Richard Branson’s New Book “Screw It, Let’s Do It”
I’d like to share with you a new book I just read. It’s called “Screw It, Let’s Do It” by Richard Branson.
If you want to get rich doing what you love, there’s no better person to learn it from than Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Music, Airlines and a few hundred businesses.
In his book, Branson says that everything he’s ever done, he did it because it’s fun.
Money is always secondary. It is important but it’s never his main motivator. If a business stops being fun, he’d quit and move on to something else.
Did you know he quit school at 16 and started his first business? It was a magazine called Student and he says it was a party every day.:)
They worked hard, played hard and hung out with celebs like John Lennon and the Rolling Stones. Eventually, he sold off the magazine to start Virgin Music. And the rest is history.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is how he bought Necker Island.
If you’ve seen his Rebel Billionaire show, you’d have seen his beautiful private island on the Atlantic. He bought it for less than 200,000 pounds. He couldn’t afford it initially but he found ways to get the money.
You see, this book doesn’t offer a blueprint to make millions but it allows you to get a glimpse into his mindset.
His mindset is what makes him a billionaire.
The average person would say, “I can’t afford the island. Forget about it!”
But Branson, knowing he couldn’t afford it, proceeded to find ways to buy the island. And that mindset is what separates the rich and the poor.
People think being rich is about education, experience, connections, intelligence, skills, creativity.
It’s not. It’s your mindset.
In his book, Branson shows you how he thinks and how he makes decisions. And that is priceless.
So, run to your nearest book shop and grab a copy. It’s cheap and a quick read. You can finish it in a few hours.
And remember to have fun in your business!
Five Easy Ways To Make Money With Your Travel Photos
There’s money in your photos. No, not your nude photos! (although I’m sure there’s a market for them somewhere…:)
I’m talking about the photos that you took from your trip to Spain or Australia or just about anywhere in the world.
Most people return from their vacation with tons of photos and a huge stack of credit card bills.
With rising fuel costs and inflation, you have to be smart and find ways to monetize your vacation and use the money to pay off some of your travel expenses.
So, here are five ways you can make money from your travel photos. They are arranged in the order of difficulty (from easiest to hardest):
1. Create and sell calendars, posters and t-shirts via Cafepress
Just upload your photos on Cafepress and you can start selling calendars, posters and t-shirts that feature your photos instantly.
You set the prices based on Cafepress’s wholesale prices. Cafepress will print, deliver and collect payment on your behalf.
2. Create and sell screensavers
Just download a screensaver editing software from Download.com and create screensavers with your photos. You can sell them on Ebay (they have a category devoted to screensavers) and/or your own website.
Screensaver prices range from $1 to $30. Since they’re digital, there’s nothing to ship and you can sell them over and over again at 90% profit margin.
Update: Ebay doesn’t allow digital products to be sold on its site anymore.
3. Sell photos to the media via Scoopt
Scoopt is a media agency that helps members of the public sell photographs and videos of newsworthy events to the press.
So if you have photos of events, disasters, crimes or celebrities, you can get Scoopt to sell them to the media. They share 50% of the selling price.
Don’t worry, you still own the copyright to your photos.
4. Sell stock photos
You can package your photos and sell them through the following channels:
- your own website
- stock photo websites
- ad agencies
- publishers
Here are two of the most popular stock photo websites you should check out:
http://www.shutterstock.com
http://www.iStockphoto.com
If you need help pricing your photos, you can visit this stock photo price calculator.
5. Build travel websites and earn money from Google Adsense
This may be the most profitable option. Just create a website for each country you’ve visited. Place Google ads on your web pages and when visitors click on them, Google pays you.
These websites are virtual vending machines. Just build and forget them. They’ll make money for you 24/7 without any maintenance.
The cost per click for travel ads is quite high, so you could earn 3 to 4-figure income a month WITHOUT doing anything.
For more information: http://www.google.com/adsense
If you’re starting or building an Adsense business, check out the Adsense Blueprint for a $410 million Adsense success story. You’ll also learn how to build a successful Adsense business without any marketing, technical or writing skills.
Rebel Tips:
1. Whatever you’re selling, you should have your own site, so that you build your own brand. DO NOT rely solely on third party sites (Ebay, Cafepress) for your sales.
2. Always put your website address in all your products so that everything leads back to your website. You’ll need Adobe Photoshop to do this.
That’s it! You now have all the information and tools to start profiting from your travel photos.
Get started right away and good luck!
How To Predict Whether Your Business, Product Or Traffic Strategy Will Succeed
Whenever you launch a new business, product or traffic strategy, you’ll always wonder, “Will this work? Or am I just wasting my time and money?”
