In my previous post I was referring to a medium which is growing at a phenomenal rate yet has very little barriers to entry and is probably sitting at where the Internet would have been 9-10 years ago. I’m referring to mobile. Entrepreneurs are still shying away from using mobile as an e-commerce tool however this is starting to change with the introduction of the iPhone as well as advancements in PDA style phones, Blackberry’s and most recently Google Android. These advancements have also extended through to “normal” phones with screen resolutions of 128×128 through to 240×320.

Technation released figures stating growth of 23% in 2007 and 30% in 2008. VKI studios talks about Nielsen report data stating that mobile growth has occurred 8x faster than PC Internet growth! More? Well the CNN mobile site now receives 30 million monthly page views compared to 2.7million when it launched in June! Take a look at a company such as Admob. Admob is the leading mobile advertising agency providing a service similar to Google Adsense (and Mobile Adsense of course!) however targeted to mobile phones. To date Admob has served over 70 billion mobile ads and has only been serving since 2006. As of the other day the company launched an iPhone download exchange supporting iPhone developments.  This is a mega dollar infrastructure supported by companies who understand the importance of mobile. This is not a stagnate or even a steadily growing market. This is growth at a tremendous rate. What this outlines is proof that plenty of people are browsing the net using their mobile and where there is an abundance of traffic then there is a requirement for good content to service this traffic. This is content that you can profit from through delivering great value and meeting a demand.

I think the reason behind people not flocking to mobile is the misconception that mobile sites look terrible and functionality is limited. Yes, you cannot serve funky flash banners, frames and complex coding through all mobile browsers (some do allow it.. and this is also growing) but why is this a bad thing? What this means is that you have limited options in order to get the most out of your mobile website. In the online PC world there are practically no restrictions with what you can do so your left with a world to choose from with your budget deciding your next move. You don’t really have this problem with mobile and this is great news for the entrepreneur who wants to start with very little. You create a functional, mobile friendly site which incorporates a good user interface and design and you are already at the top of the game!

Do they look that bad? No, I don’t think they do. If you have a look at your mobile providers main mobile page (ie Vodafone Live ),it’s not your usual html text style site. There are colours, pictures, banners and a decent user interface. However unlike developing for the PC world, it’s not really that complex. It doesn’t need to be and frankly it can’t be. Currently a mobile site is great if you include images, clean style and has clear functions. This means that with very little outlay you can immediately start competing with the big boys! This will obviously change over time but the key is to get in first, develop a solid customer base and grow from there. To single yourself out from the traditional boring mobile sites takes only a little effort but the rewards are well worth it as along with the PC world, to be successful you  need to create the perception of being an industry leader, a forerunner and an expert in order to be a success.

People are yet to provide great content specifically for mobile. I am a motor sport fan and currently there is only 1 decent F1 site dedicated to mobile. One. Do a PC web search and there are hundreds! On top of this their service can be greatly improved, its only scraping the surface. Imagine how many people are needing your expertise via their mobile? Yet no one is there to provide. First mover advantages are in abundance in the mobile world where the traditional web really only has room for ‘me too’s’ with a few exceptions (don’t ask me what these exceptions are because if I knew I would be on to them!).

I can only see this growth continue to escalate. Mobile phone advancements are rapid but most importantly, network operators are also understanding the importance of web browsing via mobile through to provision of data caps and data packages to support mobile web browsing. Only a year ago browsing the net via your mobile was extraordinarily expensive while now, its often included in your package. This alone is testament to the phenomenal growth of mobile.

I currently have a few projects on mobile and am looking at setting up a mobile business course over the coming months to help people get the most out of mobile. I will also be going over a few of my current projects as well as a new one I will be starting shortly. What I will do is cover the process of creating the mobile site, marketing the site as well as it’s progress including traffic and revenue details. I’ll be candid and open so I appreciate any feedback or advice you may wish to give.

I recommend you jump on your mobile, open your browser and do a search for your area of expertise. You’ll be surprised at the opportunities that are still available, especially with such a large and growing user base. The best time to find your second business opportunity is while your still working on your first one.

