I live a relatively different life compared to the majority of people. I don’t work 9-5, although I have in the past and all that did was tell me that is just was not for me. I don’t like to be put in a box and told what to do and how I should be doing it. I like to find opportunities that are available and pursue them and if they work and are sustainable I develop them and either sell, or hold onto and grow. I work when I want and how I want.

If your reading this blog then chances are that my life isn’t so different but then again, you are the minority. I have read books such as Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week and Robert Kiyosaki’s, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. What I have taken from these it not so much the ability to only work four hours a week or determining the difference between an asset and a liability. I don’t believe these books are designed to give you the direct answers but rather to stimulate thought and ideas regarding ways you can live the life you want to live as well as having sustainable financial freedom.

What is my take on supporting your lifestyle? Its not particularly complex but this is my method. Over compensate for your liabilities using your assets. First I guess we need to clarify the term liability and the term asset. This isn’t particularly complex either as I’m not an accountant and won’t be taking their definition of what an asset and a liability is. My definitions are inline with that of Robert Kiyosaki and it’s quite simple:

Asset: Something that leads to money coming in.

Liability: Something that leads to money going out.

Wow… how complex is that? It’s not your traditional definition of the terms by any means, probably far from it but I don’t care. My accountant’s job is to get all technical regarding these terms. My job is to put them in a form that is understandable so I can create structure for how I want to live my life.

Once we have an understanding of these two terms we can lead on to supporting your lifestyle. To support any lifestyle you want, no matter how elaborate it may be, it can be done by simply by getting this equation to work: Assets > Liabilities. Assets are greater than liabilities.  It’s as simple as that. If the money coming in is greater than the money going out you can do whatever you like.

It may seems that I have just stated the obvious but you would be extremely surprised by the amount of people who just don’t get this concept. They rack up credit card bills and go out on extreme nights out only to find themselves strapped for cash with weeks to go until their next paycheck. Yes of course this could be just down to not being able to manage money correctly but if you had assets that overcompensated for your liabilities then you would not run into this problem.

First you need to find out what your lifestyle really costs. If you like to go out and party then factor that in, how much does it cost you to go out every week? Do you have a passion for traveling? How much money do you need for your traveling? If your not sure about how to calculate your expenses then I would recommend you do so by using Tim Ferriss’s lifestyle calculator.

Once you have calculated your lifestyle cost then what you need to do is find assets that will generate enough income to pay off your liabilities. What I do not recommend is finding one cash cow which you believe will pay off all these expenses. By doing this you are developing a mentality of “have a job/asset/income that pays well and then spend as much of it as you can”. Sure if you can find an cash cow or passive income that generates $5k a day then fine, but the likely-hood of this is minimal.

I believe the key is to determine your ideal lifestyle then set up assets and income in order to support it. This is alternate to the usual approach of taking an income then determining the lifestyle that you can lead from it. By determining your lifestyle first you are telling yourself that this is the life you want to lead and you will find a way to lead it. You are telling the world what you want and in turn the world will deliver. The standard method forces you to conform to influences around you, rather than getting them to conform to you.

For example, you may like to eat out a lot and buy new clothes on a regular basis. Say this costs you $500 per week alone. Build an income stream in order to support this particular aspect. You may also own a house and need to pay a mortgage of say, $2500 per month. Ideally what you would want to do is find a passive income that generates about $3000 (you always want a buffer). Maybe you want the car of your dreams which is another $1000 per month. Set-up and and build another passive income so you can afford your dream car then purchase it.

It’s much easier in my opinion to create a few income streams that generating $2000 per month that it is to generate one bringing in $7,000 but that’s not the important thing to get out of this. The important habits you develop is that of a millionaire mindset. You learn that to support any further expenses you don’t need to limit yourself to what you already have. There is no need to take out from your current assets as you know you can create more revenue opportunities to support any new expenses by purchasing or creating good assets.

Don’t be afraid of turning the tide and creating the lifestyle you want to lead without thinking about the restrictions. I am talking about lifestyle expenses from a purely monetary point of view. You may just determine that you wish to do more “doing” things rather than simply “having” more things. Now you have the option. Determine what you want then devise a way to achieve this. Do it the traditional or “normal” way and your only really limiting yourself.

