A lot of traders struggle with finances early in the learning curve and are looking for something to bring in some extra income while they learn to trade. Others, established traders who are making money, are simply looking for a new challenge in their life. An online business can provide the solution for both groups of people. Over the last few weeks the whole "if you are so good at trading why do you bother to teach" debate seems to have been in full swing here at ET. I have spent a lot of time demonstrating the profit potential that a person has selling products to traders, using both my own personal finances as an example and showing what others have done. The thing is though, trading and traders are far from the only market on the Internet. I know a guy who makes over $250,000 per year selling an info product on getting Hummingbirds to feed in your backyard. HUMMINGBIRDS!!! I don't know if he has ever seen a hummingbird in his life, he outsourced the product creation, and he has a great business. So, if you guys are interested I can try to create something on ET showing you how to pick out a market that you can profit from and then where to go from there, from idea to launch to profits. A few conditions though. First of all I'm not a "make money from the Internet at Home" guru. If you think that the stuff traders get sold is terrible, you should see the stuff that people charge up to $10,000 for in that market. I've seen stuff sold for $1000 that I'd be ashamed to GIVE AWAY! If you guys decide you would like to have this thread it will take some time to develop. Being as that I'm not a make money from home/ Internet Marketing guru I don't have any material. Not only that I will probably start off assuming you know a lot more then you do. I think that I am a good teacher having done it for so long with traders, but his is a new field to me, one that I had never thought of getting into until the last few days as I've had a lot of requests about it. I won't be teaching you how to make batrillions of dollars, because I've not figured that one out myself yet. Basically if we get going I'll be focused on teaching you to start small sites that will take a few hours of your time to get up and going and then be able to make $300 to $1000 per month for you. This is not a ton of money, but it's a car payment, insurance payment or a mortgage payment for a lot of people. In any case I've never seen someone willing to turn down a few hundred dollars. It's also something that, like I said it will take you 10/20 hours the first few times you set one up, but after that not nearly as much time - and it will probably take about an hour and a half to two hours per week for a site. There is also no rule saying you can't have 10 sites if that's what you decide to do, so there is the potential to make a lot of money if you decided that is what you want to do. Anyway, just vote yes or no. Yes means you want me to start the thread. No means you don't want me to. I figure I will just start it in Chitchat since it's clearly off topic in regards to the main point of this board (trading). If any of the mods have a better idea for a forum to put it in I'd be all ears. Also, if I do this I need you guys to interact with me. This isnt like my trading business where I have interacted with 10,000 newbies and I know what questions and concerns you guys might have. I have NO IDEA, I'll be learning to teach as your learning to run the business, so in this regard I really need your guys help or the thread simply will be useless. That said if we can get good interaction and keep the ET drive by flamers away (Just ignore them please) I think we can have a thread that will help a lot of people in this community.
I'd be very interested to watch the development of a website from scratch. I hope you decide to continue with this thread.
Also which forum do you guys think it should be in? Like I said my thought is that it's not really related to the main point of ET, though I think it will help traders, so I'm thinking chitchat. If anyone else (especially a moderator) has a suggestion for another area (or concurs with me) then I'd be glad to hear it.
For those of you who are interested in taking part in this "class" you should do a few things before I get started. First of all get an account with Clickbank. That's the premier affiliate program on the web for digital products. I always start out using Clickbank for research purposes at the very least, and have had good luck selling clickbank products as well (MY sisters three sites are all clickbank products). Next you need to get Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web or some other HTML editor. I prefer the WYISWYG editors because I know NOTHING about HTML or site creation, and they do it for you even if your a total boob like me. I use a program called KompoZer which is based upon the discontinued open source WYSIWYG HTML editor NVU (which I think you can also still find). You could also look at getting a hosting account and using a wordpress blog (from wordpress.org , not wordpress.com). The thing is, I'm bad enough at the straight HTML stuff, I'm 10 times more stupid on Wordpress (but I'm learning about it because it's probably the most powerful thing out there right now). Anyway, the good news with these things is that there are plenty of free lesson on Youtube and whatnot that will teach you how to use them enough to do what we need to do (you dont need an mad killah skillz trust me) You'll also want to get an aweber account, but I'd wait on this until the day you get your website up so that you can take advantage of the free trial as your building your list and your site. You'll also need a webhost, (cost about $10) and an FTP account. One thing you will not have to worry about at this point is credit cards, paypal, shopping carts etc. I'll be using mindmapping stuff to show a lot of my processes to you. I find that mindmapping helps make things very clear, both for the student and teacher. Every successful business/product that I've ever launched/started has been first laid out using a mind mapping process. There are a number of great premium mind mapping programs out there - but I tend to just use www.bubbl.us which is free. You should kinda mess around with it to get an idea for what it can do and how you can use it. (as a play project I created an entire mafia family leadership tree on bubbl.us ) Anyway this is not something I was expecting to be doing, but it does seem to be an idea that people are interested in. This is a project that over the last hour or so I've gotten really excited about as I think that I can grow from it just as much as those of you who take part, so I'm really looking forward to getting started. The first video I will put together will be on finding a niche market and a product thats worth your time. So anyway here is the resource list so far. Clickbank HTML Editor (best is a WYSIWYG program like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web (both are retail) or some open source alternatives include KompoZer, NVU, Amaya, SeaMonkey) Aweber list manager Mindmaping (bubbl.us) an FTP program such as cuteftp Some time and an open mind. This should be fun.
