Personally, I think not.  In fact, I find it natural to use the Internet to make money.  I am not talking about some rip-off scheme, no get rich quick scheme, nothing like that.  I am talking about doing honest work in exchange for money, and using the Internet to conduct that business.  However, truth is… there are a lot of people who think that everything on the Internet should be free.  They think it is evil to charge money for anything that happens on the Internet.  I don’t think so.

You can make money online, but you actually have to do something first!

Think about other modes of communication.

Should it be illegal or considered evil to use a telephone to make money?

How about a TV?  Should actors, actresses, companies who advertise, TV stations, TV networks et al be allowed to profit from the business they engage in?

Using the logic of the “free internet” crowd, TV, phones and other methods of communication should all be free.  What about books?  Should authors be able to charge the public for buying the book?  Oh my…  we can stretch this into almost every aspect of life if we want to.

Recently I wrote an article on another site entitled “Backward Thinking” which was about earning money, and being able to live anywhere you want to live.  One person commented (I have left the poor grammar just as he wrote it):

i read your letter,and you r right,i want to move to the philippines,and yes my biggest concern is how to make a living,and you letter told me nothing other than a motavational speech. I understand that you make your living helping others who want to live in the philippines so is that why you dont give any info away,for the fear you will not make money?

My response to him:

John – I do give information and I help people who ask. Thousands of people read this site every day, and for each person the path is different. I said in the article that you should find your niche, find something that you are passionate about and go for it! I am sorry, John, I will help, but I cannot hold your hand. You are an adult, and have to do the work yourself. No, I am not afraid to help anybody. but frankly, I know nothing about you. I don’t know what you are knowledgeable about. I don’t know what you are interested in. I don’t know what you enjoy doing. How can I possibly tell you exactly what you should do when I know nothing about you? My god… you can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!

Does your keyboard have a "Make Money" Key?

Pretty amazing, huh?  There were some others who left rather ignorant comments too, but I’ll just stay with this one to illustrate my point.

Now, when it comes to making money online, I find that there are tons of people who want to do it.  I also find that there are very few people who make an effort to actually try, but they do complain on the mountaintops that “it can’t be done” or “nobody will show me how.”  My friends, it is up to you to make an effort to learn how.  I often write and tell my readers how I did this or that, and they can do it too… but few do it.

Just today, I was looking at a site that asked the question, “Is blogging broken?“  I found this paragraph particularly enlightening, and matched my experience:

Most people who read this very blog are tire-kickers. What I mean by that is you guys act like you want to make money with your blog, when all you do is dabble with it. You read blogs like mine, but you’re not willing to invest much of anything to actually pull it off. In fact, when somebody like myself or another person in this business makes an offer that will legitimately help you pull it off, that offer often gets met with suspicion.

Now, I don’t BLAME you for that. Let’s look at the environment that we’re in here. Complete and TOTAL information saturation online. Which, of course, leads people to engage in louder and more audacious marketing tactics to cut through the noise. Which leads people to question the honesty of it. Which then comes full circle yet again. Rinse and repeat.

I think the saturation with free information out there is devaluing the information. It is coming at us all with such volume and quantity that we can’t make heads or tails of it.

And that makes tire-kickers… people who will lurk, read and occasionally comment… but in the end, will never pay you a dime. Because they think the answer is out there for free somewhere else and they’re too overwhelmed to notice good information when it hits them upside the head.

I fully agree!  Most people are tire kickers and they really have no intention of buying the car.  In fact, when they leave the dealer they will complain about the car, no matter how much they want it.  That’s how it is with the guys who bitch and moan that they can’t make money online, yet they are not willing to spend a few hours trying.  Like I said in my reply to John, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

So, do you want to make money on the Internet?  Get off your butt and do something, then.  Just bitching and moaning won’t put any dollars in the bank, I can assure you of that!

