How difficult is it to achieve your target monthly income?

[devon]

Or anything close to that? I'm a young college dropout and seldom-employed web designer who makes most of his money as a barista (i.e. not much), and I'm halfway through the development of my muse (an informational product for beginning guitarists), but I'm curious just how helpful this book has been for the forum members here. Sure, 4HWW has helped some of you refocus your lives, or it's helped you to begin your withdrawl from the rat race, but has anyone achieved their TMI, or made a significant in that figure? Ferriss suggests you can make $10,000 per month within 3 months of getting off the ground with a good product and good sales, but I've been struggling financially for so long that making the jump from $1,200/month to $2,000/month, with a comparatively insignificant time-investment, would lift an enormous weight off my shoulders. Hell, I'd be able to live like a king on that kind of money!

Most of my dreamlines involve vagabonding throughout Argentina and Brasil – where I lived briefly during my adolescence – and that would involve very little money, really. And I mean serious seat-of-your-pants slumming it, in the backlands, far off the beaten path, an adventure for which $2,500/month would be more than fine. But on the other hand, I've been working way too many crap service jobs for the last few years, and you might even say that my dreamline is to relax.

So, my question is this: forget $10,000 and up – those mouth-watering figures that Ferriss drops in the book – has anyone broken $1,000 since reading the book and setting up a muse? How about $2,000? $5,000? And how successful have people been while doing this part-time?

I'm just curious.

–devon.

[Vagabond]

thats a good question...

personally no. I finished the book about a month ago and have come up with an idea i think is feasible and a product that can be sold and completely managed with a computer and internet connection, and something i think i could make a decent amount of money with. I know that Ferriss talks about quickly setting something up to test the water but the target for the product i'm marketing this towards is a bit too saavy for some half-assed website... so im basically writing a full on business plan (which is a pain in the ass but good because its made me think about every aspect of my business - plus i took entrepreneurship classes in college so i have experience with this) while trying to come up with a quicker less involved muse to get a couple hundred bucks coming in on a weekly basis.... the business plan has been taking up too much of my time though.

so make a long story short... i havent made anything yet but i am working on it.

[GatsbyGirl]

Yes. It takes a while to build to $10K but I released an ebook in Frb 2007 that nets me $600/mo and grows each month. I am using those profits to develop and test other muses.

I see too many people that get analysis paralysis but you HAVE to just start!

[Vagabond]

yeahhh i agree that i might be doing this. im caught between just wanting to see if it will sell and needing to do the research because its going to take a little bit of money to get everything up and running and the product made.

how could i do this with a nutritional supplement? i need logos/product labels etc., website design... its gonna cost $ so i feel like its smarter to spend a couple months planning it out than just throwing up some website. im not sure though, id like to have an ebook or something i could sell but i have no idea what i could write one on.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Technically you could get away with a very small investment... An eLancer could quite easily and cheaply design you product labels/logo/header graphic for a website, you could use an opensource shopping cart for your catalogue which can be installed cheaply and to begin with you can host on a cheap web host.

The only thing you'd need to spend cash on would be an SSL certificate if you'll be accepting CC payments directly through your shop (which you don't neccessarily have to!) and paying a web designer to incorporate your logo/header and re-theme your opensource site.

The other thing you have to bear-in-mind is that when you have a site up and running you can test different landing/squeeze pages or move bits and pieces around the screen to see hoe people react. For instance you may have paid for a "Hacker Safe" logo and people buy more when it's in a prominent position such as the header.

Planning is a good thing but as 4HWW says, fewer is better sometimes.

Of course the other thing you could do is start out easy and be an affiliate for products to bring in a few hundred $ over a month or two whilst planning the big muse and then use the affiliate cash to start-up the REAL earner ;)

[Drewkerr]

Well from what I gained from the book I went from 60 hours a week to 20, and only lost about $1,000 a month in income. I own my own mortgage company.

Muse I have two in developememt. First I will get my first check from which should be about $1000 to $1500 a month. I didn't really even create it, I just took a part of my business that usually generates income for real estate attorneys (title insurance) and converted it into extra income for me. I took an attorney that I didn't use too often and setup a title company with them, my company will get about 80% of the profit and the attorney will get 20% for managing it. They benfit from getting a guarenttee of my loan closings. They basically loss money on the title insurance profit (this is where i gained money) but gained money on closing more of our loans. Sort of a muse. I make extra money but have to do no extra work. Basically leveraged what i already had.

2nd Muse I am developing and once it is up and running should turn a sizeable profit in a couple months.

Just the extra $1,500 a month from the first muse is pretty life changing amount.

