Over this past week I have had experiences where two of my friends could have had a seriously negative impact on my ability to earn money online.  I want to advise my readers that you cannot always help your friends, especially it is very important to not let your friends do things that could limit your ability to earn money.

The first incident happened with a very close friend.  I am willing to do almost anything to help this fellow if he is in need.  Almost anything.  But, this week, he asked me to do something for him that could cost me around $1,000 per week worth of business.  Sorry, I can’t do that.  What did he ask me to do?  Well, here is the story:

This fellow is in a bit of a financial jam right now, due to circumstances.  Some of the circumstances are beyond his control, some are not.  This fellow has some money in his Paypal account.  He recently tried to withdraw money from Paypal into his bank account.  Somehow, some trouble came up with the transfer, and the money never made it to his bank account.  He tells me that due to this transaction, Paypal has put his account under investigation.  Now, I don’t know the details of this investigation, but just the fact that there is an investigation worries me.  Next, my friend said that he wanted to send me about $500 from his Paypal account to mine.  I would then withdraw the $500 to my bank account, and give it to him.    Red lights started flahsing!  With this guy’s Paypal account under investigation, I don’t want to have any connection to him.  If money is moving from his account to mine, it is very possible that MY account could soon be under investigation.  I sure don’t want that.  I make significant money through the use of Paypal, and I would not want to jeopardize it in any way.  In the end, I loaned my friend some cash, and told him that he needed to work out the problem with Paypal, but not to include me in it!

On another front, I got an e-mail from a reader of one of my blogs.  He had a proposition for me.  He would start doing unethical things on my site that would cause me to earn money.  In return, he was asking me to do the same.  Hold on!  No way would I become involved in this.  What he proposed could have cost me more than $1,000 per month.  If he did what he was proposing, I might have made an extra $5 per month, but endangering $1,000 per month.  Not a good idea.

My whole idea here is that if you are experiencing some success with online money making, don’t let other people jeopardize your ability to keep that money flowing!

One person that I get inspiration from is marketing guru Seth Godin.  Seth and I hold a lot of similar beliefs, and I enjoy reading his site.  The other day, Seth had an article on his site that really spelled out the way I feel.  His article is entitled “The sad lie of mediocrity” and it talks about the pitfall of just being mediocre.

In his article, Seth points out that:

Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.

Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.

That’s because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.

I could not agree with Seth more!  Always do your best, and that is when you will reap rewards, even greater rewards than you ever expected.

This theory applies to any kind of business that you engage in, and in particular to online endeavors.  On the internet there is less to make you stand out, so the things that do make your business stand out must be taken advantage of to the fullest.  Doing your very best, offering the very best of customer service and such is one way to make your business stand out!

How was it related to this site?  Well, a company was advertising for a course that they were offering in how to earn money on the Internet, which is what this site is all about.  I’ve been earning my living online for a decade or so now (6+ years straight, with some part time earning before that), so anytime this subject comes up, it always gets my interest.

At the end of the commercial, they had a line that they gave, I’ll say it was the company’s “tag line,” and it was quite effective:

Deciding to be wealthy is the first step toward becoming wealthy.

Now, let me say, this is something that I have believed for a long, long time.  It’s not just a throw away line, or a gimmick to try to sell something for me.  I honestly believe firmly that this statement is 100% correct.

How about you, do you want to be wealthy?  Really want to be wealthy?  Most people will instinctively answer yes to that question.  But, if you examine their life, it is easy to see that they don’t act in ways that would prove their “yes” answer.  In fact, I believe that many people are afraid of becoming wealthy.

Let’s even take this examination beyond being wealthy.  How about this question - do you want to earn money on the Internet, enough money to enjoy a comfortable life?  Many people, in my opinion are afraid of that.

There is nothing shameful about being wealthy, or earning a comfortable living.  If you think that there is something shameful or wrong in doing that, you are handicapping yourself, and you will likely never experience true success.

A few months back, I wrote a series of articles entitled “Bob’s $1 per day project.”  You can find some of the articles featured on the Homepage of this site.  $1 per day is not much, some people will just shrug that off, even ignore it, perhaps even laugh about it.  But, to become wealthy, you must start somewhere.  Each $1 extra per day that you can earn is a building block.  If you can get an extra $1 per day, then find another $1 per day to put on top of that, pretty soon you can start earning some real money.  But, you must want to do it.  If you don’t really want it, and believe that you can do it, you will never do it!