I have a university degree in Business. The importance they placed on creating and defining a business plan was paramount. You need a business plan there are not two ways about it. It needs to have all the information including where your business will be located, what you will do, your revenue model, your sales forecasts, a SWOT analysis, a mission statement, first aid steps and a budget… among many other things. What complete rubbish.

I’m about to tell you this. If your interested in trying out a new business idea and decide to start by putting a business plan together then your a goose. When starting out a business plan is an acceptable form of procrastination. I will repeat that again and put it in bold and italics. A business plan is an acceptable form of procrastination. If you have a bright idea and want to get the ball rolling and you set off to write a business plan then all that is doing is stopping you from getting started. You may be thinking writing a business plan is getting started but I’m sorry, it’s not. Getting started is jotting a few points down and then doing it. Not thinking about it or writing about it but actually doing it.

Why skip the business plan? The first thing a business plan will do is make you reconsider your initial idea. You will come across hurdles and barriers that you didn’t think about before and slowly but surely you will be weened off the idea before you have even started. You might be thinking that this is a good thing right? This would mean that you have effectively saved yourself time and effort by finding out all the flaws in your idea before wasting your time, right? Wrong. What you have done is convinced your mind that the idea is not possible, nothing else. If you had actually started implementing your idea you would have come across these barriers regardless. In every business there will be barriers. The difference is that because you have started and are immersed in your project you will find away around these barriers. Thinking and pin-pointing these hurdles before hand will make starting less likely and therefore you will never find solutions to these problems.

Another problem is that a business plan actually complicates things. A business plan will flood further ideas into your mind and your fantastic small idea will turn into an overwhelming behemoth before you know it. You add more and more bells and whistles, change tact and thinking about more revenue models and target market opportunities. You no longer have a great simple idea but a complex global conglomerate before you have even started. This will again put you in an overwhelmed and less motivated mindset and cause you not to start. If you keep it extremely simple, then its very easy to get started and create your idea. Once this idea has been created you will then know where the other opportunities lie.

A business plan is effectively your mind trying to find a way to not get started. This could be due to a fear of failure, fear of the effort you need to put in or fear of not knowing how to get it done. It’s all a form of procrastination. What your doing is taking the relatively easy and non-confrontational option of working on your ‘business plan’. I am guilty of this, if I didn’t feel confident about getting started I just focused on my business plan. It’s like not wanting to make cold calls so you prepare emails instead. The problem here as I have mentioned before, is that the business plan is not just a time consuming procrastination but it will also give you more and more excuses why you shouldn’t go ahead with your idea. Very rarely does it motivate you even more to pursue your idea, your motivation is already existent pre-business plan and all your doing is finding a sure fire way to destroy that motivation. This is the worst type of procrastination, let alone a productive, business enhancing task!

Nothing is ever constant especially in the current business world. Your business plan and direction will continually adapt to internal as well as external forces. Businesses today need to be extremely flexible with the ability to adapt quickly to change. After creating a plan for your business, you will certainly find that what ends up working in the real world is entirely different to what you had in your plan. Sure a business plan is adaptive in itself but why start with one? Why not do your idea, learn from it then find out the best way to move forward. Not the other way, that would be a complete and utter waste of time. When you get an allergy test does the doctor give you a plan of what you may be allergic to because others are allergic to it then move you on your merry way? No. The doctor tests you for each individual allergy by giving you a bit of the cause and watches for a reaction. Only then does she form an outline of what you are allergic to. Why doesn’t your business idea need testing then?

Am I saying never to do a business plan at all? No, I think a business plan is great, but not for when your starting out. I am going against everything I have been taught and the reason for this is that I am basing it on experience. A business plan should be implemented after you have gone out and tried your new idea, not before. Today, things are so much cheaper to create compared to what it once was so there is absolutely no excuse to have an idea and not put it into action. To be fair this wasn’t the case 10, maybe even 5 years ago, so what we are taught in schools, colleges and universities are defunct only a few years later. Now it is essential you go out and create your idea, only then will you be in a position to determine what you should include in your business plan.

