there’s a lot of money involved in that, why there’s a trillion dollars in play for people to get a little piece of their action.

So if they’re passionate about what you guys call, rightfully so, football, if they’re passionate about that, or they’re passionate about something I’m passionate about, boxing, if you like Ricky Hatton, for example, if you love boxing, or if you like soccer – or football, sorry – or gardening, or yoga, or wine.

The fact that you can use WordPress, or Tumblr, or Movable Type, or anything to build a platform for free, and the fact that you can then go use Twitter, and Tumblr, and Facebook, and leave comments on blogs and forums for free, and build a business that allows you to make $10,000, or $20,000, or $100,000, or $400,000 a year instead of doing that job that you hate – well, that’s game changing, and to me, I’m going to scream loud about that.

Michael: Brilliant. What would you actually say, because so many people don’t have passion? What would you say to them?

Gary: What do you do when you have free time? What do you do? What do you do when you’re not sleeping and working? Are you watching television? Fine. What are you watching about? Are you watching a cooking channel, or are you watching a sports channel, or a music channel?

Are you outside climbing rocks? Are you painting? What are you doing? That is your passion, because that’s when you have a choice to do anything, and you decided to do this.

Are you going to movies with your husband or wife every night? If that’s what you’re doing, maybe you need to start a movie review site.

It’s all there, but people don’t want to work as hard as I do. I’m going to always win, and I’m going to give away all my information for free because nobody watching, none of you guys, are going to out work me – not one of you.

That’s the defining moment that people need to understand. Who’s going to hustle the hardest? The only way you can hustle that hard is if you love it. Do you know what I mean?

Michael: Yes.

Gary: So you’ve got to really love it, and then you can work that hard. I think that that’s what I want to get people to understand. You’ve got to find a way to love that much.

Michael: All right. You brought up a really good point about working hard. You’ve got to crush it and hustle.

I remember I read some chapter, and it mentions the Wii. You shouldn’t be playing. You shouldn’t waste all your time. You’ve got to get on it, and hustle, and do what you have to do.

What would you say to those people, myself included, who play too much and are not on the ball all the time?

Gary: I have no problem with you playing, because you probably need a balance. I needed to play a quick game of Ping-Pong in the office today because AJ was talking trash and I had to beat him.

We need escapes, but I want you to understand this. If you are playing Wii for four hours a day, or if you are watching football for 10 hours a day, you’re not entitled to complain about your job. You’re not.

Everything has a price. I’m jealous that you get to play the Wii so much. I’m jealous that I’m not fishing all day today or laying on a beach, but there’s a price to be paid for success.

People that are looking for shortcuts, which a lot of you right now watching are. SEO, affiliate, all this stuff – they’re shortcuts. If you want to build a real business, it takes years, and years, and years, and it takes lots of passion and lots of hard work.

There’s no one-hour [snaps fingers] quick. There are no four-hour work weeks. I love Tim Ferriss because Tim Ferriss works about 44 hours a day.

The fact of the matter is this: find what you love, because then you could work that hard. I have no problem with people playing the Wii or doing that mainly because that means I’m out-hustling them and I’m getting their cash. So keep playing.

Michael: I love that. All right. OK, on to running your own entrepreneur site. Does it have a big readership with lots of young people? What would you say to young people at school and college that want to do something big in business?

Gary: Don’t listen to your parents, or your teachers, or anybody else besides yourself. If you’re entrepreneurial enough to be watching this man, to be part of this community, or listening, that already means that you have something different.

Why did you seek out to be with me in the first place? That means you’ve already got it. You’ve already wanted my opinion. What you’re not doing now, the next piece is to understand how right you are.

Don’t listen to your elders because they’ve been around longer. Listen to yourself only, and if you do that, you have a far greater opportunity to cash in because too many people think they’re too young.

“Well, I don’t get it. Let me listen to Mom and Dad, or let me listen to the professor. They’ve been successful.” Be more successful. Just listen to yourself.

Since you’re part of this community already, you’ve already got that interest, that taste, that hunger for entrepreneurial success. Don’t listen to anybody. Listen to yourself. Work extremely hard.

Don’t get discouraged, because entrepreneurs like us, we fall, but we get up. It’s like the best boxers are the ones that get knocked down. Those are the best guys.

How can guys like Roy Jones, Jr., who never gets knocked down, and the first time he gets punched hard in the jaw, he falls and he never gets up. Sorry, Roy Jones.

