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In your opinion, when does it make sense to follow the plentyoffish model (ad supported) vs. the provide a service and charge a subscription model.
Taking that approach for example, someone could start a tutor site, make it ad supported, and potentially disrupt your site.
Thanks,
Aaron
This is a great question and I had to spend some time thinking about it.
What I came up with is that if you have the best site you can go with a subscription model, and if you don’t then a free ad supported version is a good alternative. Here’s what I mean:
Usually its not too difficult to look at what’s already out there and do it just a little bit better. This was the case with the tutoring website I put together. What’s out there currently is really not very good, so I was able to make a better site, and hopefully people will pay a small premium for that trust or convenience or whatever else they are getting from it.
On the other hand, if you are making a new site and you don’t think you can be beat the incumbent (like for example if you are trying to compete with match.com which already has a ton of users and fairly decent site), then making your site “free” could be your best competitive advantage.
In summary, you have to offer SOMETHING better to get people to use it. If you can’t offer a better service, then offer a better price (free). Or do both.
Hi Brian,
Any suggestions on how I would go about getting a mentor with a similar specialization that would be willing to help future competition? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
-Michele
Hi Michele,
Just think about who is doing what you want to do already SUCCESSFULLY. Then try to get their email or just show up if you have to and ask for 5 minutes of their time. Tell them you’d like to get started and would appreciate any advice they could give. Ask them how they got started when they were in your place. Play to their vanity and desire to teach others.
If they are already successful they won’t care about creating competition because they’ll know competition is good for them and helping others is even more to their advantage. If they do care about this then they are small time and you don’t want their advice anyway, trust me (you should run out the door).
They’ll probably give you some task (book to read, or put some plan together, etc). Do it (this will prove to them you’re serious) and now you can check in with them later to show it to them. Ask for the next step and do it. Repeat, and you have a mentor.
Brian
This is a guest post by Manuel Zeh, a friend of mine who has been travelling the world for 7 years and has come to some interesting perspectives on life. Manuel has travelled 40 countries on all continents and lived in 10 of them. He speaks 9 languages and is a professional pianist who has performed on Indonesian TV, at the Sydney Opera House and on the cruise ship “Sun Princess”, among others. He currently lives in Tokyo, Japan. Take a minute to check out his website at: www.manuelzeh.de
I used to think I want to work *really* hard so I could retire *really* early… when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t living life to the fullest now, while I’m still young. In a way, “working” means putting a price tag on your time, and selling it - and I believe my young years are priceless… they never come back. Yes, plan for later… but live in the present. The “now” is the only time we really have, and life is not a race, in which “whoever dies first, wins”. Statistics show that many people die soon after retirement, because they don’t have a purpose to live for anymore… other studies show that people who never HAVE to work again at an early age usually start to work HARDER then before, because that’s when they start doing what they love. Do these things you love NOW… they are likely your true calling.
Many people choose a job based on how much money they will make. Consider this… you spend MOST of your waking hours in your job - and life is made up of time, not money. Make your jobs something you love doing and you’ll never have to work a single day of your life! I believe the best three criteria to choose a career path are: - something you love doing and are passionate about - something that contributes / is useful - something you have a talent for If you fulfill these three criteria and learn how to market yourself, the money will follow… and you’ll be loving every minute of it.
When I started travelling the world 7 years ago, I used to think that you have a choice to either ACHIEVE a lot or to EXPERIENCE a lot… and I consciously chose the latter. I’ve since found that if you follow your heart and your passions, things just fall into place and you’ll end up achieving a lot as a by product. Sometimes I’m surprised when I look at my CV and how impressed many people are by it, even though (or maybe because!) I’ve spent the better part of a decade travelling and having the most amazing life I could have dreamt up for myself.
Once I was dating a girl who, when she was 19, had wanted to travel. But she succumbed to family and society pressure and went with the responsible, financially secure choice instead. She went to uni, postponing her travels and became a dentist. When I met her, she was 26 and almost done studying… and she realized that she doesn’t even want to be a dentist, but it was too late. She also realized that she couldn’t really travel anymore because at 26 you’re not as free as at 19… she was already tied up with career, family duties, bills, a relationship, and so forth. I firmly believe that, if she had travelled at 19, she would have found herself. She would have discovered her true identity and what she really wants in life, instead of taking on a profession that she’d end up resenting. She would probably also have been a lot more motivated during university… studying with the serenity of knowing that she has already lived out her dreams, and that she’s pursuing a career she loves.