Well, the way that it was explained, the guy was saying that you should write down everything you need to do.  Next, look through each item on the list, and immediately scratch off every item that will not make money for you today.  Basically, concentrate your time and focus on the things that will put extra money in your pocket today.  Long term stuff should be put off.  Time wasters?  Throw them aside all together.  Well, there is some appeal when you hear the idea.  I mean, it makes sense to focus yourself on things that make an immediate pay off, right?

Wrong.

I disagree with this concept.

I disagree strongly.

I mean, most of the things that pull in nice money for me today are things that it took a week, a month, even a year to put together.  It was hard work that I had to do every day to put these projects together.  A project that took me a month to build paid me nothing for those 30 days that I worked.  But, if I did not invest the time to do it, I might have lost out on $100 or more per day in income.  Some of these things that I spent major time on for nothing while I did the work pay me handsomely now, and I do nothing now, just collect the money!  Now, that is something that is nice, when you get money everyday for work that you did years ago.  That is a better approach to managing your “to do” list, if you ask me.

So, how would I suggest you do your to-do list? What I do is that I list out projects that I want to complete.  I look at those projects and try to figure how much income they will produce for me in the long haul.  I mean, how much can I earn this year?  Next year?  Over the next 10 years?  Those that promise to bring me in long term money will pay off a lot better than focusing today’s efforts on getting that extra $20 that I might have missed out on.  Maybe I won’t make that $20 today, but I might make a half million dollars over the next ten years.  I prefer the latter.

How about you?

How could it be?

Have you ever heard of brainstorming?  Do you know what that is?  For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, brainstorming is a process of thinking of all kinds of ideas.  The best way for a brainstorming session to be conducted is to have a group of people, maybe 6 to 10 people or so.  You agree in advance that all ideas will be considered relevant, nothing is stupid (no matter how stupid it really is!), in other words, nobody will be teased or belittled for any idea that they throw out, even if it is rather senseless.  Set a time for the brainstorming session, let’s say 10 minutes, or 20 minutes.  Set a topic.  Let’s say that you are going to have a brainstorming session trying to come up with a new product for your company to start making.  Then, everybody just throws out every idea that comes into their head.  You don’t come up with an idea then think it over, consider how good or bad it might be, you just blurt it out when it comes into your mind.  The leader of the brainstorming session writes the idea down, and then other people blurt out their ideas.  When the brainstorming session is over (at the agreed time deadline), then the group considers the merit of each idea.  The interesting thing that happens is that none of the ideas may be found to have merit, but maybe combinations of multiple ideas, or slight variations of ideas might be found to be perfect!

I remember when I was a kid, my Dad worked in the paper industry.  He was an engineer, and later moved into management in the industry, and he was quite successful.  I vividly remember my Dad had a joke that was a picture drawn on a piece of paper, it was a design for a new toilet paper recycling machine.  Actually, it was obviously a joke, because the way it was designed, you would re-use toilet paper that had already been used, with no cleaning or processing or anything.  Obviously, if this were a serious idea, it was a stupid idea, but perhaps if the right person saw it, they may have come up with a real workable idea based on the joke, who knows?

Anyway, the thing is that as we think, or come up with ideas for things we should do or try, many of the ideas we come up with are stupid, or unworkable.  There is nothing wrong with that, it is just part of the process of coming up with good ideas that will make us money or improve our lives in some way.  Perhaps our good idea will improve society, or help other people.  But, we would not be able to come up with good ideas if we did not go through a certain number of stupid or bad ideas in the process.

Perhaps the most valuable asset one could have is the ability to filter through the stupid ideas and discard them, while saving and refining the good ideas that are in the mix!

In my own life, when I come up with a new idea, I often think that it is a good idea, something valuable that will improve my life in some way.  Then I start thinking it over, and I often feel after a day or so that the idea is not workable, it turns out it was just a stupid idea.  The good thing, though, is that as I think about the idea, sometimes that thought that comes from the stupid idea spawns new good ideas that I never would have even considered if not for my pondering about the idea that was actually stupid!