Internet marketers and entrepreneurs are in a rave about creating passive income streams. A passive income stream is simply a form of revenue that you receive regardless if you work on the business or not. It’s regular, runs 24 hours a day and does not require you to be there in order to earn money. The net is the perfect environment where passive income streams can be generated as you can automate business systems that give information, accept immediate payments and deliver your value offering 24 hours a day, without you having to do anything. Could there be anything better?

In fact, many online marketers think there is a better way… have several of them. Makes sense doesn’t it? If you can build a website generating $40 per day and you build 5 of them, then that’s $200 per day. Every day. Without you requiring to work for it.

The next question is what type of passive income stream can you build? We know the options vary from selling products online whether it be your own products or through a drop ship mechanism, through to creating a membership based training course or similar. If you want some offline options have a look at this post. The main difficulty we face is that the average online consumer is becoming more accustomed to searching the net and getting what they want.. for Free. For example I was recently doing some research on how to learn php programming online. There were many courses available varying from $47 through to $497. Which one did I decide to choose? Neither. I picked the free options which gave me some basic tutorials and I went from there. Where there is plenty on offer, your bound to find what you want at no cost.

With the Internet today you simply can’t create something of mediocre value and expect great returns. The flip side is that when you provide something with great value it requires your undivided attention yet you yield the benefits. Meet these two halfway and your potential customers will search for the free options. So what do you do?

Ultimately you need to keep your expectations in check. Unfortunately you would most likely be unable to set up a decent passive income stream in a couple of months. Yes, there are examples of this happening but these are the exceptions and chances are you won’t be that exception. Sorry. I’m not trying to offend here but if everyone was the exception then it would no longer be exceptional? Correct? Successful online businesses take time and effort to build and sustain. Developing a passive income stream is something that requires plenty of trial and error, tons of effort and dedication. I believe that you can most definitely create multiple forms of passive income using the Internet however you will be the only factor that stops you from doing it.  The online world is very competitive and getting into any niche industry will almost certainly mean competing against established businesses in the same field. You will need to offer great value over an extended period of time in order to start gaining market share, gaining momentum and develop loyal and viral customers.

Another option is to think of other mediums other than the Internet. The Internet is attractive because the setup costs are extremely low, there are very minimal barriers to entry and it provides the potential of generating income 24 hours per day from anywhere in the world. But what if I told you that there is another, virtually untapped medium which can generate revenue 24/7 from anywhere in the world? What if I also said that this very medium is growing by an even greater rate than the Internet? What If I went as far as saying that, compared to the Internet, this other medium has even lower start up costs, lower barriers to entry and an abundance of untouched market niche’s which you can take advantage of?

This is a screenshot of a business I set up in January 2009 using this ‘other’ medium. I started off with a bit of advertising to generate just under 100 unique users per day. Now it’s closer to 1000 unique users per day in under 3 months with little to no change in advertising.

I am able to build traffic quickly due to being in an medium which isn’t yet infiltrated with content and businesses. I think the future in this medium will be targeting the niche markets and developing the appropriate revenue models. There is a chance to get back into the hay day of internet business and advertising.

But i’ll leave that for my next post. I’m a bit tired after a full day so please excuse my tardy grammar this time around!

Procrastination effects 98.66% of people. No seriously I just made that up but I’m sure many of us suffer from it and I’d be confident enough to say the majority of us do. I do and am not ashamed to say it. I am the king of leaving things to the last minute and every time I do it leads to disaster. Yet whenever I get on top of things early, my life improves ten fold however this doesn’t stop me getting back into the procrastinating swing of things.

There are many reasons as to why we procrastinate. It’s an excuse, an excuse to ourselves to avoid failure, to avoid a fear or to avoid doing things we don’t like. If you don’t do it now, then maybe you won’t fail now so put the stress off to another time. Sounds silly but we aren’t always rational and logical. Is a Task vs Time thing (I will explain this a little later) where you don’t want to spend your time doing a boring task.

I can be known to procrastinate when it comes to cold calling however when I remove this fear of rejection and just get on the phone it’s not so bad. I think to myself “that’s not so bad”, and commit to not putting it off tomorrow either and promise myself to start first thing in the morning. Morning comes and I’m checking every email account I have ever set up, praying a friend of mine is online for a Facebook chat or simply doing ‘easier’ tasks.