If a week in Florida can easily cost a few thousand dollars… how much is it to travel the whole WORLD for many YEARS? People sometimes ask me whether I’m a millionaire. Far from it… the formula is, I work in first world countries and save up. Travel in 3rd world countries. Latin America, Africa and Asia are ridiculously cheap… whereas in Europe, North America, Australia, Singapore, Japan and South Korea, you can make very good money. But there are many different ways to travel… most recently I worked on a cruise ship. Good salary, no tax, free food and accommodation, access to all the pools, gyms etc on board, lots of free time, travel in the South Sea on a pay check, and free excursions to all the islands.
Don’t come to the end of your life regretting the things you did NOT do… don’t dream your life, live your dream!
My best to you all,
Manuel Zeh.
Take minute to check out Manny’s website at: www.manuelzeh.de
Hey Folks,
This is going to be my first video blog. I’m trying out a new format. Please let me know which one you like better (written or video) in the comments!
A couple things I noticed on the video that I think could be improved: I’d like to keep it shorter and denser with information. Also I realized that I never sound very EXCITING when I talk. I think doing more video blogs over time I’ll get better. Probably a combination of video and some written outline or graphs could be a good combination. Let me know what you think!
Here is the written equivalent…
I’ve practiced this for a long time myself, but it just occurred to me again the other day and I thought I’d post about it: in general the mainstream news (television, radio, and print) is an utter waste of your time. And worse than that, it’s probably preventing you from becoming successful.
There are a few reasons why…
1. The News Is Full of Negative Stuff
The old saying in media is true that “if it bleeds it leads”. The news tends to overreport negative events like murders and crashes because it gets ratings. You can’t help but have these things affect you over time, and it slowly but surely starts to make you think the city is dangerous, or that the world is hostile, or that opportunity isn’t out there. All of course are incorrect, but whatever you spend time watching and reading becomes your reality.
2. The News Is Designed To Scare You As Entertainment
The story of the little girl who was kidnapped is addictive to watch. It robs you of your time. The story is designed just like an entertainment show, to keep you hooked waiting for what will happen next.
Some people would say its important to watch this because it gives you valuable safety information. We can prove to ourselves that this isn’t true by looking at the statistics.
Statistically, you are very unlikely to get kidnapped, die in a plane crash, or to choke on a small plastic toy. Yet this is what gets the media attention. I wrote about this a while back, how humans are bad at estimating risk. After 9/11 many people were scared to fly, and this perception caused about 1.4 million people to drive instead of fly to their holiday destination, effectively killing about 1000 people in additional auto fatalities (you’re much more likely to be killed in a car crash than a plane crash).
The news isn’t giving you valuable safety information on things that are likely to kill you (it’s boring to report on heart disease), its designed to scare and keep you watching.
3. It’s Biased
I couldn’t believe it the other day when I accidentally spent a few minutes on Fox News and then on CNN as I flipped through the channels. Fox news was essentially crucifying Obama while CNN was vigorously defending him. Of course not directly, but by the guests and hosts on the show.
I couldn’t believe how blatant it was. In theory the news should just report the facts and let us make up our own minds, but they (mainstream media) can’t even do that today it seems.
4. It’s For The Most Part, Irrelevant
99% of the stories you see on the news can never, and will never affect your life, period.
The reason is that its tailored to a wide audience. So you will have to wade through all sorts of junk you don’t care about that wastes you time to get 1 or 2 nuggets of useful information.
The Solution
So if mainstream news is a colossal waste of time that is polluting your brain with negative thoughts, what is the solution?
The first step is to spend as little time on it as possible. Reading a book on marketing could make you an extra $100,000 this year whereas watching a show on a tornado 1000 miles away will never affect your life one bit.
So, I spend about 20 seconds (literally) per day reading the news. This is no joke.
I do it with a new aggregator service that delivers articles to my inbox (I use Yahoo News, but Google News is great too). I just scan the first 5 headlines or so (they are ordered by importance) and delete. If I see something that is interesting or could really affect me (which is rare), I read deeper. This is better for a few reasons…
Its fast. With about 20 seconds per day of scanning headlines, you can know enough to know what’s happening in the world. At least as much as any reasonable, intelligent person needs to know.