Are you ready to decide to be wealthy?  How about deciding to just make an extra dollar tomorrow?  That’s the first step!

With the growth of the Internet and the tremendous money-making potential of online tools, trends, and technologies, a good income is indeed possible. Your income potential is only limited by how hard you are willing to study and then apply your knowledge.

Is it possible to be a 100% virtual earner, earning your money from the Internet? What are the ways in which you can make money at home, using your own computer? What does it take to become an Internet Entrepreneur? How does one succeed at an online business in the midst of today’s economic crises?

Bob Martin asked those same questions when he moved from the United States to the Philippines. Now living in Davao City and making his name as one of the top Internet Entrepreneurs in the country, “Mindanao Bob” is making more money now than when he lived in the USA. Bob wants to show you how you can do it too!

With Virtual Earner: A Business Forum by Bob Martin, you can uncover many ways to earn a living in the Philippines. Invest in the potential of the Internet and reap the benefits of strategic online, offline and hybrid ideas for business. Don’t miss this opportunity to discover and prove –as Bob did– that making a living in the Philippines is NOT IMPOSSIBLE!

Details

VIRTUAL EARNER: A Business Forum by Bob Martin

Speaker: Bob Martin
Venue: K-1 Coffee Shop, F. Torres Street, Davao City
Date: Saturday August 9, 2008
Time: 3:00 pm (the seminar will start sharply at 3pm)
Seminar Price: P3,000

To register for the seminar, please either e-mail or call (or text) John at (0921) 467-8372.

The forum is created to provide an intimate and informal venue for learning how to make a living in the Philippines. It will also serve as a medium for opportunities to discuss new technologies, products, services, and business ideas with a qualified expert who has explored the possibilities on the Internet to become an 100% Virtual Earner.

Who is Bob Martin?

Bob Martin is an Internet entrepreneur based in Davao City. An American who has lived in Mindanao for the past eight years, Bob has resided in General Santos City, and now in Davao City, while owning and managing dozens of Internet Businesses.

For the past seven years, Bob has made his living exclusively through the Internet. He serves customers all around the world, and has used the Internet to enhance his earning ability to the point that he is making more money now than when he lived in the USA and had a regular job. Bob wants to show you how you can do that too!

“Becoming successful on the Internet is great, but one thing I really enjoy is helping others achieve the same,” says Bob. “It makes me feel good if I can show somebody a few simple methods, or share my thoughts with them, and watch them learn how to make a living themselves. I don’t really like it when others copy what I am doing, but when they look at what I do, and mold it a little bit to fit their interests, they can come up with something that is patterned after me yet totally different from my business. I think that is great, and it gives me a lot of joy to see a friend become successful by doing this.”

Bob has a business background in Retailing and in Manufacturing, having previously managed discount department stores and an electronics store in the USA. He is also a published author of more than a dozen books. His latest book is entitled 49 Ways to Make a Living in the Philippines.

Early Bird Bonus! - For the first 10 people who sign up and attend the seminar, they will receive a FREE COPY of Bob’s book, 49 Ways to Make a Living in the Philippines! That’s right, a book that is selling for $49.00 will be yours free when you sign up and pay to participate in the seminar(but, only for the first 10 people)! So, don’t miss out, sign up today!

To register for the seminar, please either e-mail or call (or text) John at (0921) 467-8372. Remember, the first 10 people who register will get a free copy of Bob’s eBook, 49 Ways to earn a living in the Philippines! ]]> http://business.auctiontopia.com/2008/07/26/im-giving-a-seminar-in-davao-city/feed/ http://business.auctiontopia.com/2008/07/09/making-money-from-things-you-like-and-enjoy/ http://business.auctiontopia.com/2008/07/09/making-money-from-things-you-like-and-enjoy/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:12:02 +0000 Bob http://business.auctiontopia.com/?p=138 Over at 45n5 Mark has been talking about making money off things that you enjoy, or like doing.  As a matter of fact, he has an interesting video about this concept, let’s have a look:

I have used a lot of methods to monetize websites, I’ve done it through advertising like AdSense, affiliate ads, and other methods.  Over the last six months, though, as I have alluded to before, I have taken a special interest in monetizing one of my sites.  This particular site did not monetize well with any kind of advertising that I tried.  However, it was the site most precious to me, one that I love a lot, and really a daily part of my life.  Because of that, I wanted to find a way to make money from it.  So I introduced several new moneymaking possibilities on the site.  These included things like advertising services, much like what Mark is talking about in his video.  Recently, I started offering a few e-books that were really targeted to that site as well.  You know what?  That is my number one earning site now!  And, I’m doing things that I enjoy, things that I love, and in a lot of ways things that I would be doing every day anyway, even without the site.