Not Calzaghe. I know he’s undefeated and all that. I want to see him go – well, actually that’s not true. I’m on it, because Calzaghe got dropped in the first round against Bernard Hopkins and got up. Those are the guys I like.

Entrepreneurs get knocked down because we’re taking chances. We’re taking risks. But we love the game, don’t we? Just keep loving the game.

Michael: Brilliant. We’ve got lots of older people people on the site as well. For example, one reader has just started his first blog about how he wants to climb Everest at age 75.

Gary: I love him.

Michael: What would you tell those older people that think they can’t get on the Internet, can’t deal with the things that they can do to make money, and just have fun with their passion?

Gary: Yeah, I think that age is irrelevant. I think it’s DNA. I know a lot of 25-year-olds that have no clue what the hell is going on. It’s barriers, it’s barriers of listening to your… Last question, parents and professors, it’s barriers of listening to society say you can’t because you should be done.

Nobody is putting me into retirement. I’m going to retirement when God says I’m going into retirement, that’s about it. No society or case study or survey that you should be 68, I’m not listening to anybody but my heart and my soul that I want to do this. So, that’s it.

Michael: Brilliant. And you’ve had so much advice. You’ve given out so much great advice, what in the tape would you say to anyone? What advice would you give out if you had to give one thing?

Gary: Care.

Michael: Brilliant.

Gary: I think that people care about themselves too much. I promise you, if you care about your audience – how many people leave comments on a post of yours?

Michael: Sometimes hundreds.

Gary: OK. How many of those people – do you use WordPress?

Michael: Yeah.

Gary: How often do you do this? Because this is what I do. The first thing, my top bookmark, is this. And what I do is this.

Michael: I completely agree with you.

Gary: If you emailed every person that leaves a comment, and read it, and left a comment thanking them or added your two cents every day, you would be even more successful than you are now, which is wildly successful.

Michael: Yeah, you’re right. So many people will forget about inviting anyone, caring about everyone who comes to their site and to visit.

Gary: The fact that anybody is watching us right now is insane. People take it for granted, they completely over estimate who they are. They think they’re big shit – you’re nothing. You need to remember that. And neither am I or you or anybody else who are lucky that other human beings respect our thoughts and ideas enough to spend time in our communities, and we need to cherish that gift and that opportunity.

As big as – and listen, I’m going to be big ass – but as big ass as I’m going to be, I’m going to be – and sometimes people think I’m a big ass, too. But as big as I’m going to be, I’m never, ever going to forget where I came from, and that’s a very big differentiator. The reason I’m winning is because I care more than my competitors.

Michael: Exactly. All right, so we’ve mentioned WordPress and your blogging, so what would you say to those people out there who want to do their own video? Because you’re at the top of the video growing market right now.

Gary: Make sure you’re good enough to do video. Do what you’re good at. If you don’t like video, then don’t video. If you like writing better, great. If you like audio better, great. Do what you’re good at. I think a lot of people – when you’re a turtle, don’t try to be an elephant.

So first, decide. Just because you hear video is working and Flip-cams are cheap and people like me are doing well, this is my domain. I’m cozy with the camera. I want to make love to that little Flip-cam. It’s my environment. You put a pen and paper in front of me… The reason I was able to do my book was because I dictated the whole thing. That’s why the book is doing so well to the long lead magazine writers, because they’re like, “Holy crap, that sounds exactly like you.”

Hell, yeah! Because that’s exactly how I talk. The ghost writer just fixed the grammar, right? So I think it’s imperative for people to understand if they’re good enough to do it, and if they are, they need to understand it’s not about the lighting or the makeup or the camera. It’s about what you give.

And it’s not even so much about what you give here, in the content, it’s what you give them there for the community. It’s very obvious to me that I lead out those principles in the book.

Michael: Brilliant, and actually, you’ve touched on another good point. You started with blogging when you came online, and we recently featured Gary in a list we did about 20 people who started with blogging and are now doing so much more. You’re releasing your first book next month, I believe. What would you say – because that’s one thing so many people want to do is they want to write a book – what would you actually say to those people out there?

Gary: Don’t try to write a book.

Michael: OK.

Gary: If you focus on your community, and you focus on building your brand, the books will come to you, books will come to you.

Michael: Brilliant, and what about Jets and branding? Because you’re pretty much the guy.