Its unbiased. News aggregator services send out news based on what is being said in hundreds or thousands of news sources. You get the most important based on collective thought, not one person’s agenda.
Its more targeted. You can get email updates on specific areas like business, sports, or whatever is important to you.
Try it out. And with all your extra free time you should start reading and watching material that is WAY better than the news. You should be watching speeches by important innovative leaders in your field, blogs in areas that interest you, and listening to audio books in your car instead of the radio.
In fact, every morning while I’m eating breakfast I don’t read the newspaper. I read blogs (in Google Reader) like Signal vs. Noise, Seth Godin’s Blog, and The Four Hour Work Week to fill my mind with relevant, though provoking, educational, motivating material. And then I go take on the day. Because of this I’m much more effective during the day than if I’d started it by watching a story on Britney’s trip to rehab. Blogs in many ways are the new unbiased, educational, positive newspapers for successful people I think.
Derek Sivers discusses the exact point I made a few weeks ago (with a much better example than mine)
If you sell pens for a living and someone orders a million pens, no problem! You just place an order with your manufacturer for a million pens, get them to the customer, and celebrate.
But if you do hands-on massage for a living and a recent spot on Oprah gets you a waiting list of 10,000 people, “you’ll wish you were in the pen business.”
This is Why MLM and Network Marketing Don’t Work - ask yourself these before getting too far into a new business idea
Why are we doing this?
What problem are we solving?
Is this actually useful?
Are we adding value?
Don’t Listen To Negative People
I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, “Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.”
Scott Adams at the Dilbert Blog Forgets the Best Option: Self Employment and Passive Income Streams
Sleep: 8 hours
Exercise: 1 hour
Work: 8 hours
Eating: 2 hours (leisurely)
Hygiene: 1 hour
Travel: 1 (Commute, errands)That leaves you three hours for family time, sex, shopping, food preparation, chores, household repair, volunteering in the school, and so on. If you have a dentist appointment, or your talkative relative calls, or American Idol has a two-hour special, you’re tapped out.
37 Signals Celebrates People Who Quit Their Jobs
Five little companies were featured to showcase the owner’s decision to leave their daily rat dace of a life behind and dive into the uncertainty of following their dreams. Here’s the kicker: These 5 companies are some of the most mundane, normal, average little companies out there.
These companies aren’t going to beat Google, they aren’t building a better iPod or bread slicer. There’s no “the next Facebook” and not a mention of angel funding. These entrepreneurs are doing simple things they love and making a pretty decent living from it.
Oprah discusses: What should I do with my life?
Most of the time when we try something new we try to hide it.
We try not to make all the mistakes that we assume new people make. Once in a while (1 in 100) it works and we stumble upon something that we are a total natural at.
But for almost everything else in life, its pretty obvious that we are no expert the first time we try something. In fact, most of the time we downright suck at it for at least a year.
When I started doing brazilian jujitsu I was terrible at it. Every week for about 3 months I would go in and just get tapped out over and over again. It was pretty discouraging at times. I remember the first day I actually submitted an opponent (won) after about 3 months. He had just started and was even more inexperienced than me, and he promptly beat me again in the next round, but still…I had actually seen a little progress.
This is true for learning marketing, how to start a business, how to play the guitar, go on a date, throw a pitch, or dance salsa. Pretty much anything worth learning in life is like this.
A lot of people live their entire lives in a perpetual state of mediocrity at everything they want to learn just because they don’t want to admit to other people that they aren’t an expert. They aren’t ok being bad at something for a while.
They even get defensive if someone gives them advice. “Why would you even say what? I KNOW how to do that.”
I have the utmost respect a for totally clueless person who at least knows it and is eager to learn. I’ve been that person a bunch of times in my life.
But there is nothing more challenging to work with than a totally clueless person who argues with every suggestion.
I heard a cool parable one time about a man who wanted to learn from this old guru who lived on top of a mountain. He hiked up there, found the man, and told him his desire to learn. The old man said “very well, before our first lesson let us sit and have a cup of tea”. The old man began to pour the tea into the cup of his visitor. He kept pouring till it reached the top. He kept pouring and pouring until the tea had run over and was getting everywhere. The man leapt up from his chair and cried “stop! the cup is full!” And the guru said, “your first lesson is to know that I cannot add any more to a cup that is full. For me to teach you new ideas, you must clear your mind of what you already know”.
