5 Ways to Start an Online Business

With the Internet these days, tons of people have switched from their traditional jobs and moved towards Internet-based businesses. The opportunities are huge in this area. Here are a few ways to start an online business.

Online platforms:
1. Starting your own website - You pay for the hosting, design, marketing, & selling. People usually know about designing websites (or outsource it), what they're going to sell, & how they're going to sell it.
2. Blog - fun. A blog is like your own magazine/newspaper. You get to write about your favorite topics, design it, decide which products you'd like to promote, sign up subscribers, sell your own product, sell advertising, host videos. The possibilities are endless. Hosting & design are free. Great for sharing information, writing. Another variation of the blog are the vlogs (video blogs) & podcasts.
3. Ebay store - My favorite. Pay a monthly fee of $15.95. Ebay takes care of the marketing, promotions. Plus, millions of shoppers a day go through Ebay. You decide which products you'd like to sell, then list them. You pay to list, final sale price, & PayPal fees. Check out my Ebay store.
4. Yahoo stores - a variation of #3
5. Amazon stores - a variation of #3.

Once you have your store/website up & running, the next step is to market it. All of the strategies below are topics in and of themselves. So you drive more visitors, more traffic to your site. Market research is also important - what your niche is, who your customers are, what they're likely to buy & for how much, and product sourcing. After that it's refining, tweaking your site so that the people who come there are more likely to purchase something from you (increasing your conversion rate).

Strategies:
1. Affiliate marketing
2. Google AdWords
3. Sponsorships
4. Endorsements
5. Partnerships
6. Drop-shipping
7. Pay-per-click advertising
8. Search engine optimization
9. Social media marketing

That's it!

The TRUE Meaning of Wealth

In today's society, we're all conditioned to think of being wealthy & being rich as the same thing. Society defines being rich as having a lot of money. Yet, there are many people who have a lot of money, but are completely miserable people. Sometimes they have to put in 20+ hours/day to sustain their current standard of living. Or their kids, spouses resent them because they're never around. So society's definition of being rich is measured in financial assets - dollars, stocks, businesses, real estate, net worth, & so on.

However, being rich is only one component of being wealthy. Wealth is composed of not only financial capital, but also emotional, spiritual, social, & intellectual capital. In my previous post on your greatest assets, wealth is defined as the number of days you could sustain your lifestyle without working. So, in other words, having a lot of time is a measure of wealth. And along with time comes freedom, independence, and mobility. Being happy, healthy, having a lot of positive relationships, great ideas, a lot of leverage, are all forms of wealth. A way to true financial wealth is through sources that provide passive income. A great book that explains this concept is the "4 Hour Work Week", by Tim Ferriss. Great book, one that changed my reality on what it really means to be wealthy.

So in the Information Age today, being wealthy means:
1. Your health
2. Your time, freedom, independence, & mobility
3. Your happiness
4. Your mind
5. Your ideas
6. Your friends
7. Your integrity
8. Access to various forms of capital (social, financial, intellectual, emotional, spiritual)
9. Various social, business, professional, academic, athletic skills applied to the appropriate settings.

That's it. Stay tuned!

How to Get Quality Books for Pennies on the Dollar

Hey guys - the other day, I wrote a post on how to devour one book per week. Today, I'm going to tell you how to get top/quality books for pennies on the dollar.

Actual physical books:
1. Borrow them from friends/family, trade them for your personal library.
2. Local library. Has literally TONS of some of the best books of all time.
3. Book sales & auctions - usually done by local libraries (once per month), college/universities (once per year).
4. Half.com - Excellent
5. Ebay.com - Check out my bookstore.
6. Half Price Books - Excellent.

Digital media:
1. Scribd.com - Free site where you can download free ebooks. Courtesy of Brian Armstrong of Startbreakingfree.com
2. Audible.com - Great place for audiobooks! Highly recommended.
4. Ebooks.com
5. Itunes.com
6. Local library, friends/family, garage sales, books sales, auctions.
7. Ebay, Amazon.com

8 Environment-Conscious Habits

With global warming, erratic/extreme weather changes, extinction, pollution, scarce natural resources (energy, water, food) being major issues, a couple of things we can do to help save the environment.