I am interested Brandon. But I know I will be a reader of the thread first before I can give anything. The pc is new to me and I know very little about it. Maybe chit chat is good place to put the thread, or educational resources because learning a business is educational
A NO! I am crushed!!! Anyway judging by the poll results and the PM's I've gotten this morning the idea is pretty popular. I think that for some people if they could figure it out it literally has the chance to be life changing and I would be honored to be a part of that. A lot of people always asked "Why teach" and the first answer was and is financial. But, as my financial needs become less the personal impact I could have on others become a more and more powerful driver for me. Aside from being told that I'd probably die, the worst feelings I've ever had in my life have been in talking to students who's life I made a meaningful impact to. The worst feelings of my life though have also been in talking to some traders who have been so damaged by the process, and taken advantage of so terribly by guru's that they will literally never be the same and in a lot of cases lives have been ruined. I could have easily gotten back into the trading "guru" field, and I guess at some point it's still an option- but at this point my feelings run very strongly against it. I really do think that the students who came across Toni and I are a lucky bunch, and that we are/where among the best teachers available to traders on the web. Unfortunetly though by the time most people arived at our site they had been at it for some time and had lost most of their capital, confidence and <b>self respect</b>. I don't want to even imagine the number of people who I have talked to who's live's have been ruined by the pitchmen selling an impossible dream to people in this (trading) industry and so I have made the personal choice that I really want no part of this particular industry anymore. I used to talk to hundreds of guys n gals, today I talk to Toni and Bo Yoder and that's about it. That's not to say others are not good guys, there are some, but overall I just think that it's an industry that has, on net, hurt the average person more then it's helped them. That's had a pretty strong impact on me to say that I really don't want to be a part of it anymore. I really don't know where my life will take me now. I'm getting my health back and I really feel like at 32 years old I've been given the chance to relive my life. There are a lot of mistakes that I have no intent to revisit, but there are other things I did that I want to do a lot more of. Teaching and helping others is high on that list. So, I'm not sure where this "course" will take me. It could suck - and if it does I hope you will tell me because there is plenty of garbage out there and I don't want to make a contribution to there being more of it. On the other hand, there is the chance that I could really help a person, and that to me is very exciting. So - I'm still thinking of where to start this thing. Like I said to me this stuff is kind of natural, so it's hard for me to think ok, I need to lay the foundation for the foundation for people..and I know that this is probably what I need to do. Over the coming days I'll try to get an outline up so that you know what to expect. Brandon
Looking forward to your thoughts on starting something on the side with an open mind. Regardless if I think it is worthwhile or crap, I'll never turn down an opportunity to maybe learn something new and make my own judgement after the fact.
Brandon, I think it is decent of you to offer the benefit of your experience in setting up an internet business. However, I have a question. As I understand it, having a web site is not unlike having a store that sells goods or services, albeit with potentially better exposure and lower overhead. But the point is that you still need to have something worthwhile to sell in order for it to be a sustainable business, no? And so, I'm curious to know what the people with a half dozen or more web sites are selling. I understand that it varies from one person to the next, depending on their background, interests, contacts and so on. Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what kind of web sites can generate a reasonably regular cash flow without too much ongoing effort once the operation is set up.
I tried this a few years ago but had no idea what I wanted to sell. I knew you needed a niche (like hummingbird stuff) with e-selling but never could come up with anything. Creativity is huge with online selling.
My success has been pretty much limited to info products (think "how to get laid" or "how to cure a yeast infection" or "how to profit in the stock market" type stuff). I've tried my hand and physical goods (and am in the process of trying it again) but so far no dice in "real" products. My success has been in the "information" market, and judging by what I have seen from others that's probably the easiest market for the average person to make a good living from. I doubt your going to make a billion dollars on info, but you can make a few million. In terms of how many products you can have, the sky is the limit. I have a friend with over 500 sites. He doesnt know anything about any of the stuff he sells, his partners do or he just promotes someone elses product. There are tons of products that you can find on clickbank and then just start your own marketing campaign for. Here's an example of one I was selling until the owner pissed me off. http://www.panicaway.com/ I created my own version of this site, and then sold their product. The product sells for $39.99 and they pay $26.70 per sale. What I found was that for every 200 people I got to my site I could sell 9 of these. Since I had no expences beyond hosting and aweber associated with this product my only concern was making sure that each hit coming to my site cost me less then $1.20 since that was my breakeven point. As it was I was above to get them for between 15 and 27 cents, so it was a very good product for me until I stopped promoting it. (just as a sidenote the owner of this site is an ethical person with a good product and I'll probably promte it again) This particular promotion was making me about $1500 per month in profit and took about 45 minutes of work per week. You can of course create your own products, and that is always the most lucrative route to travel down. But, when your starting off I think it's best to just do other people's for two reasons. First of all you learn to sell, and second of all it gives you a good chance to learn what markets are hot and what people actually will buy. Hope that helps.