John Chow on why you shouldn’t “trading time for money”…one of my favorite topics

There are many ways to make money in this world. By far the most common is trading hours for dollar, also known as a job. Maybe it’s the fact that I have never held a job for more than a year of my entire life, but I just can’t understand why people would choose to make their income this way. Trading hours for the dollar is like the worst possible method of earning a living one can make. Here’s why.

Scott Adams with the best (and simplest) advice I’ve ever seen on how to write funny stuff

Tell me what you were DOING immediately before reading this blog, and also tell me what you were THINKING about while you did it. If you can do both of those things, you are halfway to being an interesting and humorous writer. For example, “I was answering an e-mail from my coworker Karl while thinking he won’t understand my answer because he has an unusually small head that probably can’t hold much of a hat much less a brain.

Shoemoney on why people fail in business

Starting your own business can yield amazing rewards but at the same time its a pretty big risk. I was recently asked in the Q&A why people fail at starting their own businesses. I came up with several reasons and wanted to expand more on this.

37Signals on the lack of value in getting an MBA

There’s a popular book on entrepreneurship called The E-Myth which claims that bakers shouldn’t run bakeries, plumbers shouldn’t run plumbing companies, and everyone else should think about how they could turn their small business into a franchise. On the face of it, there’s a lot of good advice about how you can’t just be a good baker if you don’t have a business bone in your body and expect commercial success.

On October 14th, 2005 I quit my job at Deloitte to work for myself full time. It wasn’t quite like this…but I wish it had been :)

One of the most bizarre pieces of business news lately has been around Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid of Yahoo.

Since Yahoo rejected the bid, the news is reporting that:

Microsoft Corp.’s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google Inc.

I mean at first, I thought this story would just turn out to be an embarrassment for Microsoft, who offered a ridiculous $46B for a second rate, circling the drain, “we haven’t created a successful product in years”, search engine.

That in and of itself would have been ridiculous enough. For some reason Microsoft still seems to think that they can compete by knocking off good ideas (Zune? Vista? etc) instead of actually innovating (oh yeah and learning how to do good user interface design).

I’ve written about how Microsoft has lost touch with reality since as early as 2004, but lately it seems to be getting worse. Here is a video of Balmer laughing off the iPhone. Whoops! Turned out to be the fastest selling consumer electronics device OF ALL TIME.

Come on, Google needs some real competition or they’re going to become lazy and arrogant at the top!

Anyway, I thought that would have been the end of it….but no, Yahoo! decides to top Microsoft’s stupidity by REJECTING the bid.

I mean sure, the idea of working for Microsoft probably wasn’t ideal for them. But seriously, to be doing that poorly and then have a huge buyout offer come along like that, you should be counting your blessings and praying the check clears before Microsoft comes to their senses.

I’ll make a public prediction right here that Yahoo! will look back on this in the years to come as a HUGE missed opportunity. Their stock will continue to decline and they’ll never get another buyout even close to that.

So what do you think, who is the bigger idiot? Yahoo! or Microsoft? Or do I have it all wrong? Let me know in the comments…

You may have noticed that I added ING Direct as a sponsor for this site.

I’ve had an account with them since 2004 (long before this blog) and they are awesome. Essentially they are a high interest savings account, and they offer far better rates than your bank.

In general their rates on a regular savings account (that means you can move money in or out any time you want) are about equal to a 12 month CD (where your money is LOCKED in) at a regular bank.

Right now their rates are only 3%, but they fluctuate with the economy and are often over 4%. Thats earning 4% for free….zero risk, move it whenever you want, insured by the federal government against loss.

The way they do this is that they have no local branches and therefore no overheard from that. That is fine with me because I move the money in and out electronically, and use a local bank for my checking account.

Since I don’t invest in stocks, my money is only ever in one of two places:

1. Invested in real estate
2. Parked in ING Direct waiting for the next deal to come around that I like

The only other two options I’ve heard about that come close to this are: (1) a competitor to ING that came out a while back called American something. They offered a slightly higher rate to try and compete with ING but they were a small time operation and people complained of non existant customer support etc so it didn’t seem very safe. And (2) high interest savings accounts in other countries where you get the benefit of currency exchange and things like that. I’d be interested in learning more about this because the rates are higher, but just keep in mind it isn’t quite as safe because those accounts aren’t insured by the U.S. federal government like ING is.

Anyway, getting an ING account (or something like it) is pretty essential for building wealth in my opinion. Because otherwise if you have some cash parked somewhere it is just losing value to inflation. Tons of successful people I know use ING.

Oh yeah, and there is no minimum deposit and no service fees so take a few minutes and open an account.