So, stupid ideas are not a waste of your time.  They are a breeding ground for good ideas, and are actually a necessary step that you must go through in the thinking process.  We all get stupid ideas.  The key is in being able to recognize that it is just another stupid idea, and to discard it before you invest too much time or money in it.  And, also, being able to use that stupid idea to spawn other ideas which are actually quite good!

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.

How true is that statement?  Well, it’s very true!  I used to believe in it less than I do now, but events over the past few years have illustrated to me how true it is.  Both in my personal life and also in my business life things have happened that time and again show me that nothing lasts forever.

However, there are things that you can do to stretch the lifespan as long as possible out of whatever it is that you are trying to preserve.

Let’s look at business, since that is what this site is all about.  I have a business that I started up about 7 years ago.  It’s been a super business.  I have made some really nice money from this business.  It has kept me happy, healthy, with food on the table, etc.  There was a time when I thought that the business was invincible.  A couple of years ago, I decided to concentrate on the business less than I had been.  I thought that this particular business was so well established that it could prosper even just with the guidance of my staff.  Of course, I would keep an eye on it, but I would involve myself less and less in the day to day operations.

So, I set out on this path a couple of years ago.  It did very well for quite some time.  However, about a year ago, it started declining.  At first, such decline is virtually unnoticeable, because you just count it as a normal fluctuation, the regular ebb and flow of business.  But, it has continued to spiral downwards.  New competition came in.  We didn’t make many changes, just maintained the status quo.  That is my fault, because I put the thing on auto-pilot.

That is a huge mistake.

Now it is time for me to jump back in and get the business back on track.  Honestly, that is something that I enjoy doing.  I don’t enjoy running a business, but I enjoy innovating, making changes, etc.  That is part of the personality profile of a true entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurial people enjoy starting businesses, but then they tend to walk away when things are going smoothly.  That’s what I did.

So, I have come up with a list of innovations that I need to make to hopefully get my business back on track.  It won’t be an easy thing to do, but I am drawn to do it.

What about you?  Do you believe in the statement that I used as the title of this article?  Innovate or die.  Nothing lasts forever.  I just hope that through innovation I can prolong the life of this particular venture.

If I go to the mall, I have my eyes peeled.  If I go out to eat, I am watching to see if I am missing any potential products.  No matter where I go, even when I surf the Internet, my eyes are open for potential bargains that I can turn around and sell at a profit!  You can do it too.

Stuff to sell

When people talk to me about doing e-commerce, the number one reason they always give is that they can’t figure out what to sell.  They can’t find products.  Well, I am here to tell you that my problem is that if I am in the “product finding” mode, my biggest problem is that I find too many products!  With the number of products that I find and want to try selling, I would need hundreds of different stores on the net.  Remember the old adage – one man’s junk is another man’s treasure!

When you are searching for stuff to sell, keep watching for the junk.  When you are selling, sell nothing but treasures!  What I mean by that is to keep an eye out for people trying to unload stuff.  Lots of people want to get rid of junk.  There will always be another guy who is looking for the exact item that the other guy is practically throwing away.  It is your job to find these two people, and act as a conduit between them.  You don’t want to let them know about each other, or you will be cut out of the deal.  But, if you have enough guts to spend your money buying the “junk” then your next step is to put it up for sale on the web, and always describe it like it is a very valuable treasure!  That, my friend is marketing!

If you are out looking for junk that you can turn to treasure, and you see me there ahead of you….  don’t forget – I was there first!

Good luck in the search.

It all started out with my old laptop, a Compaq laptop that was only about 18 months old, or so.  I started having problems with it.  The monitor was starting to give out on it.  If I touched the monitor, the screen would go white.  Because I make my living on the Internet, I cannot afford to go even a few days without a computer.  Because of this, my wife told me to go buy a new computer when it was my birthday last week.  So, not wanting to disobey my wife (!), I rushed out to get a new PC.