I’m getting better though because I have found a few personal methods that have helped me to overcome the difficulties of my procrastination. When I follow these steps my procrastination disappears yet the key is to be persistent and use these methods regularly until it’s second nature.

Do something related - It does not have to be starting the task. Just do something related to it. If you need to start cold calling, get on the phone and pay a bill. Get on the phone and book your massage that you will receive after you finish your task. Need to write a blog post? Then reply to a few posts. Add a comment on a forum. Need to go to the gym? Put on your shoes. The aim is to get into the starting mood where starting is only a tiny (mental) step. If you need to start making some cold calls and your on Twitter “networking” then the process of getting the phone, looking up a prospective client, dialing the number, waiting nervously for someone to answer the phone (almost hoping no one does), then start rapping your heart out seems daunting. So you never start. On the flip side, if your on the phone already, making calls, hearing ring tones, speaking to people the step isn’t really that big. Same goes for writers, your not going to find it easy to start if your on the phone or watching Youtube videos. Get writing something. Start the process and slowly bring your mind up to speed. It’s all a mental shift. Deep down we know picking up a phone and calling takes about 8 seconds but mentally if your not in the right state of mind, the thought of those 8 seconds can be unbearable.  Procrastination is a mental thing so it requires a change in your mindset. Doing something related will hopefully lead to my second point.

Time Blocks and Task vs Time- Set yourself time goals (again make sure they are unrealistic) and work for these time blocks only. I found a good time block to use is an hour, but you can vary that. After ever time block of 1 hr reward yourself with things you love to do. Procrastination occurs when there is a compromise between doing the things you like to do and doing the things you have to do and I refer to this as Task vs Time. This is the relationship between the limited time you have and the time that it will take to complete the task you really don’t want to do.  Get on Youtube or Facebook for 20 minutes after every time block then start the next time block. This reward will reduce the effect of task vs time as you still are able to do the things you love to do and still work on your task.

Ambitious Goals – Set yourself ambitious almost unrealistic goals. If the task you are about to undertake will take 6 hours set yourself a goal to finish it within 1hr. This is a mental mind shift. There is a strong element of time here. If you think you need to do a 6 hour task then that is 6 hours of your day, 6 hours of your life that you will need to forgo doing this task. Therefore you associate that task with being a waste of your valuable time and gather disdain towards doing it and ultimately you will put it off. So set yourself a really ambitious goal. Say that you are going to complete the task in 1hr. Got 100 phone calls to make? Try to do it in 1hr… and charge. Need to write a 4000 word blog post, 1 hr… and charge. This does a few things. It tells you before starting that you will only be working for 1hr. Not so much time wasted. Secondly by working feverishly and intensely you will develop a rhythm which will help break through the wasted time mentality barrier. This brings us to:

Flow – Using the above technique will get you into a flow and this flow is a fantastic tool to target reverberating procrastination effects. Putting yourself into a zone will allow you to block out distractions and focus on the task at hand. The key is to run with it. If your writing just put down whatever comes to mind. Ignore mistakes. Ignore the fact you might ramble and just get into a zone and write. Making phone calls? As soon as you hang up dial the next number. Make it flow. Don’t stop until you have completed your time block.

Getting Started – You might be wondering why this isn’t first on my list. You hear it everywhere, getting started is the hardest part and no matter how many times you hear it, it’s importance simply can never be put into words. So I won’t try. If you can get started then you simply don’t need help in dealing with procrastination, your already there. Instead I thought I’d rather give ideas that would lead to and make getting started easier by changing your mind set. Doing something related, the first point, is aimed to guide you to making the first step which is to get started. The other points are designed to get you deeper into the anti-procrastination mind set and make is easier to get started. The thing is that whatever advice you get about procrastination it’s all to do with leading you to get to this point, getting started. If you can master this then you’ll never have to worry about procrastination again.

The world is obsessed with finding out some one’s “worth” and then placing them on the world’s business or wealth hierarchy. Forbes ranks the world’s richest people based of their ‘worth’ and this same worth is what a bank might look at to determine how much money they will lend you, if they’ll lend you anything at all.