A business plan can also be effective when you are working with a group of people. A basic plan will help put all the ideas down on paper so you have a chief aim and defined objectives to work towards. Even then, the plan should really only be a couple of pages long, if that at all. It needs to be just enough to point out the main details and get everyone thinking along the same path. This is not really a business plan but a basic business outline, leave the plans for later.

What about for investment? Don’t you need a plan? Yes of course you do, but you also need something to show for your idea. Most investors and venture capitalists want to see something in action before they decide to invest. So do something first, then plan out after.

A proper business plan takes times and effort. This is time where you could be putting things into action. This is the time when your at your most motivated and excited yet you will be putting it to waste. This is the time that will enable other people to leap frog you and get a started on your idea. This is the time when you could lose your first mover advantage. With the endless number of plug-ins and software on offer as well as the ability to easily and safely outsource the creation of your concept, the only person you have to blame for not getting started is yourself. Stop using your business plan as your excuse.

This is the first post in my Step by Step business series. Instead of talking about how to set up a business I will be actually setting up a business and take you step by step through the process I go through from thinking up a business idea through to implementing that idea and also sharing the results. I’m a firm believer of “doing” and that jumping in the deep end is the best way can learn how to do something. You will never learn how to drive a car by reading a book, you need to get out and drive. You will also never learn how to start and run your own business by reading about it, you need to get out there and do it.

A couple of weeks ago I was raving about how mobile will be the next big thing. What I’m going to do now is start up mobile site from scratch and go over all the steps that I will take to get this up and running and hopefully, profitable. My aim here is not only to set up another income stream but to show you how I do it, step by step. I will be quite candid about the results so if it is a flop, you will know about it!

I need an idea. How do I come up with a concept? Well I looked to the online world for inspiration. I asked myself what online business have taken off yet are relatively easy to replicate in the mobile environment? My first step was to visit Alexa and have a look at the top 100 websites for inspiration. There are the usuals such as Google, Yahoo etc. Some of the most obvious ones are in the ever expanding field of social networking, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. However a prerequisite to my concept was that it needed to be easy to replicate and these social networking sites would definitely not be easy to replicate. The possible exception to this would be Twitter but Twitter has a great mobile interface and many people are “Twittering” via their mobile, so that was out. What else? Amazon? Probably a little complex and advanced for mobile (at the moment). Wikipedia? ahhh… no.

Then I took a second look at Youtube. My first look was interrupted by those little voices in my head saying “yeh right.. good try!”.. and “.. Youtube, I wonder what I could look up now?”. Just to introduce you, this is Mr. Negative and Mr. Procrastination.. I have been trying to evict these guys for the last 26yrs but they manage to find their way back in occasionally. So on my second look I managed to focus objectively and break it down to get a clearer understanding. What is Youtube exactly? Well in its essence, its a place you go to watch videos and share your videos to the world. Obviously there are far greater capabilities including networking and social interaction but in its most basic form, its just a video sharing site. Would a video sharing site be that hard to replicate?

The next question is to ask myself what is currently available in terms of video sharing in the mobile world? We know that Youtube has its own mobile version so why would people come to my mobile video site? Also what can I do to separate myself from the others? I did a search on Google mobile: mobile video sharing. There are a few present, namely Vringo, Livecast and Yamgo among others (interestingly Youtube didn’t come up). But looking through these and other sites it was obvious that they were either grossly deprived of content and you could only download a couple of bad quality videos, or they were too difficult to find what you want and start watching by requiring you to download some software or sign up with an account. The beauty of Youtube is that anyone can just jump on, watch a few videos without having to fiddle around with accounts and logging in etc. When browing on your mobile you don’t want to have to download software or log in everytime, it’s not like a PC where you can open tabs and have multiple windows on one screen. Mobile needs to be simple, straight forward and to the point. Give the users what they want straight away so they are more likely to come back. Give them a convoluted sign up process and time consuming ways to access content then you have lost them. Simple.