1. Drive less - live closer to where you work, take public transportation, ride your bike, exercise rather than go shopping/eating out. Drive a smaller car. Go hybrid.
2. Eat less fast food.
3. Recycle. Waste less.
4. Adjust your thermostat to slightly higher temps (summer) and slightly lower temps (winter).
5. Use shades, reflecting windows, sealants to better insulate your dwelling.
6. Adopt a plant. More plants = more O2, less CO2.
7. Go digital - rather than waste paper, etc. Do everything online, on your computer. Back everything up, though, & have anti-virus software.
8. Use a water-filter system as opposed to buying bottled water.
9. Adopt a pet
10. Donate to charitable causes such as alternative/natural energy, saving species from extinction, fight against global warming, pollution, deforestation, etc.
11. Use your own reusable bags when grocery shopping.

That's it. Until next time!

3 EASY steps to Devouring 1 Book per Week

Does the title make you skeptical? Lots of people think finishing 1-2 books per week seems impossible. The barriers to making this happening include: time, distractions, energy, and money.

The 3 steps are:
Step 1: Increase your reading comprehension, speed. There are a number of cheap, easy to read books/tapes on speed reading.
Step 2: Invest in a iPhone, iPod, MP3 player, laptop/desktop, CD/tape player, or DVD player.
Step 3: Next is to use these tools & skills to acquire knowledge, ideas, insights rapidly, easily, cheapily. Play audiobooks, tapes, CD's, DVD's in the following subject categories - motivational, self-help, inspirational, spiritual, educational, professional, business, diet, fitness, relationships & learn from them while you go about your day - driving to work, cleaning, cooking, working out, running errands, waiting in line, eating. I also sometimes watch the movie version of a book, if I feel that I can get the gist of the book from the 2 hours I spend watching the movie, versus the 2+ hours I will need to spend to complete the book.

Another thing to take into account is how we learn: We remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, & 50% of what hear/see/do. I am primarily a visual learner. I find that audiobooks are faster for me (timewise), but I have to come back to them more often. Also, it's easier to locate information/ideas in printed text versus the spoken word.

Following the 3 steps above is sure to increase your comprehension, speed, acquisition, & ultimately the number of books you finish per week.

Until next time!

3 Easy Ways to Double Your Visitors Using Twitter

Have been using the Twitter application recently, & tried a couple of steps that doubled the number of visitors to my blog.

1. Twitterfeed.com - sign up. It's easy & free. Then add the RSS feed from your blog to the RSS feed that Twitterfeed looks for.
2. Sign up for Facebook, if you haven't done so already.
3. Sign up for Twitter. Look for the option that allows you to link your Twitter & Facebook accounts.

So everytime you post a new article on your blog, Twitterfeed automatically sends it to Twitter (for all your followers to read) and Twitter then tweets it to Facebook for all your friends to see.
You can do this for pics, audio, video (yours & others) as well.

I did this & in one week, the number of visitors doubled on my site. That's huge, a 100% increase in visitors, which translates into increasing the number of subscribers, people knowing about you, buying your stuff, etc.

Am excited about this finding. I'm currently experimenting with other ways to boost my site visitors/subscribers using social media marketing, so stay tuned.

Your Greatest Assets

Hi folks - a lot of people think that assets are things such as stocks, businesses, real estate, gold. While those are assets, and good ones, I think even greater assets are the intangibles things that have the potential to yield huge, infinite returns. So here they are:

1. Your health, energy, spirit
2. Your time
3. Your mind
4. Other people - their time, talents, resources, skills, capital
5. Friends, family

So all of the above encompass the realm of social and intellectual capital rather than financial capital, which is the subject of another post. Until then!

