Making money online

We lose a little bit on each sale, but we make up for it with the huge volume!

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!

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!

Do you know what I’m talking about?  What do I mean about “pulling the trigger?”

Well, what I mean is this… if you get an idea for something, do you actually do it, or do you talk about it, then promptly just blow it off?  I hear a lot of people tell me of ideas they have for some kind of new product or service, a new business that they just know will make them a fortune.  They talk about it and talk about it, but I never see anything materialize.

Pull that trigger!

A lot of people will come up with some kind of innovation, a slight variation on something that already exists.  They tell me about it, and I think it sounds great.  But, nothing ever happens.  I don’t mean that they try to introduce it and fail, rather they just drop their idea after the initial excitement.

Fairly regularly, I get e-mails from people.  They explain to me that they have an idea for something.  Usually they say:

I have an idea for this great new gizmo.  How much do you think I can sell my idea for?

Well, frankly, in most cases you can’t sell an idea.  You need to develop the idea first, maybe come up with some kind of prototype, and then you could perhaps sell it.  Ideas are just that… ideas.  They are, frankly, a dime a dozen.  Nobody buys an idea.

Think of it like this.  Just as an example, let’s say that you have invented some new kind of sauce, a condiment.  It is very tasty, delicious, and every single person who tastes it things it’s the greatest new condiment since ketchup.  So, you decide that you are going to contact Heinz and pitch the sauce to them.  Surely they will like it, and they will pay you millions for the “idea”.  Maybe they will even give you residual payments for the rest of your life.  You are on the verge of becoming a millionaire!

Wrong.

The truth is that it is highly likely that Heinz will not even talk to you.  Honestly, they don’t want to even know what your idea is.  Why?  Because they fear that you will end up suing them.  Why?  Look, a big company like Heinz, who specializes in condiments, sauces and such has a huge research and development department.  They have dozens, maybe hundreds of employees who work every day on combining different ingredients trying to come up with the next hot condiment.  Now, if you write to them and say “hey, I’ve got this new condiment” and they say to come on down and tell them about it… well, what if you lay an idea on them which the research team is already working on?  Maybe you have this idea for a sauce made from raisins and jalapeno peppers, something that you would think that nobody had ever even considered before.  But, Heinz has 4 guys who have been perfecting this sauce for the past 3 years, and they are just about to introduce it to the market.  You come in and tell them about your idea, and a month later the new Heinz sauce is on store shelves.  You will sue them claiming that they stole your idea!  The fact is, they had already been working on it for years, though.  How can they prove it?  Maybe they can, maybe they can’t… but, it’s a big expense for them, and a huge hassle.  So, most big companies don’t even want to know your idea, for fear of lawsuits.

So, you get the idea for the raisin and jalapeno sauce, what can you do?  Well, you need to do a few things.  First thing is that you need to file for a patent of your idea.  You see, when you file with the patent office, a search will be done to see if your idea really is unique.  You also need to make some of this sauce, maybe do some taste testing to get a public reaction to it.  If you get your patent, and you have some sampling data from taste trials, then you contact Heinz and say, hey, I have this new sauce, which I have patented, and here is some data showing strong public demand for the product.  Then they will likely talk to you.

So, what it all comes down to is pulling the trigger.  Instead of just thinking something up and trying to sell it, which is highly difficult to do, you need to actually take some action down the road toward product (or idea) development.  Then you have something that you can sell, if the demand is there.  But, trying to just sell an idea is rarely doable.

As I said earlier in this article, I am a trigger puller.  When I think of something that I feel has value, I usually take action.  Note, I said usually, not always.  Why usually?  Well, here is my process that I follow:

1. A new idea strikes me for a product or a service.
2. I get very excited about this new idea.
3. I will spend a few days or a few weeks thinking about the idea, picking it apart, looking for flaws or downsides.
4. If the idea has merit after deep consideration, I pull the trigger and take action.

You see, probably half of the ideas that I get don’t withstand that scrutiny that I describe in #3.  Usually, when I get an idea and get very excited about it, by the next day, I say to myself that it was a stupid idea, and that I should just move on.  A little bit of time wasted, but no big loss.

So, get into the habit of pulling that trigger if you really believe in your idea.  Don’t just talk, do it.  You can never succeed if you don’t try!

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.