Mounting Muse Frustration

[AdamJay]

Hello all,

I've been sitting on this book for more than a month now. Let's have a look at Mr. Ferriss' famous acronym through my scenario:

D(efinition): I've never even touched a dreamline, but I know exactly what I'd do if I had the kind of time freedom that Tim enjoys.

E(limination): I'm pretty efficient as it is. Most of Tim's advice in this area is aimed at the 9-5 crowd, but I don't want a job like that because it is not conducive to my goals. I'm a waiter, and I've analysed (80/20ed) the hell out of my job. As a result, I've enjoyed better productivity. But the ultimate goal is to kill this job. Beyond that, I've virtually no possessions to de-clutter myself of. (My mattress is on the floor of my little cloister, for Pete's sake.)

A(utomation): This is where I've caught a snag. And looking at the number of posts on this section of the forum, I think I'm in good company. I've followed Tim's advice to the letter. But I've yet to come up with ANYTHING TO SELL. There are so many niche markets I could cater to, as I have a lot of interests. But the money up front? Even if I had $300 to spare, I wouldn't sink it into a subscription for a website just so I can find a drop-shipper. My research efforts to locate a drop-shipper come up short at the library too. After brainstorming informational products, they all fail in the testing phase.

I keep thinking I'm just missing something that's right under my nose. What little gem of advice from the book have I overlooked? Or perhaps one of you has advice of your own? How can I blast through A so I can start on L?

Inquisitively,
Adam

[neuromancer]

First of all, do a dreamline. It is not about knowing what you want to do, it's about defining it, figuring out the per month cost and then taking steps to achieve it. As I said in another post, decide to live the lifestyle and consider it a done deal. The rest is just putting it all together. Once you have your cost targets and per day targets, it is just a matter of finding what to market and who to market it to.

www.seductiveman.com is an example. I sell my lifestyle to my readers and make money off my advertisers. My readers are men in the online seduction community, the guys from the vh1 show The Pickup Artist. What I talk about is quite similar to what Ferriss says only I focus on meeting and having relationships with desirable women. My product is my philosophy and proof of my lifestyle. My readers pay for it by looking at my advertising. Instead of me spending my money to get a product to sell to my customers, I publicize my life and beliefs to my audience who then buy from my customers... the advertisers.

As far as a muse goes, don't limit yourself to a widget. Any thing can be widgetized and sold. If a market already has companies selling products, do a fan site about the market and set up affiliate marketing deals with the manufacturers. You send them the customers and they pay you for it. Derekbeau.com has a step by step on how to automate this process. Once you have automated it, find a similar market and do the same thing. If you can't make 10 grand a month on one affiliate marketing site, make 10 that make $1000 a month or 100 that make $100 a month. Once they are automated you don't have to deal directly with them any more. Outsource the work to elance.com or one of those Indian service companies Ferriss talks about. Once a week you check their stats and emails on what is happening with advertising and sales and have your people adjust accordingly.

How about shirts? Come up with some designs and put them on cafepress.com then market them. Cafe Press takes about $14 per shirt so you charge 20 pluss shipping and walk home with $6 per shirt. Then you drive traffic with a PPC campaign. If you sell 100 units a month, you make $600. After $100 in advertising a month, you walk home with $500. Up front cost to get started $100 in advertising and some time. Now take the $600, put $300 into a set of designs from elance, $300 into the PPC campaign and put the designs on cafe press. Lets say that you now have 6 designs on cafe press and sell 100 units each. That's $3600 in that month. Now take that money and hire an elance designer to build you an ecommerce site, a guy to do your marketing and dump the any money that is left over you put into more designs. This time when you go to your designer, as him if he can handle the silk screening too. The answer is always yes (I used to be a freelance designer) and tell him that he can have all your shirt design and fulfillment if if he gives you net 30. Now your designer starts cranking out designs, you send the ones you like to the ecommerce guy who then tells the marketing guy what the new designs are and he markets them.

You then fly to Cuba for Mojitos.

[jetpacklife]

I agree with neuromancer, my advice is to find something to give away as well. (although, I don't see any ads on his site, so I'm not sure how he's making money??) It's a lot easier to come up with ideas, because you know that everyone can afford it. The internet has really made it possible to reduce publishing costs to almost nothing, and google has made it easy to monetize traffic. It's not for everyone, but the top people are making a killing doing it. Here is a sampling:
http://www.getitinwriting.biz/blog/2007/02/9-people-living-real-american-dream.html

[Marcie]

Just wanted to mention, I have a cafepress store & ran a CPC campaign & lost money. I think if I had more of a niche and limited the CPC price I might have broken even....I get $5 per shirt and that's just not a great profit margin...maybe would have been better to start advertising on Yahoo, since they're significantly cheaper.

[neuromancer]

The site is new. I am building up content. I made my money running a custom tee shirt business. that site is down right now for renovations. As far as cafe press goes, I don't recommend using them. I have my own shirt setup at home and I run pro level heat press transfer and cut vinyl. Anything under 20 units I do in the house. if I go over that I farm out to a silk screener. I generally keep my per unit cost under $5 plus my time. that means I can run a CPC campaign and at $20 per unit retail, I can dump up to $15 per and still break even. That's 100 clicks per shirt at 15 cents per click. Tack on to that a 110% guarantee and 3 months to return it, I should be doing alright. If you want, I will post when I get my shirt site back up.

[nucleus]

How about an inexpensive ebook:

"How to wait tables with twice the tips and half the effort!"
"If this book doesn't earn you an ten times it's cost in extra tips, double your money back!"


Hello all,

I've been sitting on this book for more than a month now. Let's have a look at Mr. Ferriss' famous acronym through my scenario:

D(efinition): I've never even touched a dreamline, but I know exactly what I'd do if I had the kind of time freedom that Tim enjoys.

E(limination): I'm pretty efficient as it is. Most of Tim's advice in this area is aimed at the 9-5 crowd, but I don't want a job like that because it is not conducive to my goals. I'm a waiter, and I've analysed (80/20ed) the hell out of my job. As a result, I've enjoyed better productivity. But the ultimate goal is to kill this job. Beyond that, I've virtually no possessions to de-clutter myself of. (My mattress is on the floor of my little cloister, for Pete's sake.)

A(utomation): This is where I've caught a snag. And looking at the number of posts on this section of the forum, I think I'm in good company. I've followed Tim's advice to the letter. But I've yet to come up with ANYTHING TO SELL. There are so many niche markets I could cater to, as I have a lot of interests. But the money up front? Even if I had $300 to spare, I wouldn't sink it into a subscription for a website just so I can find a drop-shipper. My research efforts to locate a drop-shipper come up short at the library too. After brainstorming informational products, they all fail in the testing phase.

I keep thinking I'm just missing something that's right under my nose. What little gem of advice from the book have I overlooked? Or perhaps one of you has advice of your own? How can I blast through A so I can start on L?

Inquisitively,
Adam