I ran into some problems buying a new PC, which I wrote about on my other blog, click the link to read about that.  As it turned out, the big local PC dealers were not helpful, and few of them had anything that I really wanted to buy.  At that time, I decided to try a small local computer store that I had not visited in years.  About 5 or 6 years ago, I bought a Shuttle PC at a little shop called “PC Shack” in Uyanguren, also known as Chinatown here in Davao.  PC Shack was a very small, very local Mom & Pop type store.  They treated me well when I went there 5 years ago, but I had not really gone there regularly over the years.  But, last week, I visited there again, and I’m glad I did.

Actually, as it turned out, I discovered that PC Shack had “bit the dust,” sort of.  They had been bought out by a company out of Manila called “Qube”.  The sign still said PC Shack, but the stuff inside all said Qube.  As it turned out, I was very glad that I went to Qube.  They had a number of PC’s that interested me.

I saw a new form factor of PC that really caught my eye quickly, it is called a “USFF” PC, which stands for Ultra Small Form Factor.  This USFF PC runs on a dual core Intel Atom processor.  The Atom is the processor that runs the new little “netbooks” and “net-top” desktops.  I liked this one because it was a dual core Atom, so more powerful, but still efficient, cool operating, etc.

My new USFF PC, sitting on my desk next to my cellular phone

In the past, I have always been a “power guy” when it came to PC’s.  I wanted the fastest, most powerful PC that could be bought, and I was willing to pay a premium price to get the best.  Now, I still want a good quality PC, but I want only the power that I need.  I am not a “power user” to be honest.  Most of what I do is just stuff on the Internet, and a few other minor things.  I do some light photo editing work with Gimp Image Manipulation program, and the most power hungry thing I do is Video editing, but I do that only rarely.  When I started thinking about getting an Atom powered PC, I was worried if it could really handle my needs or not.  In fact, I held off for a number of days trying to decide if the Atom was really right for me or not.  In the end, I talked to several friends who have similar power needs as I do, and they told me that they are able to do it on an Atom based PC, so I took the jump.

I sure am glad that I gook the plunge too, because I love my little Atom USFF PC!  It’s great.  Here are the Specs of the PC that I purchased:

• Intel Atom Dual Core 330 1.60GHz
• nVidia MCP7A-ION Chipset
• Integrated nVidia ION
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz Memory
• 320GB Mobile SATA Hard Disk Drive
• Internal Card Reader
• Wireless Lan
• HDMI 1080p FULL HD Support

Overall, all I can say about this PC is that I love it.  It’s so tiny, so efficient.  It runs very cool, the case rarely even feels very warm.  Although I can’t really verify this, it is said that it uses 90% less electricity than a “regular” PC too, which is cool.

Another thing I learned in the experience of buying this PC is that I enjoy dealing with a small Mom & Pop type operation too.  One thing that I enjoyed about that was that it gave me a chance to use my Bisaya skills.  I think that if I did not speak Bisaya, I would have had a difficult time buying this machine, because the clerks there had a bit of a tough time speaking English.  At first, I tried to speak English with them, but when I switched to Bisaya, the purchase went a lot smoother and more friendly too!  I enjoyed it.  I’ll be buying at Qube again too, you can bet on that!

What is an “X Deal?”

Is it “X Rated?”

Is my wife OK about it if I do an “X Deal?”

Well, an X Deal is certainy not X Rated.  An X Deal is short for an “Exchange Deal.”  Basically it is like bartering.  It is really a very popular way to do business in the Philippines.

X Deal

I am not going to go into the details of the X Deal that I recently completed, I mean that is a business matter that is private between me and the other businessman that I had dealings with.  But, let’s look at some examples of what is involved.