[BrianDale]

There are plenty of books & programs & feel good people out there being cheerleaders for improving your life. Tim's book is one of the few that give a step by step course. BUT...you also need to have your thinking right. The 2 best books i have ever read on the subject (and I read at least 50 books a year for over 40 years)...is "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho and "The Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace D. Wattles (published in 1910!!!) "The Secret" is a rah-rah book but they offer Wattles' book...but I picked up the CD On Book @ BAM so I can listen as I drive. These books (alaong with 4HWW) are my constant companions now. My goal....Sept 2007...running strong and be ready to chuck the J.O.B. (Just Over Broke)

[VitaminD]

how could i do this with a nutritional supplement? i need logos/product labels etc., website design... its gonna cost $ so i feel like its smarter to spend a couple months planning it out than just throwing up some website.

This isn't true. I threw up a website within about an hour for my eBook, threw together some weak ads, and I still did well enough in testing that I would have made hundreds in profit per day.

That's why you test ads. You do different things to see which one works better...it works the same for your strategies. How will you know what could happen if you don't test it?

You said you feel like it's smarter to spend a couple of months planning...planning to TEST? Seriously? It's like the Office Space sign that says " planning to plan." Nothing could be more anti-FHWW.

Real-world feedback is what you're after, not hypothetical "what-if" feedback that you just feed yourself. Throw up the website, THEN you'll know if it's smart to do it. Not before.

EDIT: My TMI is 1600 to cover expenses and then some. I will set new TMI's after that, after deciding what I'd like to do.

[MuseMojo]

Way to go VitaminD!

Since I'm totally unfamiliar with purchasing web space, creating web pages, writing web ads or how to post an ad, I'm going to give myself until Fathers' Day to post my first ad. I'm also giving myself permission to do a crappy job so I don't obsess about it too much.

[MarkNNelson]

This isn't true. I threw up a website within about an hour for my eBook, threw together some weak ads, and ...

Vitamin D,

Can you give us a brief overview of your eBook? Specifically, length, selling price, and whether you wrote it yourself or outsourced that?

A few years ago, I developed a recipe book that I sold through small ads in regional sports weeklies. This was right around the time the Zone Diet came out, so I developed a set of 40/30/30 recipes. I don't know if it was the pricing, the quality of the product, or what went wrong, but I never really got the thing to pay for itself.


Thx,
MN

[Mav]

Are you guys finding that it is rather expensive to post your test ads? What is working best for you and would you mind posting some examples of your cost and vehicle used?

I'm thinking of social websites of my target market, craigslist, possibly print?

I think it would be easier to negotiate if I had an idea of what others are doing. Maybe I should ping everyone and then use their pricing to create a bidding war.

-Mav

[davidd]

As of today (1 October 2007) this topic has been read a thousand times (1010, as of this moment), yet has generated only ten responses, from no more than a half-dozen individuals, two of whom report positive cash flows from their muses. One of those lost a thousand dollars a month by reducing his work hours, but added fifteen-hundred by reorganizing services within his current business, for a net gain of five-hundred. The other positive cash flow person reports six-hundred dollars. A third person says testing indicates he "could have" made a significant number of sales.

I've just started reading the book. I allowed myself to get distracted by the forums here at the site. While I think there's significant substance in what I'm reading in the book... it ain't gonna be easy! Hey, Tim himself said the two companies that tried to copy his nutritional supplement success, both having significant financial backing, failed and went broke.

Just watching Tim's video clip about Pen Tricks was enough to make me feel like giving up. I don't have Tim's talent... not the coordination to do Pen Tricks, not the mental recall to learn multiple languages, not the strength or athletic ability to kickbox (let alone become a "champion" kickboxer) or dance the tango, not the "people skills" to talk my way into an Ivy League school, and not the business knowledge to put together any kind of business or service that anyone would ever pay to use. Use my strengths? What strengths? Some of us are just "average," or sub-average, all the way around.

Yeah, I know, with my negative attitude I'm creating my own recipe for failure; and by posting a comment like this, I'm dragging the rest of you down with me. Sorry about that. And honestly, I don't want to be this way.

What I want is... well, look: the book has sold ka-jillions of copies at this point. As has been noted, comparatively few book-buyers even bother to register at this site. Of those few, however, a lot have looked at this particular thread. Over a thousand views. Only ten responses. Only two say they're making progress. Progress in the hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands, of dollars.

I notice that a number of people in the various topics who are making progress already had reasonably successful business ventures underway, or had managed to accrue at least a small real estate portfolio or other assets.

What I want is for a few "real people" to tell us that the plan works for them. No, not "I was living out of a shopping cart under a bridge, and I parlayed my welfare check into forty-grand a month." And not, "I liquidated my six Los Angeles rental properties and moved to Costa Rica." I want to hear from those twenty-five thousand to sixty-thousand dollar a year wage slaves who figured out how to pay off their ten-grand in credit card debt and car loans, quit their forty-plus hour a week jobs without losing their homes, and managed to start living the life of their dreams. Even if they're not quite there yet, those are the people I want to hear from. Is it working for you? Are you getting close? Are you getting anywhere? Is the only money you've seen the five bucks you got selling your used copy of Tim's book on eBay?