Do yourself a favor and admit when you’re clueless. If you’re not getting the results you want, let whatever ideas you have go and be willing to try anything that someone who IS getting the results suggests. You’re not fooling anyone anyway, they’ll admire the honesty, and you’re learning curve will go up drastically.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first.”
-Unknown
About a year ago I walked into the local SCORE office in Houston and was very impressed. I waited only a few minutes for my appointment (which I’d made on their website) and was soon sitting across from an elderly retired gentleman in full suit & tie who was once the CEO of his own large successful company with over 100 employees (before he sold it and retired). We talked for several hours, he listened to my good ideas and my bad, was respectful and asked lots of questions, and occasionally offered sage like advice.
After this we kept in touch by email, I can go back for more meetings whenever I wanted (he volunteered about one day per week) and it was all free.
SCORE is an outstanding and under utilized resource for would be entrepreneurs. The volunteers are all former entrepreneurs themselves - which you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while is very important to me. You should only get advice from people who have actually accomplished what you’re trying to do!
Whether you have an existing business, or have no idea where to start, SCORE is highly recommended. If you are lucky enough to live in a city where they have an office, do yourself a favor and go make an appointment right now: http://www.score.org
Also worth reading: Maverick’s At Work
Old version: work hard (for a very long time), achieve success, earn freedom (to retire and do all the things you missed out on while you were working)
New version: find work that affords you freedom = success
Have you ever seen someone complain about a parking ticket as if it’s the end of the world?
Have you been cut off in traffic and let it ruin your whole day?
How many times have you let your experience at the airport (crying baby, delayed flight, missing luggage) be the first thing you bring up in conversations with friends?
I want you to repeat after me: “these things happen”.
We all have these types of events come up in life, but successful people just go on as if nothing has happened, and unsuccessful people let it derail them.
The next time you feel a surge of anger coming on over an insignificant event in your life, go over these points in your head:
If something this small throws you off, imagine how you’d react to a REAL problem in life. Overreacting tells the people around you that you can’t be trusted to deal with important issues. You’re not the goto guy (or gal) when they’re in need, because you can’t even take care of yourself.
Sometimes people ask me questions like:
Why take the risk of quitting your job?
I was just listening to Brian Tracy speak in The Psychology of Achievement, and he phrases it better than I could have:
Every single peak performing human being, every single high achieving man or woman, has been a person who has thrown off the natural tendency to play it safe and stay within the comfort zone, and has continually tried to exceed their previous levels of accomplishment, has continually moved forward into the risk zone, to try something more and bigger and better and more important. Every single accomplishment in the history of man, has come from men and women who have had the courage to take the risks, to step out even though they had no guarantee or assurance of success.
I would go as far as to say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to reach your full potential as a human being while spending a third of your life working for someone else. Make a quick list of people who really changed the world, helped others, and were wildly successful. Did they have a 9-to-5 corporate job?
I also love what Brian Tracy has to say about failure. Most people don’t try, and those that do give up after the first or second time.
This is the final part of my series on 6 Ways To Generate Passive Income.
Today we will discuss the final (and I think best) way to generate passive income. As I stated in the first article:
The way I evaluate any claim behind a method of building wealth or generating passive income is this: how many people can I find who have used this method to accomplish what I’m trying to do?
One of the best things I ever learned about success is to simply find successful people and model what they are doing, while ignoring the advice that unsuccessful people give you.
Is real estate a reliable way to generate passive income? Lets see…
CNN says that “Forty-six percent of those surveyed [millionaires] own investment real estate”.
Economics Edge says that the “real estate industry has produced the largest number of self-made multi-millionaires”.
Best selling author Brian Tracy did the research and says that 74% of millionaires are those who started their own business (included in this is real estate, but its unclear what percent).
(Interesting sidebar: less than 1% of millionaires consist of those who made their money in show business, sports, music, writing, inventions, or the lottery combined.)
So clearly real estate is a popular means of acquiring wealth. Many others have used it successfully. And investment real estate by its very nature is passive income.
I’m sure you can validate this for yourself by thinking of the wealthiest people you know or have personally met at some point in your life. Chances are they either (1) own a business, (2) own quite a bit of real estate, or (3) both.
Let’s look at the pros and cons…
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