Random thoughts

Here are some of my favorite quotes to keep me focused in the moment, enjoying each moment.
1. Life is short. Work hard. Play hard.
2. Savor every moment, b/c it can be taken away in an instant
3. Use your creativity, vision to make each day your masterpiece.
4. Spend 80% of your time on the 20% that yields 80% of the results.
5. Focus on activities that either: rejuvenate, recharge, refresh, change/alter, help you to grow. For example, reading, working out, watching a movie, hanging out w/ friends.
6. Choose work that when you do it, it comes naturally, you feel in the moment, you feel energized rather than drained by it.
7. Check email at 11 AM & at 5 PM. That's it.
8. Cherish each day b/c it could be your last.
9. Greatest power that we have is in the power of choice.
10. Be grateful for your health
11. Happiness is an internal state - contentment, positive self esteem, self image, optimism. Not dependent upon anyone, anything, or any circumstance.

Top 7 Inventions of All Time

Wondering about the life-changing inventions, that have helped shape the world, our lives, & the way we live.

Here they are:
1. Automobile
2. Airplane
3. Computer
4. Telephone
5. Cell phones
6. Internet
7. Lightbulb

Curious as to what the next invention will be to change our lives. I'm thinking it will be along the lines regarding the environment, energy, water, or food.

Role of Charity in the Information Age

I've been thinking alot lately regarding the role of charity & giving. Was at a seminar this past weekend, & played a game called, Cash Flow. In the game, the player has the option to donate 10% of their income to charity & gets the chance to roll more dice, when they do. Most of the players, when they landed on this space, did not donate. Why? Interesting. Got me to thinking.

Lots of us are conditioned to get, get, get, take, take, take. That form of mentality was common during the Industrial Age & is based on scarcity b/c resources were by definition limited during this age. That is why after the Great Depression, the way to survive was to get a good education, get a good job - safe, secure, lifelong, w/ good benefits.

However, in today's age, that notion is becoming obselete FAST. Now that we are in the Information Age - knowledge, information, ideas & what we do with them are key. Speed, volatility are becoming the norm. We can communicate with people overseas in our bedroom w/ just a computer & internet connection, in our boxers. We no longer have to fly to conduct business meetings. We can host webinars, telemeetings in our own living rooms.

We can see signs of the Industrial Age disappearing in previously corporate giants (GM, Ford, Chrysler) collapsing, facing bankruptcies, smaller/faster/smarter/efficient companies overtaking them, airlines facing financial issues, labor jobs being shipped overseas, the price of oil increasing.

In the Information Age - where we make our living by sharing information, knowledge, a new paradigm is emerging, & that is the concept of abundance. Since transitioning into the Information Age - ideas, thoughts, words, pictures, sounds, etc. are all abundant, they are all around us. Our economy is now based on the creating, packaging, & giving of things that are knowledge based. Multimillionaires, billionaires were created from this idea that information (an idea) can be created, marketed, & sold to the masses. Examples include: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang, Larry Paige, Sergey Brin, etc. Other examples include rockstars, movie stars, athletes, businesses who have created a brand from their identity, experiences, accomplishments & have sold it to the masses in the form of endorsements, sponsorships, CD's, MP3's, movies, athletic products, franchises, licenses, businesses, partnerships, you name it.

So as we progress into the Information Age charity/giving will be more natural, easy, in my opinion. By reprogramming our minds from a scarcity to an abundance-based mentality, we set ourselves up for greater returns in every aspect of our lives. Here are a couple of reasons why I think giving, increases your returns:

1. It trains your mind to think in terms of abundance
2. You give to give, rather than give to receive (trains your subconscious that there's abundance)
3. Karma

The returns may be in the form of monetary returns, but it can also be in the form of lucky breaks, excellent relationships, good health, happiness.

So give whatever you can to a cause that you're passionate about - it can be to your local church, hospital, school, whatever, as long you give.

That's it. Stay tuned!