It’s looking more and more like I will head down the video sharing path but I need to differentiate my business from many of those out there. Obviously the biggest competitor will be the video sharing bohemoth Youtube. So what is their mobile offering like and how can I better it? To be honest, their mobile offering is pretty fantastic so there is no point in me going in there are doing the exact same thing with 10 videos asking people to use my site instead. That would be ridiculous. They do a better job than anyone else in the mobile marketplace by making the streaming of videos to your mobile so simple. You do a search, click the video your after and then watch it streamed onto your mobile.

Not worth competing? Well actually I see an large gaping opportunity presenting itself immediately. The problem with one type of mobile video site is that you need to do a whole lot of mumbo jumbo before you can start watching a video. The others that offer a simple download to mobile service (in 3gp format or similar) don’t have much content. Finally, Youtube makes it easy to watch videos but you have to stream them everytime and this costs you a fortune in data as well as the time it takes to download each time.

So I’m presented with an opportunity here. What if I can take the best of all these mobile video services and combine them into a single, easy to use video sharing service where you can search, submit, download and stream videos? It sounds simple enough. Now all I need to do is find out how I can actually do this!

Drop shipping is quite a magical concept: you take an order, get paid, send a request and payment to your supplier then they send it directly to your customer. You don’t see the product, you don’t touch it. You simply get your money, pay for the goods (hopefully the goods cost less than what you sold it for!) and that’s it. With the presence of major online trading hubs such as eBay as well as how easy it is these days to create your own online e-commerce store, its a fantastic cost effective option o doing business online.

Personally, in the past I have experimented with drop shipping using eBay as well as my own online stores and I can say that drop shipping definitely is a great profitable option however there are a few catches and factors that you need to be aware of. This is not a bad thing as in any industry there are things you need to be aware of and traps that are to be avoided. Nothing is ever as rosy as you think but adopting the right measures will ensure that you give yourself every opportunity to succeed. First I’ll outline the good stuff!

Pros:

1. Inventory - What inventory? Drop shipping allows you eliminate the cost of holding industry as well as pre-purchasing it. There is no need for an office or warehouse to house stock. Your drop ship partner does this for you. Plus there is no need to purchase stock in bulk to meet potential demand as you only buy stock once you have received the order (and your money!).

2. Risk - As you don’t hold stock or order masses of inventory the risk is relatively minimal. However most notably the risk of a product not selling is minimal as if it does not sell you have only really invested the cost of promoting that product (eBay fee, Google Adwords etc). This allows you to spread to risk and try a multitude of products at little cost until you have found something that sells and is profitable.

3. Marketplace - The online world is a massive marketplace. There are multiple avenues you can take in order to sell a product. The first way would be through using eBay. The great thing about eBay is that people who are going to eBay are looking to buy. That’s usually the main reason why they are there. Of course you have the browsers but it’s a place where genuine  buyers will hang out. On top of this the selling infrastructure is excellent and there is everything you need to run an online business, even the all important traffic. Another alternative is to open an online store which is much easier than you may think. Gone are the days where you need a mint to hire a programmer to create a custom e-commerce infrastructure or even install a shopping cart plugin. Today there are easier options such as Shopify who specialise in hosting great looking online stores that include all the features you may need. There is even a free option so you can give it a try before signing up for their service.

4. Automated - Drop shipping if done well can turn into quite an automated process (to an extent). Due to you not holding any stock there is no need to pack items and send them out, this is your drop shipper’s job. Therefore this way of doing business leans itself towards developing an automated system to receive orders then send the order through to your drop shipper on a daily basis. Even if you don’t want to be so technical you can simply designate 1-2 hours every couple of days to send through a new batch of orders. I would recommend this over sending a request one item at a time as you can compress your work load significantly and also please your drop shipper as your making large orders, not 3 separate orders a day which can get frustrating and confusing. Ensure you inform your customers of any possible lead times (say 10-14days) and using this strategy you can deliver to them well before your stated benchmark. Under promise over deliver and they’ll love you for it.

