Working from home starting to make sense?

Posted by Jim in Creative Ideas, inspiration 48 comments

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I’ve been encouraging people to find “home based” income streams for years now. I used to be in the “crazy minority” on this topic, but now more than ever there are great reasons to seek out home based income streams.

What questions do you have about leaving behind a “real job” and trading it in for home based income?

Insurance, benefits, risks, opportunities, discipline etc. What concerns do you have?

Let’s have a discussion. You’ll find the readers of this blog are quite helpful and creative. This is your chance to ask your questions and get good answers. Use the “comments” button to post your questions or replies to others.

Ask or answer any of these types of questions:

• What opportunities are out there?
• When do you go from “Part time” to “Full time”?
• What are the benefits of working from home or starting your own business that you’ve discovered or look forward to?
• What are the disadvantages (if any)?
• What questions do you have about it?
• What’s keeping you from working from home?
• Where you surprised by any aspect of the change when you left the “real work force” for a home based job?

UPDATE: Two days after this article was posted the comments and discussion are fantastic! Be sure to check it out by clicking the comment button at the top.

A “free marketing” success story: Wampler Pedals

Posted by Jim in Creative Ideas, Finding Cutomers, Information Marketing, inspiration, Leadership & Influence, reputation and influence 2 comments

Yep – that’s a video of Brad Paisley talking about my partner/friend Brian Wampler’s guitar pedal.

Brian’s stuff is worldwide, and he is now “big time” with what started out as a small passion. Here’s our story as it appears in my 101FreeMarketing.com book:

“For several years my guitar playing buddy Brian and I worked on houses together fixing up junkers using loans and investment money from our parents. He had serious construction skills. I mainly did “grunt” work.

Neither of us enjoyed this type of work, but we were trying to supplement our income so that we could each work on our true passions online. Luckily for us we stopped buying houses and started focusing online!

His true passion was guitars and more specifically, the tiny niche market of “guitar pedal mods” (if you’ve never heard of “guitar pedal mods” don’t worry – it will all make sense in a minute). Working together on houses gave us time to talk…and those talks helped each of us establish what can now easily be considered “online empires”.

The theme in many of our talks was “the power of the word free” – and it wound up working out great for both of us!

Ten years ago, bands in the Indianapolis area all knew that there was one guy locally that was “the man” when it came to making a guitar pedal produce sounds way cooler than they were supposed to produce. Musicians call these guitar pedal “mods” and Brian was “the man”.

Brian would tediously work weekends and evenings on one guitar pedal at a time for band buddies and local musician friends. He made a decent side income charging for his services, but he was “trading a few dollars for a few hours” and neither of us would ever settle for that.

As my Internet career began to take off slightly ahead of his, Brian and I had several conversations about how he could use his unique skill to grow a real business around his passion driven niche.

Enter the “free content”.

Brian began taking digital pictures and documenting the process he used to modify various guitar pedals and turn them into the valuable “mods” that his local fans were enjoying. He turned these “digital courses” into PDF files that could be easily downloaded or printed and mailed to his increasingly eager fan base. Inevitably, each course that he produced and distributed would lead to more questions, more followers, and more fans of what he was trying to do. The more he distributed this free and inexpensive content online, the more his fan base grew. The demand for his guitar pedal “mods” and manuals and other related instructional material began to steadily increase to the point where he had to hire help to meet demand.

Although I’m sure Brian isn’t the only guy in the world that can crack open a guitar pedal and modify it with a soldering tool, I am sure he’s the only one that took the time to document the process and then give the information away in order to grow a raving fan base of people that “get it”.

His reward?

Dozens of the top musicians in the world now use and rave about “Wampler Pedals”. He has his own brand on store shelves around the world, and has worked with some of the most talented musicians on the planet that now rave about his custom equipment.

You can now get the full story at WamplerPedals.com and see where Brian’s passion and the word “free” have taken him lately.”

Leave me any questions or comments!

The richest man I ever met

Posted by Jim in inspiration 25 comments

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As a kid I had the opportunity to work with my dad for one of the richest men in America. Here are a couple of great, simple lessons I learned that I think can help all of us.

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What are your 2011 plans? What did you learn in 2010?

Posted by Jim in inspiration 212 comments

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In your comment I want to know:

• what worked really well for you in 2010 (be specific or general about it if you want to protect your idea) OR
• what your business plans are for 2011 OR
• what you like (or don’t like) about my blog, membership sites, books or newsletter OR
• what you’d like help with in 2011 regarding your online business efforts

Happy New Year!