You know, I have come to the conclusion that offering my own services and selling my own products is the way that I like to go.  Firstly, I find it is more profitable.  Secondly, I have control over what’s on the website.  I am not at the mercy of Google or somebody else putting ads on my site that I can’t approve.  Thirdly, the premium products that I’m selling offer additional value to my readers.  These products are specifically about the topic that I write about, thus it is certain that these are things my readers are interested in.  A year ago I was strongly into the AdSense  thing, but mostly, I kind of abandoned that.  At least I’ve decreased it.  Most of my sites are highly specialized, very niche oriented, and my niche is very narrow.  In terms of how many people it attracts.  Because of this, it can be difficult to get ads that are targeted properly.  However, when I create my own products and advertising things that I do myself, I get to choose how targeted those things are.  And believe me, they are targeted to my customer.

Yes, I still make money off of AdSense, but not nearly what I used to make.  And now my earnings from Google are about one third of what they were last year.  However, my total earnings are higher than they were last year, and these self-made products and services are what accounts for that.  Whenever you’re selling advertising, unless you’re talking about direct ad sales, you only get a portion of what the advertiser pays.  People like Google or others get a cut as well.  When you make and sell your own products, or selling your own services on your site, you get the whole thing.  You can actually sell it to the customer for less than what Google would and still get more money from the sale, because you’re cutting out the middleman.

The other thing that I find is it is easier to make that money.  Why?  Well, if you build up a good side and you have a good following the people, those people trust you.  They know you.  Many of them visit you everyday online and read what you have to say.  You have established a relationship with those people.  Thus, if you come out with an e-book or some other product that you did yourself, they know what to expect.  If they thought that your writing wasn’t very good, they wouldn’t be visiting your site anyway.  Since they obviously feel that your site has value, by extension they would also feel that your products have value.  If the product that you offer is something that they are interested in, it’s likely that they’ll buy.  So it’s good for you, and it’s also good for them because they get information that they want and need.

Thanks to Mark for bringing up this topic on his site, 45n5 is a site that I like to visit every day.

Basically, the book goes through 49 (actually 50 ways, because I have a Bonus Idea) Ways that you can live in the Philippines and earn your living while you are living here.  I have been living here since May 2000, and when I came here I did have a bunch of money, but I went through it too fast!  By 2002, I had only two choices:

1. Go Home
2. Figure out how to make money here

I chose to go with number 2, because I didn’t want to leave.  Sadly, few people (expats who move here) are ever able to figure out how to earn money here.  Most expats will tell you that “you can’t make money in the Philippines, it’s impossible.”  Well, I am living proof that they are wrong! In my book, I want show you how to make money here too!

The ideas that I present are real-life ideas that work!  Most of the things that I discuss are things that I have actually done to make money, and because of that I know for sure that they work.

I know of people who have come to live in the Philippines and after a few years they had to go home, because they ran out of money.  Don’t let that happen to you!  Why leave a lifestyle that you love, just because you don’t have money?  Making money is actually pretty easy, if you just know how to do it.  I didn’t know how in 2001 and before.  But, in 2002, I started learning how to make money, because I had to!  Let me show you how to do it too.

Let me be clear, I am not going to tell you that you can get rich quickly or easily.  I am going to say, though, that you can earn a good income if you are willing to work at it.  I don’t slave away, I generally just work a few hours per day, and I am living good.  How good is my life?  Well, I make a lot more money here in the Philippines than I ever made in the USA, I can tell you that.

If you read my sites, you already know that I make 100% of my income online through my various websites.  However, I know that some people are not comfortable on the computer.  That’s why I have ideas in the book not only for Online businesses, but also for Offline and for Hybrid ideas that mix online and offline strategies into a single business.  So, whether you want to earn your living at the computer like me, or you don’t want to even touch a computer, there are ideas for you!