I’ve haven’t used their mortgage or checking accounts but the rates look equally good.

Some of you have noticed and emailed me about the “Top Commentators” section in the right hand sidebar of this website.

This is a list of people who have posted comments on the site, and as a bonus for commenting it gives the top 5 posters a link to their website (based on number of posts). This link shows up on several hundred pages of this site including the Page Rank 4 homepage.

Its a great way to build traffic and ranking in search engines for your website.

Of course, you can also just email me a thoughtful relevant question that you really would like to know the answer to, and if I post the reply I’ll include a link to your site.

What ONE THING are you really dying to know, that would help you get a business started, quit your job, or get you on your way to financial freedom?

To date the most popular article on this site has been about how to analyze a killer real estate deal.

Would you like to hear more about real estate? Internet marketing and web businesses? Interviews with self made millionaires? Something else?

What is causing you the most stress right now? Quitting your 9-to-5? Getting that first dollar in the door of your new business? Generating enough passive income to quit? Finding what business you should start?

Please write me a comment and give me some detail on what you’d like to hear more about, and I’ll do a series of posts to address your needs!

Some quick updates….

My mother (yes, she reads this blog) let me know today that I achieved a #1 page rank for the very competitive keyword “home based business” (currently at #8)!

This has been a few months work that finally paid off, especially as part of my 30 day marketing challenge.

Secondly, a few days ago I redesigned the sales page for my book based on an extensive critique I had done (you can see the before pictures there). I’ll report back on the change in conversion rate in about a week or two once there is enough data to make a reasonable conclusion.

Just wanted to give you a preview of whats to come on this site…

1. I’ll be releasing a product in the next few months I’m calling “Interviews with Self-Made Millionaires”. I’ve been finding and meeting people who have actually done it….quit their job, started their own business, and are now worth in excess of $1 Million (and in some cases $50 million or more).

   In the interviews they’ll be sharing how they did, the secrets to their success, and where they made mistakes along the way. I’ve done two of them so far, but I’m not quite ready to release it. It will probably be a subscription product where for about $20/month you can get a new interview each month as a CD mailed to your house or as an MP3 download to put on your iPod.

   I am REALLY excited about this for a lot of reasons. In terms of the potential to really help people, I think it could be the best product available anywhere to learn entrepreneurship and wealth building.

   Read the rest of this entry »

I think the email subscription is going out too often: every evening.

While this content is hopefully useful to readers, you are probably a lot like me: busy, inbox overflowing, and lots of things to read.

I’d like to send out updates perhaps every 3 days, but currently FeedBlitz doesn’t offer this. For right now I’ve set it to go out once per week on Wednesday, but I may be able to adjust it further in the future.

The update emails will be longer, but then you can skim for articles that catch your eye.

Thoughts?

This is the first day of the marketing challenge. Here are the three things I got done today. These aren’t the sort of real traffic building activities I’d like to get to, but are more like pre-requisites to get the site together properly.

1. I moved the email newsletter service from Zookoda to FeedBlitz. There were a few reasons for this, namely that Zookoda is really buggy and appears to have no-one supporting or correcting it anymore. It’s a shame because they had the best service out there (and it was free), but a little neglect here and there and the whole thing became unusable. They must be focused on other activities. Feedblitz is quite good as well, but costs some money.

If you see an email from FeedBlitz, don’t be alarmed. Hopefully this change will allow the email newsletter to operate smoothly and draw people to the website with excerpts that grab their attention, and entice them to click “Read More”.
Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, this website has moved to a new format: a blog!

The previous site was a newsletter with a standard opt in page to capture emails. I never felt quite right about that site…it always seemed a bit too sales-letterish and dishonest. The emails were at times intrusive…you continued to receive them whether you’d asked or not.

This worked fine in the past, but as I watch the net evolve, I think consumers have started to get tired of that model. When you’ve seen one landing page, you’ve seen them all.

I like the blog format because it helps build trust right away. You can view others participating and see the real message up front. You don’t ask anything of the reader until you’ve delivered and earned their trust. And blogs are focused primarily on educating (in other words whats in it for YOU the reader, as opposed to me the author).

It sure didn’t hurt to see several marketing experts using blogs on their own sites, including Seth Godin and John Reese, both of who I’d recommend.

Of course blogs primarily use RSS instead of Email for subscriptions, but most people don’t know what RSS is yet. So for right now I’ve created a hybrid blog that still includes an email option. I created it with WordPress, which I have been absolutely thrilled with as a platform.

I’ve got some exciting ideas for this blog that will be comes over the next weeks and months. Stay tuned!