I recently traveled from Taiwan to Los Angeles for a brief visit and now to New York.  Many colleagues ask me:

“How do you plan to pay off your daily and travel expenses while traveling without working?”

It’s a great question and I’d be asking the same thing if I met someone in a similar position.  Well, the simple answer is the Internet is going to be paying for everything.  Yes, the Internet is my bank account.

As you may have figured out, doing business on the Internet allows you the freedom to be 100% mobile as long as you have a computer and Internet access.  Obviously, you need to have a little tech geek savvy and some street skills.  But it’s truly a beautiful thing.  If you are interested in having the freedom to do business online, here are a few ways the Internet pays me:

100% Online Design Business

I say “100%” because so far literally all my clients have been only through online referrals and interactions.  I started my company Geekwhat Design earlier this year, we specialize in designing all types of web and print graphics for clients from London to Seattle.  So far, we’ve spent basically $0 on marketing/advertising our services and make anywhere from $800-$2000 a month.  I spend about 15-30 hours a week creating designs for clients and managing this business.  I can only imagine the scaling should we start to spend some $$ on marketing.

Blogging

This blog, Geekwhat.com, has existed for around 4 years on the web.  Back in 2007-2008, I worked hard to increase the visibility of the blog and raised its income to average $90-$110 per month through ads and well… some more ads.  Unfortunately, my server was cut off in 2008 after forgetting to pay the bill ontime.  I lost all my earlier blog articles and backlinks and had to start over again.  Lesson learned.  I am now making about $20-$30 per month and intend to increase that amount with the new blog design/layout and increased blog articles.  I’m intending to commit to about 1 hour/article at about 3 articles/week, so about 3-4 hours a week on this.

Selling Products Online

This one is a bit tougher because there is overhead involved and physical shipping of products.  However, I’ve learned recently of the process of automating everything from warehouse shipping to customer service.  In the past few months, I experimented with some  hip products and was profiting about $700-900 a month in my best months, but ran into some problems with sites where I was posting.  I’m contemplating going the solo route with an isolated online store and spending some money on advertising to get the word out online.  Clearly my products were selling well when viewed by the right eyeballs.   Before the automation kicks in, I’d say I would spend about 10-20 hours a week on this.

So, to sum up… based on these three methods, the Internet was paying me about $2000-$3000 a month on good months and $1000-$1500 on slow months.  Amount of time spent on these activities = 40-45 hours per week — and nearly zero marketing.  I’m in the process of outsourcing and automating a lot of my tasks to minimize my number of work hours so I can focus on marketing and increase my bottom line.  My goal: Have the Internet pay me around $5000-$8000 per month by the end of this year (with the majority of the income being passive i.e. automated/outsourced), this would be ideal.

More to come about automating and outsourcing.

Internet money image courtesy of http://www.taramagazine.com

In my last post, I talked about how to not be a whore and succeed in a business transaction.  In this post, I want to talk about wooing a potential client.

This article is about initial contact.

More specifically, the best and worst ways of getting someone’s full attention (so that subsequently he/she will believe in you and your product/service enough to actually fork out money).

In my experience, here are …from WORST to BEST… 7 ways of contacting someone for a sales pitch:

1. MSN or Some Chat Client = NO GOOD
2. Facebook Wall
3. Facebook Message
4. Text Message = ACCEPTABLE
5. E-mail
6. Phone Call
7. Meet In Person = HELL YEA!!

Notice one through five are all based on text communication.  Almost all tone and personality is lost through text, unless you’re an amazingly convincing writer.  Number six and seven are both verbal.

1. MSN or Some Chat Client - If you go this route, you’re just lazy.  You didn’t even make the effort to pick up a phone.  Plus, people can purposefully ignore your instant message while you sit there wasting your time wondering why they haven’t responded.

2. Facebook wall - If you try to get someone interested in your product with a public wall post, you’re trying to appear personal but in fact you are masking your greediness and trying to get a lot –by gaining more visibility– out of your minimal effort.  Don’t be an arse…

3. Facebook Message – This is where you start showing some actual effort.  You provide a private message, showing that you want to personally share something with this person.  Also, because it is an independent message (as opposed to one of many, many wall posts on one page), it receives much more attention and is much more likely to prompt a response.

4. Text Message – Actually this is still pretty lazy and shows a general lack of aggressiveness (and also some passiveness).  But at the very least, 1. it is very personal and 2. it is literally instant i.e. he/she will receive the message RIGHT away.  Plus, it takes quite some effort to type out a full, personalized text message on phone.

5. E-mail – Now we’re talking.  E-mail is very personal (as long as there aren’t any irrelevant CCs).  It is focused, direct (as opposed to on a platform like Facebook with a lot of noise), and free of any distractions (like other wall posts on Facebook).  It shows that you are focused and serious.

6. Phone Call – This takes guts.  Real guts.  You have to be ready for any response, whether it be positive or negative.  You got your A game ready.  It shows confidence and conviction.  Plus there is less room for miscommunication that could occur in text form.  Your words, tone, personality, and attitude are 99% conveyed through your dialogue.  If you’re a good talker, you just might secure a deal with only one or two phone calls.