5. Time - My favorite. Drop shipping when done correctly in association with all the above points will lead to freeing up plenty of time to do the things you really want to do. Sell a great product at the right price using a good automated system and you will need to do very little for a great passive income. But of course there are always issues that can (and will) pop up and you will need to address these but these should be minimal providing you have a good relationship with a quality drop shipper.

Now for the Cons!

Cons:

1. The Dropshipper - So far I have referred to drop shippers quite objectively however they are a major factor when it comes to getting into this business. Put simply, if you don’t have a good drop shipper then you don’t have anything. Finding a great drop shipper is extremely difficult and there are many out there fighting for your business. The problems you may face include questionable quality products, bad service, a tough return policy and even counterfeit goods among other general mistakes. I cannot stress enough the importance of a great drop shipper and finding a good one is the first major step you will need to take. People usually find the product they want to sell and then look for a good drop shipper. I do the opposite, I find a great drop shipper and then I look at the products I can sell! If you can’t get a drop shipper recommended then bite the bullet and purchase something from a prospective drop shipper and send it to yourself. Find out what their service is like, ask them plenty of questions to see how quickly they respond and most importantly test out the product and make sure you like it. Ask yourself, would I buy this? If the answer is no then chances are other people won’t either. If you sell it regardless and people buy, then expect the complaints to come rolling in. Think of it as your own personal litmus test.

2. Competition - The internet is packed with people selling drop shipped goods. The costs being as low as they are lead to businesses competing heavily on price and this diminishes the ability to sell with good profit margins. This is most evident on Ebay where you have hundreds of sellers all drop shipping and pretty much selling many of which are selling the same product as you. Some are happy to sell a $100 item and only make a $2 profit. This is ridiculous but such is the competition it happens. My recommendation is that if your profit margins are not at least 80% its really not worth doing. If I buy a $100 dollar item I want to be selling it for at least $180-$200. If I can’t get this price I pull out as the headaches of returns and questions about the product are simply not worth a few measly dollars.

3. Exchange rates - This can also be a positive thing. Remember when your selling online you effectively buy and sell to the world. You will be at the mercy of exchange rate fluctuations and other global forces. Of course a good exchange rate can be beneficial and make you a few extra dollars however the flip side of that coin can be disastrous. For example most of the time when you buy from a drop shipper you pay in $US. Say you are in Australia and the $A buys 70USc, you need to know what you have to set your price at in order to make a profit. If you run a 7 day auction on eBay and during those seven days the market decides to nose dive (trust me this happens.. more than you could possibly imagine!) and the dollar goes down to 62c US then your in trouble. Think what would happen if you sell 20-30 items set at the original price and it gets  a bit scary. You might think this is only trivial but it has happened to me multiple times and in today’s current environment its definitely not uncommon.

4. Other business costs – This is more of something to be aware of rather than a point against dropshipping. When you start drop shipping, never make the mistake of thinking that you have no overheads. That’s not true at all. Overheads will include the cost of the item itself (cost of goods sold – COGS) as well as any taxes you need to pay on both the profit as well as any goods and services tax such as Australia’s GST. These costs are REAL costs… not something that you can get out of because you drop ship! I’m not an accountant nor can I give any financial advice but i’ll give you a personal example. If I buy an item for US$200 I don’t pay GST but when I sell the item in Australia I pay GST.. so I lose any benefit of an offset. Therefore I always need to put aside my GST component and on top of that pay tax for any profit I make. I personally needed to factor in almost 40% in taxes! Once again, I cannot give financial advice as I’m not qualified and I would recommend you see your accountant and discuss the purchasing and selling process and he/she will be able to tell you what your tax liabilities are.

5. People - Yes people. People get angry. People are not stupid. People want the best products for nothing. You will have to deal with these people. Don’t ever think people can’t see inferior quality, they can and usually will. So don’t sell crappy goods. You will be caught and regret it. Check your item first before you consider selling. Even if you do sell a great product, expect people to complain. You can’t take things personally and need to learn to deal with the issues at hand and move on. However the biggest problem that results in people being people, is that you will hit a critical mass where an abundance of complaints will come your way and you will need to deal with it. This isn’t fun and becomes time consuming. This was my main frustration as I felt I had to reply to everyone who said “thanks great product” through to people who said “how do I turn this on?”. I eventually learned to screen out the important from the non important but the realisation that “passive” no longer became “passive” the more sales you made and the more money you turned over. Make a little and things seem great. Make a lot and expect to work hard, there are no two ways. I understand there are many theories behind automating a process and dealing with these matters using other less exhausting ways but as long as your dealing with people, don’t expect to sit back and do nothing, especially if you set yourself high financial goals.