Gary: That’s the game, to me. To me, that’s the game, because look, I was a wine guy. But it was about Gary Vaynerchuk, right? And then when I segued into talking about business, people were like, “huh?” Plenty of people were like, “Stick to wine, douche bag.”

But, the fact of the matter is many more came with me and I think that’s very powerful to understand. You can’t call your thing twitterhouse.com or thefacebookconnectworld.net, because you’re associating with something else. It needs to be about you. My last name was impossible. My name is Gary Vaynerchuk, that’s no present.

But, the fact of the matter is because I own it and it’s about me, people know I love business, and I love wine, and I love the Jets, and I love root beer, and I love WFF wrestling and boxing. It allows you to show multiple tunnels to your personality. If I go now and start a Jets website, it’s not going to seem weird to people, because they already know what I’m passionate about.

Michael: I think everyone who follows you – that’s actually a question I was going to ask is you love the Jets, and you also love wine. If you had choose…

Gary: Oh, the Jets. I’d give up wine in 30 seconds and I love wine. But the Jets are my religion.

Michael: Yeah, brilliant.

Gary: Honestly, I wish I was more like you guys. I was born in Europe, my parents screwed up. I am, by DNA, a football, a real football, a soccer fan. My DNA, the way I am, I’m an anomaly in the U.S., fanatical. I fit right in in Europe when it comes to soccer, because I would punch somebody in the face. I get crazy, I lose my mind.

Michael: All right, and if you could jump in a time machine, go back and change something. I know there’s so many things.

Gary: That’s a great question.

Michael: I know there’s so many things like, it makes us who we are, our mistakes. But if you could actually change one mistake or one thing, what would it be?

Gary: Yeah, I would approach Sergei and Larry and try to invest in Google, because I know I’d make money and I could buy the Jets. The funny thing is I live very non regrettable. I don’t do bad things, because my parents raised me well. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m not sure I like that. My mistakes are the things I didn’t do, not what I’ve done, because when I choose to do something – and this is big.

If you’ve stuck around long enough to hear this or watch this, here’s going to be probably the best thing I’m going to tell you. If I’ve ever decided to do anything, Corked, Vayner Media, this gourmet food center is one, I did it with the purpose of enjoying and learning about the process, not how much money it made at the end.

I made the decision to do it, and the second I made the decision to do it, I had already won. I wanted to do this because I wanted to learn. And it’s never been the best financial decision, it’s the education decision. I need to learn this, let me take my bruises, but at the end of the day I’ll be better off for it. And most people are too thin skinned to take bruises in our society today. Love the process, and the results won’t matter.

Michael: Exactly. One of the things I always think about when I’m doing the sites and doing new projects is that the money is just a byproduct. The main thing is doing it and having fun.

Gary: The challenge.

Michael: Oh, the challenge.

Gary: The challenge is the game, it’s a game. Money is shit, except I like the fact that it allows me to count points. It’s points to me. I agree with you, that’s why you’re successful. If you love the game, you’re going to win. If you’re chasing cash, you’ve lost.

Michael: Exactly. All right, just to end the interview, you’ve been asked so many questions, what would you want to add? One question you haven’t been asked before. What question would that be and the answer?

Gary: I probably would want to be asked something that would allow me to elaborate on the fact that I know I got really lucky with my DNA in liking people. It makes me feel good when people, after six months of knowing me, are like, “Oh, crap. You’re like a really good guy, huh?” That’s what I live for. That’s what I wrote this book for.

I wrote this book for one reason, for February 2010. You know what’s going to happen in February 2010? I’m going to start getting emails from people saying, “Dude, I read your book in October, and this winter I’ve been doing what I’ve loved and been hustling, and I’m making 10K. But I’m not ready to quit my lawyer job, but my ski blog or my skateboard site is on its way and I think I’m going to be quitting by this summer because I’m making enough money. Thank you, you’ve changed my life.” That is the only thing I did this for.

Michael: So it’s a legacy.

Gary: Legacy is greater than currency. My favorite video I’ve ever done for myself.

Michael: All right, brilliant. Thanks, Gary.

Gary: Thank you.

Michael: This is Mike and Gary for incomediary.com. Work it.

Gary: Great job.

Michael: Thanks very much, man.

More On Gary Vaynerchuk at:
http://garyvaynerchuk.com
http://crushitbook.com

Buy Crush It at Amazon.com

Buy Crush It at Amazon.co.uk

Gary’s Websites:
http://garyvaynerchuk.com
http://tv.winelibrary.com
http://crushitbook.com

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