7. Meet In Person – Old fashioned but by far the most efficient and successful method.  Taking time out of your busy and finite life to sit down with someone at a coffee shop or their company means so much more than sending out a text message or email.  Not only are you using physical dialogue (as opposed to text), but your attire and facial expressions can do wonders in contributing to your sales pitch.  Assuming you are on time, well dressed, and say the right things, you are automatically already in success territory.

meeting in person = the way to go

People can tell very easily whether you’re just out to make some of their money or if you actually care and are trying to help.  Don’t forget that being super awesome at following up is equally if not more important than the items mentioned above.  FOLLOW UP always.

These are just my two cents.  Your thoughts?

In my last post, I talked about keeping track of your net worth by keeping a spreadsheet with a running tally of your various incomes every month. After doing this a few days ago, I noticed a few columns on the spreadsheet that curiously racked up some significant figures annually. What’s interesting about these sources of income is that I don’t really… do much work to get the money every month. I want to share these things with you. Here are just a few ways you can make a grand or two a year without really even trying:

Certificate of Deposits (CDs)

• Placing a portion of your money in a CD account basically guarantees you a chunk of free cash every month. Seriously. The only catch is that you can’t touch that money until the CD matures, so just put a few grand that you won’t use for a few years. You can choose how long you want your money to remain in the CD (usually longer term = higher rate = more $$ made). A term can be anywhere from 3 months to 4 years depending on the bank. There’s also a minimum amount required.

Google Ads on your website

• If you have a blog (or any website for that matter), consider throwing on some Google Ads for free cash every month. All you have to do is place the code on your site and keep the site relatively updated with fresh content.
  Bonus: make more money by focusing your site on a specific topic.
  Double bonus: make the ads visibly obvious but NOT annoying.

Get really good at something you enjoy doing and then teach it

• I know what you’re thinking… Tony, if I’m spending time teaching, then it’s work! Yes true… but I emphasize the word “enjoy” in the above statement. Seriously, if you enjoy yoga and are really good at it, devoting a few hours per week to teaching it is not really work… because you would’ve spent that time doing yoga anyway! The only difference is you’re getting paid to do it. I teach guitar two hours a week and make $200-$300 USD a month. That amounts to about 8-12 hours of work a month (including curriculum prep time) at about $25 an hour. Not bad if you ask me…

Adding up the money I make from these three activities amounts to anywhere from a few hundred to a few grand annually… and honestly, the work doesn’t justify the cash IMO. So get crackin’!!

Today I was buying a candy bar at the convenience store, only $0.50, chump change right? Yes, but it got me thinking about how much money I’m spending at the convenience store every week… and furthermore…

How much money / assets do I own total?? i.e. what is my net worth?

So I just spent an hour updating my ginormous net worth excel spreadsheet. It basically has all my assets organized with dollar amounts for every month. I organized my spreadsheet into the following categories:

• CD accounts (Certificate of Deposit accounts)
  1. Account 1…
  2. Account 2…
  3. etc…
• Website Revenue
  1. Google ads
  2. Text Link ads
  3. etc…
• Securities Revenue (Stocks)
• Bank Account Balances
  1. Bank 1…
  2. Bank 2…
  3. etc…
• Music Revenue
• etc…

After organizing all my account balances and revenue amounts, it really gave me a very clear picture of where my income is being generated as well as how much money I have TOTAL. I highly recommend all of you to make such a spreadsheet and update it monthly (especially if you have income coming in from many sources).

I think that setting milestones/deadlines is the surest way of achieving something.

Especially if you’re not working for the man.

At a job:
The man sets deadlines for you, so that you can be productive during the time when the man is paying you.
At school:
Why do we have midterms, quizzes, and final exams in college? They’re deadlines to ensure that you will be productive and learn.
Video games:
Without getting past that boss in level 8, you will never get to level 9.

I’m contantly setting goals for myself because I am inherently a lazy mofo. I decided recently to try something new with a close friend:

I am telling him to set a goal and a deadline. If he doesn’t reach his goal by the deadline, he owes me $20 in cash.

Think about it. You really don’t want to give a friend $20 free. So do it. Achieve that goal. And feel good about it after it’s happened and you don’t owe anybody anything.

I challenge you to make set a goal and deadline and have a friend hold you accountable.

Anybody gutsy enough to tell me your goal? If so, leave a comment.

When you’re a poor college student whose income comes from volatile stocks, you’re destined to a path of efficient spending. I’ve been trying to cut back on expenses recently. While doing so, I came up with an idea:

Make good use of that stash of pocket change!

I have a stash of coins in a big jar on my desk. And a lot of miscellaneous change lying around on the floor from whenever I’m picking dirty jeans. I collected all this change and divided them into one-dollar-stacks.

Now, whenever I leave the house, I bring one of these stacks with me. This way, I feel good about my purchases because it’s as if I’m getting a one dollar discount on whatever petty items I buy. That’s 50% off a $2 burrito (or a free pack of gum)!

Assuming you use one stack per week, that’s $52 saved in a year!

Am I saving a lot of money short-term? No.
Long-term? Maybe!

It makes me feel good.