I offer my book in two formats:  paper and digital.  If you order the digital version, you can download it immediately after payment.  If you order the paper version, I will ship it directly to your mailing address.

Guess what?  I also have a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee!  If you don’t think that the book is what you were expecting, you get the full purchase price back upon return of the book!  No fuss, no muss, no questions asked!  So, what do you have to lose?

Order Bob’s New Book TODAY!

One of the things that I learned from my first mentor was that Customer Service is the most important thing about any business.  Actually, I’ll expand it and say that Customer Service is the most important aspect of any part of your life.

Now, in some parts of your life, you may have to look at the word “customer” a little differently.

Marriage?  Your spouse is your customer.  Treat your customer right, and you’ll have a customer for life.

Friendship?  Your friends are your customers.

It applies to any kind of relationship.  However, this blog is about business, so let’s focus on that.

I contend that the very best way to keep a customer for life is through making mistakes.  What?  That doesn’t make sense, right?  Well, first, let’s all agree that everybody makes mistakes.  No matter how hard you try, how much you concentrate, you will make a mistake sooner or later.  It is how you deal with that mistake that will decide if you just lost a customer, or strengthened your relationship with that customer.

I have had incidents where I, or one of my employees has made a very serious mistake and a customer told me that we had lost his business for life.  He would never shop with us again.  Well, the gut reaction is to get mad, tell the person off, and say goodbye!  Forget him, right?  That’s not the way I do it.

First of all, consider that the reason that the customer is mad is because YOU made the mistake to begin with.  If you handle the situation right, you will not only keep the customer, you will also have a stronger relationship with him when he sees that you take care of mistakes.  Go out of your way to not only correct the mistake, but go above and beyond what the customer would expect!

Just as an example, I have a business where I sell flowers.  Roses and such.  Generally, we deliver these flowers to a man’s girlfriend in most cases.  If we make a mistake, the guy usually gets quite angry, because not only have we not done what he wanted, in many cases we might have even made him look bad to his girl.  That’s like playing with fire.  For example, let’s say that we delivered flowers that were not fresh, already wilted.  The lady tells the guy that the flowers were not so nice, then he gets angry at us, and says we can kiss his business goodbye.  We go out of our way, and we then delivery maybe 3 times the amount of FRESH flowers to the lady as our way of saying “we are sorry” to the customer.  Not only that, we tell the girl that it was her boyfriend who sent the additional flowers.  This not only corrects the problem, it makes the man look good!  You can bet, 9 times out of 10, the guy is so happy that he forgets all about his threat to start shopping elsewhere, and becomes even a better customer in the future.

Customer service is all about how you handle mistakes, which are inevitable.  Treat your customers good, step up to the plate and fix the problem when you made a mistake, and you will go far in business.  If you don’t do these things, your business may not survive long.

One thing that I get a lot of is e-mails from other people who want to live here in the Philippines.  One of the most widely asked questions in those e-mails is - “how can I make money while I live there” or “what kind of job can I get in the Philippines.”  Well, my answer to that second question is always the same - you can’t get a job here.  In addition to legal hurdles for foreigners who live here getting employment (i.e. taking jobs from Filipinos) there is the simple fact that employers would rather hire a Filipino in most cases.  And why not, after all, a Filipino can better understand the customer, can speak the same language, etc.  If you do find an employer that will hire you, are you willing to work for a few dollars per day?  I doubt it.  I know that I would not.  I mean, if you are the type that is willing to work for $3 per day in a full time job, you probably shouldn’t even be reading this blog!

So, how can you live here if you are not independently wealthy?  Well, derive your income from some other method, some other source.  That’s why I talk on this site about ways to make money online.  Do things like write books, write websites, sell things online.  There are lots of ways you can do it.  But, the key is to be self employed, and take responsibility for your own well being.

Recently a friend of mine wrote about somebody that he knew who worked for a major corporation in the Philippines, and the company refused to even pay the salary.  When you work for yourself, you don’t have to worry about those things.  Yeah, you will have people who will try to weasel out of paying for things, but after you are in business for a while, you will figure out how to spot those people, and you will also figure out ways to do business where this can’t happen to you.