Well, today is your lucky day. I’m going to show you how to tell if your business, product or traffic strategy will succeed.
All you have to do is to ask two simple questions:
Question 1: What is your business, product or traffic strategy’s magic?
What do I mean by magic? I’m referring to your competitive edge, your unique selling proposition.
In other words, what makes your business, product or traffic strategy special? What makes them unique?
For example, if you have an Adsense website, what’s so special about it?
- Does it have a unique design?
- Does it have unique content?
- Does it have original content?
- Does it have frequently updated content?
- Is there a reason for your visitor to return to your site?
- Is there a reason for your visitor to tell her friends about your site?
If you answered “No” to two or more of the questions, your site has no magic. As such, it will not achieve long-term success unless you make major changes to it.
If you answered “Yes” to two or more of the questions, then your site has an advantage over other Adsense sites in your market.
However, don’t jump for joy yet. Here comes the next big question…
Question 2: How easy is it for other businesses to copy or crush your magic?
It is such an important question that it amazes me how so many entrepreneurs don’t ask themselves that question. And that’s probably why they struggle or fail in their business.
If your competitive edge can be easily duplicated or crushed by your competition, it’s game over. You won’t stand a chance in any highly crowded market.
That’s why so many internet entrepreneurs whose business is built on:
- resell rights ebooks
- private label articles
- private label web templates
- software-generated web pages
- Adsense arbitrage
- affiliate products
…struggle to generate consistent profits.
Their websites and products can easily be duplicated by anyone. Anyone!
Ultimately, all strategies, products and websites can duplicated by your competitors but the issue here is the ease of duplication. If one or two companies duplicate or crush your products, you’ll still survive.
For instance, Linux and Open Office are cheaper versions of Microsoft Windows and Office respectively. But they didn’t put Microsoft out of business.
On the other hand, if your product is a resell rights ebook or a private label Adsense website that anyone can buy for $50 to $100 and start competing with you, then you’ve got a serious problem.
So, what you need to do is to evaluate your competitive strategies. If any of your strategies is easy to duplicate, drop them. If they are hard to duplicate, keep them.
For strategies that are somewhere in the middle, you need to improve them, so that it’s extremely difficult for competitors to duplicate them.
Remember, if anyone can do what you do, it’s NOT a competitive advantage.
If you want to learn how million dollar companies develop their competitive edge and crush their competition, check out the Startup Rebel Competitive Magic course now.
The Biggest Traffic Secret Most Gurus Won’t Share
If you have bought many marketing or traffic courses and still struggle to generate consistent traffic to your site, I’m going to reveal a traffic secret that most gurus won’t share with you.
Right now, you’re probably overwhelmed by the number of traffic strategies being taught by marketing experts.
Your problem is further compounded by contradicting advice given by various marketing experts.
One expert would say focus on advertising as you have 100% control over it.
Another expert would recommend focusing on search engine optimization as it is free.
Then, yet another expert would claim that having your own affiliate program is the best strategy since you only pay for results.
Are you confused yet?
Well, here’s the secret:
You only need to master ONE traffic method to build your business.
There are only 3 ways to generate traffic:
- Advertise: e.g. pay-per-click ads, email ads, banner ads, print ads, brochures, direct mail.
- Publicize: e.g. press releases, SEO, articles.
- Referrals: e.g. affiliate program, viral marketing.
Note: If you’re wondering why I placed SEO under the Publicize category, it’s because you need original articles to generate long-term search engine traffic. And since articles fall under the purview of publicity, it only makes sense to place SEO under the Publicize category.
Ideally, you should implement all three traffic methods for your business. Relying on only one method is sheer insanity.
However, one of the most common mistakes internet entrepreneurs make is trying to implement all three traffic methods simultaneously when they haven’t even mastered a single method.
When they do that, they are diluting their efforts. If you can’t even generate consistent traffic with one method, doing all three will only exacerbate your problem.
So, choose ONE traffic method that you believe you can execute better than your competition. The one traffic method where you can really kick your competitors’ butt.
Focus on that traffic method for at least six months. You should master your chosen traffic method before attempting the other two traffic methods.
Once you have consistent and predictable traffic, then you can proceed to implementing the other traffic methods.
And here’s another big secret:
Use the profits from your business to hire specialists to implement the two remaining traffic methods.
Never ever do anything yourself when there are people who can do it better than you.
Forget multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is for employees. As an entrepreneur, you should only focus on doing what you do best.
That’s it. That’s the “secret.”