As an example, let’s say that I wanted to do an X Deal with the Coca Cola Company.  I have a website that is very popular.  The topic of my website is about soft drinks.  It’s a natural place for Coca Cola to put advertising, since my tens of thousands of readers are interested in Coke products.

So, I approach Coca Cola and tell them about my website and that I am interested in negotiating an X Deal with them.  I offer to them that I will put certain types of Coke advertising on my site, and in exchange, I want them to give me 50 cases of Coke per month.  If they see value in that, they might go for it.  Probably they will come back and say something like:

You know, we really would like to do that, but we think that such an ad only is worth 30 cases of Coke per month.

So, or course there is negotiation on just exactly “how much” each side will receive, and how much they will give.  This, of course, is the nature of business.  But, if both sides are expressing an interest, eventually a deal will probably be struck.

Now, why would a company prefer to do an X Deal when they can just outright purchase what they want?  Well, a number of reasons:

1. Tax reasons. In the USA, if you barter (which is essentially whan an X Deal is), you must still pay income tax on the value of the products involved.  In the Philippines, though, I am not certain what the law is.  I would be very surprised if anybody is really paying taxes on the value of X Deals, though.
2. Costs. For example, let’s say that in the example I used, the value of 30 cases of Coke is $150, for the sake of argument.  But, it might cost Coke only $40 to actually manufacture that product.  So, in essence, they are getting $150 worth of advertising for a cash outlay of just $40.  For the website guy, he is giving away something which basically costs him nothing, or very little, for an amount of coke that would cost him $150 to buy in the store.

The X-Deal – It’s a win-win.

So, remember, when you want to make a business deal with somebody and they (or you) may be short on funds, barter, or the “X Deal” may be a path you want to explore.  I know that it has worked for me!

Basically, the theme of these articles is about earning money online, and the fact that doing so is a business, not just a time to play around.  Many people start blogging, or some other way of earning money online, and they will put AdSense ads, or something similar on their sites, and earning a little money.  But, even if they get up to a decent amount of earnings, it would seem that they never quite make the leap to considering what they are doing as a business.  They never get serious about it.

Business People, or Bloggers?

Think about this.  When you have a business, do you just “do it when you feel like it?”  No, usually when you have a business, you have a schedule of the times when you are supposed to “work” or be at the office, or whatever it is that you are doing as your job or business.  Same thing when you are earning online, you should have a schedule, and you should follow it.  Not just do it when you have the urge.

The first article that I read along this theme was from Jim Kukral.  I always enjoy reading Jim’s blog, and he offers some good ideas.  In many ways, I feel that Jim and I have been on similar paths in our online earning over the years, so following what he is doing is something that helps me in my own quest to develop my business further.  One thing that Jim said in his article that really echoed with me was:

We’re no longer bloggers anymore, we’re “publishers”.

This was nice to read, because I have been saying the exact same words myself for about a year or more now.  I don’t consider myself a blogger, I consider myself a publisher.  One of the things that made me make that change in nomenclature is because my most popular site is one where I have about a dozen different writers who contribute to the site, so I don’t write everything there.  I publish it all, though.  So, I truly am more a “publisher” than a “blogger,” and being a publisher also tends to give off a more serious tone than being a “blogger,” in my opinion.

The next article that I read about this was written by Darren Rouse on ProBlogger.  Darren points out in his article that when he finally decided to get serious about his blogging, that is when his success grew in multiples.  His wife gave him an opportunity that he could try out full time blogging for 6 months to see if he could make a business out of it.  If he wasn’t developing into a full time business (with full pay) within that 6 months, he had to go find a “real job.”  Well, that stimulated Darren enough to do the real concrete things that a businessman does to grow his business.  Instead of just doing what he felt like doing, he started taking serious steps to turn what he was doing into a business.

For me, until we start considering online earning as a business instead of a hobby, or “just something we do,” we cannot reach the level of success that we should.

Check back, I will be writing a serious of articles on this theme over the next couple of weeks.  Let me know what you think too, I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.