6. Numbness (my personal one) – I’m not sure how to explain this any other way but the main reason I got out of drop shipping was because I felt it provided a very numb feeling. Think of a business anesthetic. You have minimal control over quality or control of anything that has to do with the product and this made me feel kind of numb. You know its there but you can’t feel it or do anything with it. And this is what I didn’t like. But this is my personal “con”, not one that can be applicable to everybody.

These are my pros and cons for drop shipping and is purely based on my experiences NOT what I have read or what other people have told me. Im finding it very frustrating when I read through some blogs and the blogger is simply out promoting a product and trying to add content in a field they have never been involved in, yet claim to be. So you end up reading regurgitated drivel which can be spotted a mile away. So if I have left something out that you feel is important then please leave it as a comment as these are now enabled. Let me know your thoughts or share your own valuable drop shipping experiences.

Drop shipping articles worth reading:

7Th blog.com – Is drop shipping an easy way to earn cash?

Tips for Mums - How to start an online drop shipping business.

If you were to go 10 years back in time and have the knowledge that you have now, what would you do? First I would buy every decent 3 and 4 letter domain name under the sun. I would set up a social network, a clean cut search engine and maybe dabble a bit in online video sharing. It would be safe to say I would be doing extremely well for myself right now and anyone within a 3km radius.

Isn’t hindsight a great thing? Think about the opportunities!! If only you knew. Well in a way you do. Maybe not on a PC online level but even better than that, the next big thing. Mobile. I have said this before and will continue to say it, Mobile is the next frontier. Growth is massive and the opportunities available are in abundance.

Enough of the mobile praising and let’s get to business. Mobile business opportunity No. 1 – Domain Names. Domain names are extremely important for such things as branding and generating traffic (among a host of others). We also know that the domain name trade is a massive industry with many companies specialising purely in the buying and selling domain names.  Yet entrepreneurs have seemingly neglected jumping on the mobile domain name bandwagon. Since 2006, mobile has been given it’s own mobile friendly domain known as .mobi.

Currently a good .mobi domain sells for anywhere between $1000 – $3500 all the way up to $20,000. Although this doesn’t yet compete with the value of a traditional .com, this is quite significant as .mobi has only been around for the better part of 2 years. With mobile internet growth exceeding online internet growth by 8 times what will these .mobi domains be worth in a year? 3 yrs? 10 yrs?

Interestingly there are still plenty of 4 letter .mobi domains which can be bought for around $11-$15. If you buy now and sell a year later at $5000 that’s a decent investment. Buy up 5-10 of these then there is definite potential.

There are a couple of small catches though. Whether these domains will be as valuable as .com remains to be seen however I very much doubt it. Currently a premium .com domain would sell for almost 15x-20x as much as a .mobi. Even 5-6 years down the track I don’t think their value would be level with .com but expect great margins nevertheless, probably around the area of 40-50% of a premium .com domain. Considering a premium domain may cost upwards of $500,000 (check out Sedo selling results.com for $500k!) that’s not too bad. Some interesting reading regarding the value of some of the top domains can be found at the New Affiliate Resource blog.

The other catch is the problem of cyber-squatting. Before you go out and buy the best domain names you need to be wary of IP and trademarks which would most likely be owned by online based businesses. For example going out and buying twitter.mobi or Myspace.mobi wouldn’t be appreciated by the Twitter or Myspace people and you may expect a elegantly presented legal letter and a battle you don’t necessarily want to be apart of. This is something you must be aware of before going and investing in a good .mobi.

For reference here is some more info regarding domain name parking. Keep domains generic using highly trafficked search words with little characters as possible and your onto something big. So what what will you be thinking in 10 years time?

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.