To leave a comment please use the comment link at the top of this article. Be sure to check back on this blog post after the comments start rolling in. There will be some GREAT ones I promise!

Better than cash in the bank?

Posted by Jim in Affiliate Marketing, inspiration, reputation and influence, Social Media, Traffic Generation 85 comments

Quietly over the last 10 years or so a new world currency has been introduced.

I predict…

In 2011 those that hold this new currency will thrive, while those that do not will increasingly struggle.

See if you can figure out what the new currency is…it’s a bit of a challenge I have for you.

This currency is far more powerful and available than any previous currency used by businesses or individuals ever before.

In the coming years businesses and individuals will either be rendered irrelevant by a lack of this currency, or they will thrive if they have an abundance of this currency in their possession. Numerous examples of this effect are all around us already.

Some facts about this new currency…

• it is more stable than the dollar, the euro, the yen or gold.
• it is invisible but easy to recognize when you see it.
• it can’t be used to purchase anything, but those who have it lack for nothing.
• it can be invested for nearly unimaginable returns.
• if used incorrectly even just one time it can virtually vanish overnight.

Those possessing an adequate amount of this currency will have doors open to them regardless of how much traditional currency they do or don’t possess.

Your race, age, gender, location, and education have nothing to do with your ability to obtain this currency.

Traditional education gives you no advantage in obtaining this currency.

Traditional currencies cannot be converted into this new currency using any reliable methods.

Right now many people have a great deal of this currency but are not using it for any meaningful purpose.

Have you guessed what the new currency is yet?

After many guesses in the comments section I’m revealing what my take is on the “new currency”. Don’t read on unless you want to know my answer!

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The currency, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is “influence”.

Why is “influence” going to be such a big deal from now on?

It’s a world where a 10-year-old like my son has a YouTube account with videos that have over 100,000 viewers, and where college students have followings of millions of fans because of some simple software concept they launched from their dorm room. It’s an economy that allows tiny niche market experts to have thousands of readers because they write words that appeal to their eager fan base spread around the world.

In all cases these “influential” people have a stockpile of currency that could carefully be converted at any point in two real “money”, but even real money can’t get them the full benefit of the currency they now hold.

Take craigslist.com for example. It’s one of the most visited websites on the planet, it’s not pretty by any means, and there’s no charge to use it for 99% of users. Craigslist has been valued as being worth billions of dollars, but they’ve chosen not to sell and not to accept advertising (for now). Is this crazy? Are they just holding out? Or is it just that they understand something about the stability of the new currency called “influence”?

Craigslist has a massive mailing list of loyal followers that they could use to move virtual mountains if they so chose to. Is that better than having money? In an age when virtually all currency is unstable I’d say that it is worth holding on to.

How can you tap into this “new currency”?

If you aren’t in the habit of “creating content” you need to start doing it. All influential success stories start with audio, video, or written content on a topic that has appeal to their target audience. Content can be ebooks, articles, blog posts, useful or helpful facebook posts or twitter posts etc.

While you are creating your content on your blog, website, youtube, facebook etc. keep one rule in mind. Give people more than they expect and then give some more before you ever ask for anything in return.

Online the “influential” will increasingly be those that are best at “giving” more than they take while earning loyalty. If you can do that there will be no need to “spread the word” because your audience will do that for you…and your “new currency” net worth will explode.

One way to establish influence QUICKLY is to partner with other influential people in a win/win/win way. Make sure you make them look good, and help out their audience while also expanding your email list. For example, I’ve had people GIVE me 100% original special reports (very well written an informational) about topics of interest to my readers. This report had my name on the cover as the author and all they asked was that I give (or sell) the report to my mailing list. In exchange they have a reference to their blog or mailing list inside the report. That’s an example of a win/win/win that grows the influence of someone seeking more of it.

In order to tap into your influence potential you’ll need a way to communicate with your following. This is best done via email, but growing your connections via SMS (text), facebook fan pages, traditional addresses, twitter, etc. will all remain important in measuring the extent of your influence.

Those of you that guessed “time”: This is a very creative guess, but we all have a limited amount of that resource in order to do what we’ve been put here to do!

Those of you that guessed “relationships”: I like this guess, but the term “influence” hits the nail on the head a bit better.

Thanks for the creative cooperation guys -lots of great answers! By no means is this anything other than MY OPINION and an attempt to let you in on the way I think, but there are some GREAT ANSWERS below. I’m floored by the response really. Check out the comments!