Do you know your worth? I think there is a fundamental problem with determining your worth based solely on your income or the proposed value of your assets. Say John makes $200,000 per year working for a large corporation, would you say he is worth $200,000? On top of that he has a property portfolio valued at around $1.5million funded by $750,000 in debt. Where does that take him? My answer: It depends.

The answer all depends on what ‘worth’ means to you (and John). Is it purely money or is it more than that? Is spending 70 hours per week in the office ‘worth’ it? Is answering to someone ‘worth’ it. Is being with your family and friends more often ‘worth’ it? What about traveling and enjoying the things you love to do… whats that ‘worth’ to you?

There needs to be a compromise between the monetary side of ‘worth’ and the lifestyle value of ‘worth’. So how about we use this statement: For every day I am not working, I am worth $______.

Determining worth using this method allows us to take into consideration the quality of life aspect as well as the monetary side to determine someones worth. So let’s get back to John. If John stops working his 9-5 then he will stop making money. That’s no good. Luckily he has enough equity in his property portfolio so that he doesn’t need to worry too much about needing a big income to support his debt repayments. In the end if John doesn’t receive an income (income greater than repayments) from his property portfolio then his worth would be relatively neutral. He can’t borrow off his equity because if he quits his day job, he can’t afford to make the repayments. Plus his assets have no liquidity therefore in terms off ‘worth’ (using my calculation) John is worth very little (not worthless though!). However if John had $1.5million in investments which brought him a steady return and he received rental income greater than repayments then it would increase his ‘worth’ substantially.

David on the other hand owns a website bringing in $10 a day from advertising revenue and $80 per day in sales. David is not burden with debt and has overheads of about $400per week. His income is automated and regular and is based on good content and a steadily growing user base. If David stopped working for a week he would make $630. That means for every week David decides to do nothing, he will have in his pocket $230 more than last the previous week after overheads.

John’s numbers sound impressive however when we calculate each persons whole worth, David looks to be in a much better position, even though he may only earn $90 per day. He can choose not to show up to work and still make money. At the end of the day David has produced the more sustainable approach to his worth and one which will continue to grow.

This is value. This is worth.

I’m a big advocate of writing unique good quality content. However after reading through a few blogs I came across an article which I thought was excellent. It’s Brilliantly written and well executed. I am also a big advocate of giving credit where credit is due. So I’m thinking I might start a “Article of my week” section where I will post a link to my favorite article that I have stumbled across over the course of a weeks blog surfing.

The article I was referring is by Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-journey.com. It’s all about living in the now and the process of letting go of your past and the burdens the furture holds. Click here to read the article, its fantastic. Enjoy…

Property. Safe, wise and profitable.

Property. Risky, stupid and money sapping. Well this is my opinion compared to the opinion of many others (above) in reference to property as an investment. Would you still say investing in newspapers in a good investment? What about analogue mobile technology? What about investing in Sony Walkmans? Well maybe not to that extent but I put property up with this list of things to avoid investing in. I hate it. Let me give you 5 reasons why:

1. Negative gearing – what is this? What a dumb concept. Someone pays you money then you pay someone else even more. How about this.. I give you 20 bucks and you give me back 50? Would you do that? What If I said that I’ll give you $15 dollars back at the end of the year? I’ll keep my $20 bucks thanks. Yes it helps in tax… but your only getting a bit back of what you have already spent so you are still spending money.. its not free! Its pure liability and relies on the fact that property prices will forever increase.. yeh.
2. Returns – The returns in the good old days were fantastic. You’d buy something in 1999, sell in 2004 and make a few hundred thousand dollars. Is that really that good? Well it doesn’t really work like that. Say you bought your property for $500k and sold for $1 million… you make $500k.. First the government will take a nice chunk of that depending where your from. That leaves you with about 250k. Then you need to remember that you have been paying interest of about $1000 (approx) per month out of your own pocket which equates to about $60,000 over the 5 years. The there is water, council, strata, water and maintenance. This will probably take the total gain to about 150k. Over 5 years your looking at 30k per year.. This is best case scenario assuming the price doubled. What if it didn’t? What if you invested say 5 years ago? Count your loss.
3. Quality of life – If you don’t have a few hundred thousand stashed away to make up equity in the property (reducing interest payments) then your quality of live over these 5 years would vastly deteriorate. Would you forgo your quality of life and skip the nice things in life for extra 30k a year at most? Worst of all you could never quit your day job! The payments will force you into sticking to a 9-5 as security. Banks don’t like it when you don’t pay so you feel stuck. Your tied down.
4. The Market – The property boom in most developed nations is over. The best returns you could currently expect are almost negligible at best and we will no longer see the returns mentioned in the example above. So why exactly are you in it?
5. Liquidity -  There is no liquidity when it comes to property. Your money goes in and won’t come out unless you go through the full process of selling the investment or you decide to borrow based on equity which will just put you further in debt. There is no residual, regular or passive income. You may be worth several million dollars according to your property portfolio but quite possible can’t afford to pay off your credit card bill or go out for a nice dinner.