Basically, if you are looking for a way to get into your own business and earn your own money, take time to read this blog!  Read other blogs on this topic (there are hundreds of them).  Don’t expect the UPS truck or FedEX to pull up to your doorstep with a box of money the week after your start.  It doesn’t work that way.  Indeed, you must work, and the money will come.  Give it time, though, and don’t give up!  Instead of getting discouraged and working a little less day by day, work harder when it isn’t going the way that you want.  It will pay off.

Believe me.  I know, because I’m living the life.

Conflicted about what?  Well, I am debating about whether to go the traditional way of writing a book and having a publishing house print it and distribute it, or whether I should self publish.  If I decide to self publish (which is the way that I am leaning), I can see two paths to take there too.

1. Go the traditional route of printing the book on paper, and distributing it to book stores and such.
2. Go the new route of doing an e-book (electronic book) and distributing it over the Internet.

It’s a tough choice.  Each route has advantages.  I know that from my past experience, you can expect to get maybe 10% of the sales price as your share of the money.  So, a $15 book would bring you maybe $1.50 per copy sold.  This, of course, is if you use a publishing house.  If you self publish, you would get a lot more than $1.50 per copy, but that means that you also have to front all of the costs for printing, distribution and such yourself.

One nice thing about living in the Philippines, though, is that you can self publish a printed book relatively cheaply here.  So, let’s say that I got 5,000 or 10,000 copies printed and then distributed them myself.  I can imagine that most sales would be off my own websites.  I’m OK with that, because I have a lot of traffic on my various sites, and I think that I could sell that quantity of books relatively easily.

The electronic press path is attractive too.  You just write the book, publish it as a PDF file, and you are ready to go.  No real costs involved, except for your time (I already have all the software that would be needed for the project).  You could then sell the book, even at a lower price, and still make more money.

I feel that I actually have several different books in me, just waiting to come out.  I just have to decide the proper path for publication and selling.  It’s been a decade and a half since I’ve done this, and a lot of things have changed in that time.

So, what do you think?  Which method of publication is best in today’s environment?  If you are buying a book, do you feel that a paper book is better or more desirable than an electronic book?

Share your thoughts, I need them!

I blame Wordpress.

“Why Wordpress,” you say?

Well, I blame Wordpress because it has become like a treadmill that never stops.  First of all, you have a never ending parade of updates to the software.  As soon as you update to a new version and get all the kinks worked out, it seems like there is a new, critical security update that you have to do immediately!  If you don’t update on time, it’s like running around in public naked - you just don’t do that!

Here’s what happened today.  I had a couple of improvements that I wanted to make on one of my sites.  When I went to that site, I noticed that the Plugin panel on Wordpress was telling me that two plugins were out of date.  Oops!  I better update those right away.  So, I went and downloaded the new releases on these plugins, and installed them.  What the….   I just checked my blog and the whole top half of my screen went black!  Hmm… turns out that one of the plugins didn’t work!  So, I reverted back to the old version, it worked fine.  That second upgrade that I did didn’t work either.  So, I eliminated that one.  I have dozens of blogs, so all of this piddling around took me half the day (or more).

The thing is, I am feeling like with Wordpress, it is getting to the point that there are so many Admin tasks that need to be completed, that I rarely have time to produce the quality content that I want to share with my readers!  If I had one blog, maybe two it would not be a big deal, but I have more than that.  It is making me wonder what I should do.  Abandon some of my sites?  Find a new software to run on?

I have been playing with the idea of moving to Drupal.  Today I took the step of installing Drupal on one of my inactive domains, and playing with it.  It only took a few minutes when I realized that if I changed platforms, that meant that I had to re-learn the whole system again!  I had to create a lot of new templates.  Hmm… I have sites with thousands of posts on them, which means that I had to import all those posts into a new platform.  Importing thousands of posts usually doesn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Hmm… I don’t think I want to change platforms.  I also don’t think that Wordpress is the right platform any longer.  Updating plugins and platform software doesn’t bring in any money.  However, if you don’t do the updates, your site will end up getting owned by somebody else who hacks in.  Either way, you haven’t written content that keeps your readers coming back.

For me, the call comes down to what direction to go in order to make the most money.  Problem is… right now I can’t figure out which direction will achieve that goal.

What do you think?