As an entrepreneur all the above points make property extremely unappealing to me. The profit and growth margins are minimal, if affects your quality of life, your investing in a dying and shrinking market and there is no liquidity or passive income to either reinvest or to improve your quality of life. Worst of all you can never really quite your day job if that’s where your money comes from. Property will immediately lock you in and make it difficult to break free from the mould.

There is an exception to my thinking and that depends on the reasons you get into property in the first place. If you invest in bricks and mayhem in order to create and build wealth then your a fool. It’s slow, its cumbersome and the returns are only seen many years later, if they are seen at all. If you invest to protect a large income and hoard mounds of cash currently spewing from under the bed, then I think its great.

You may look at the above paragraph and think I’m confused but let me just say this: if you purchase the property and it’s an asset then well done. However if you purchase the property and its a liability then good luck. Negative gearing (the majority) – liability. Positively geared (minority) – asset. Something that you spend money on – Liability. Something that makes you money – Asset.

What are your options? Where can you make good returns in today’s doom and gloom? Well the key I believe is to spread your risk and not to throw all your eggs into one basket (how cliche!). However I will outline a few alternatives that may give you some ideas.

1. Online – Buying – Got a few thousand to spend? There are many websites for sale which can return an extremely good profit and residual income plus unbelievable ROI. You can find top quality sites for sale at places such as the Sitepoint Marketplace. Usually you can get your money back in 10-18 months depending on the revenue model that the site uses. A website with revenue based on advertising should go for about 10-12x its monthly revenue and is a little less secure. Something with a membership base would fetch for a bit more and you may need to pay up up to 18x monthly revenue. I would also look at revenue compared to profit. Work out how much that site will make for you for every month that your not working on it and use that as your basis. For example, for a website with $14,000 advertising revenue per month, returning $10,000 in profit, I would want to purchase something like this for about 100,000 to 120,000 (NOT 140,000 +). Could you imagine purchasing a $100,000 property and it returning $10,000 a month?! No chance.
2. Online – Selling – Got a few thousand less than you wanted to spend? Well one option may be to buy upcoming websites. You can do this via sites such as Sitepoint or finding websites that you like and think you can develop then contact the owners and start the negotiations. There are small improvements you can make in order to increase the value of a site such as improving the overall user interface, fonts, images and revenue model. It’s not uncommon to make 200% – 300% and even more on a website in the space of a few months but you need to know what your doing. If you need some help Max Davis provides some good video tutorials and tips on how to buy and sell websites for profit.  This isn’t a get rich quick scheme but a process on how to buy and sell websites effectively. Highly recommended resource at buying and selling websites.
3. Create – Create something that will improve a current process, then sell it to those who most need it. This is essentially what many entrepreneurs do, day in day out and is a little bit more difficult that number 1 but the rewards will prove must more substantial if your providing value and improving a current process or product. Plus the investment can be relatively small compared to potential profits.
4. Royalties – Invest in software, creating ebooks, music etc that you can give to others to sell and collect royalties. This might be purchasing the rights to existing property such as music and receiving royalties for every sale or use of that item. Once again a little bit more difficult than no.1 but the rewards are passive, continual and substantial. I recently created 6 full length sounds CD’s for sale by various online music companies. I own the product and whenever that product is sold by a distributor then I collect a royalty from it. All I did was create an interesting product and get other people to profit from selling it, with me taking royalties along the way. Its a win-win situation and I do nothing but accept the royalties. Not bad for an $80 investment.
5. The up and coming – Imaging you invested in Google in 1997? Or Facebook in 2004? Twitter last week? There are many agencies that specialise in connecting prospective investors to up and coming start up businesses with potential. Pick and industry that your interested in and look for any new movements or potential and invest early. This is where you stand to gain plenty of revenue through obtaining equity in a successful startup. I probably would not recommend this alternative if you only have a few thousand to spend as its usually reserved for big time investors plus is a bit limited in terms of liquidity. Alternatively you may find some bargains in the business market.

My despise of property is biased. It’s biased as an entrepreneur who can’t stand the time it takes to gain a return as well as someone who has invested in property at a young age and has been subject to the reasons mentioned above. I’m not trying to put you off the investment as you may have done your homework. On the chance you are simply following the status quo and have been groomed to believe that this is the way to go then take a step back and think objectively. What are your goals? Are they short term, long term, income growth, wealth or security? Do your sums according to the current property market. Then finally have a look at the alternatives available which could yield a much greater return on your investment. My aim in this post has been to arm you with some alternate options but of course, It’s your call.

I have been doing a little bit of research lately. Readers of this blog may already be aware that I am a big believer of the 80:20 principle, officially known as Pareto’s Principle. If Can’t be bothered visiting that link well here is (another) run down: The 80:20 principle states that roughly 80% of the effect is based on 20% of the cause.

I occasionally think about every day areas of our lives that are effected by this rule. Then over a cup of coffee, or possible late at night after a little bit too much coffee, I go to work crunching numbers and seeing what interesting facts I can gather from it. My last number crunching session while hopped up on caffeine and sweet gooey Macadamia choc-chip cookies found me looking into the Internet world and the websites we so frequently visit.

Delving deep into the statistical data provided to me by Alexa I was focusing on the top 100 websites. I’m sure I would get a more accurate indication using the top 1000 sites but I only have one life time and I don’t plan on spending to doing data entry. Of the top 100 sites I wanted to find figures to explain whether the 80:20 was applicable in the online world. Its one thing to assume it is and another to go out and test it. Firstly Alexa doesn’t give out traffic numbers, only % of total web users that visit a particular site. Not perfect but not too bad either. I decided to use each percentage per website (averaged over 3 months) as points. For example Google receives 29.675% of total Internet users averaged over the last 3 months and I have regarded this as 29.675 points that go to Google. You can check out a screenshot of my list below. (Pictures in my Blog?? Who would have thought!!!)

Data snapshot

Once I entered the top 100 I sorted them into declining order from most points to least. Alexa sites are a bit jumbled up when it comes to this, nothing major but I wanted to keep it as accurate as I possibly could.

So what interesting stats could I make of it? Well first I put the 80:20 principle to the test. Do the top 20 websites make up 80% of the combined traffic of the top 100 sites? I understand that using percentages makes this a little bit difficult but remember we are using the same % variable each time (% of total Internet users). Here is a small pie graph of my findings summary (another picture!).

% breakdown graph

According to my findings the top 20 websites make up 72% of the total traffic points that comprise of the top 100 websites, a ratio of 72:28. I understand that this isn’t exactly 80:20 but we need to remember that it’s a relatively small sample (100 websites). To give you an idea if you pick the top 10 sites the breakdown is 37:62. The top 20 is 51:48. Top 50 is 64:35. So you can see the pattern. If I had the time (or the spider programming skills) and worked this out for the top 1000, that pattern would most likely to have continued to get much closer to the 80:20 ratio. 72:28 is quite telling nevertheless.

Other Interesting facts:

• The top 2 sites, Yahoo and Google, actually make up 20% of all websites in the top 100 list with a total of 20 websites between them
• Google on its own makes up 20% of traffic from this whole list.
• The final 50 on this list only make up 16.1% of the total traffic

I’m relatively pleased that this turned out quite conclusive and I have no doubt that if I was to use a larger sample then that 80:20 would be more definite but the stats show great support of the 80:20 principle.