I think that's what the originator of this thread was getting at. How difficult is it to achieve your target monthly income? From the sparse response to this thread, particularly in light of the huge volume of hits it gets, I have to conclude: pretty darned difficult!

Please don't flame me, guys. Yeah, I'm a "noob" here. And no, I'm not a "rah rah" motivational seminar type. Despite my "concerns," I don't mean to be a naysayer. I'm just wondering... is this approach realistic for everybody? Is it realistic for anybody? Were Tim... and Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump, born with something many, or most, of us lack? In one of his books, Trump says he thinks certain people are just born deal-makers. They see possibilities, and they have the "gift" for convincing others to work with them to make things happen.

Kickboxing, tango, languages, entrepreneurship, best-selling authorship, and nifty sleight-of-hand pen tricks, and not even thirty years old. About the only thing I'm ever gonna top this guy in is age.

C'mon... somebody, please... share a success story!

[GFBodywear]

I do personally know a guy who has an e-book - it's a downloadable PDF that sells for $37.00 (re golfing). He cross-linked his page to that of another guy who also sells golfing tips. He's bringing in about 3k a month.

As far as I know, this was before this book came out - but the principles he is using are basically the same.

[Mike Rhodes]

It does work.

Personally it's working, but I over analyse & it's taking longer than I'd like. I recently talked with a lady that's making $50k a month from a simple membership site (1000 people paying $50 a month).... it took her 3 months to get there! It blew me away & made me realise I've been over-complicating things WAY too much!

I'm doing ok... prob making $3-5k at the moment but I realise there's the potential to make 10-20k so easily... it's all mindset.

My mentor brings in about $140k a month just selling clickbank products (just 7-8 different ones!) About $40k a month of that is profit.
The key to his success has been offering great bonuses if they buy the product from him (ie go create a useful bit of software on rentacoder for $300 that has perceived value of $97, now give this to everyone buying that other $79 product - if they buy via your link.)

another great lesson I got recently was the power of forced continuity. ie a monthly fee. I'm in the process of setting mine up & hope to have it running by end Oct (if I don't it's coz I'm thinking too much & not doing enough!)

A wonderful 'trick' here is to position the monthly thing (newsletter, audio cd, group call, q&a session - all of the above!) as a bonus for free when buying the first product.
So they spend, say, $79 & are given a free 30 day trial of the monthly deal worth $39 a month.
after 30 days you start charging.

Now before you start yelling at me for tricking these poor unsuspecting people into paying each month.
1. they can cancel at any timee, no questions, no hassles, no upsells!
2. I'll provide huge value for that $39. worth at least a few hundred to them if they implement the info
3. it's not done in a sneaky way. they know they'll start paying in 30 days. on the sales page, on the order form, on the thank you page & receipt.

So, even if the average person cancels after just 3 months, I've brought in an additional $117 on top of the orig $79 sale. that's a 148% increase in average sale value.
now how much extra do you think I can spend on AdWords ads vs my competitors?
how much extra room to move do I have if google changes the rules?
or extra money to spend on seo & get free traffic...

so, so simple. just needs to be put in place.
and that monthly component doesn't need to take a huge amount of work to put together. just a few hours a month
which could be created & ready to go before that 2 month trip to argentina ;)

I hope that helps someone...

someone mentioned adwords testing earlier
I hope this is ok with the mods, here's a link to a 14 min video I created that shows the power of split testing. no pitch, no sales (no continuity sale!!) http://www.websavvy.com.au/day4
just free info. I go through some real ads from clients & show the power of changing just a few tiny things... hope that's ok

love & light.
mike

[kingfish]

Don't give up, I have a tiny (real tiny) site I setup just before reading this book. I'm now making nearly $600 or so a month from just that and thats going up, don't get caught up in the idea that your muse has to be an info product or has to be a diet supplement or something tim talks about. Those are examples think outside the box and find a niche that isn't over saturated. I recommend using yahoo advertise network to check what cpc you'll pay to run ads for your niche, if costs are pretty low (< 50 cent) you'll probably be ok in that niche but still try to find out what you're competing with. There is a large advantage to going into a niche with very little or no competition. Personally I have about 8 muses I want to make right now and I have to pair that list down to less but doing this has helped me eliminate at least one that would have probably not given me the return on investment I'd need.

[DavidHH]

I made $3M in a year, and lost it all to personal stupidity: education and arrogance. Lost a loving wife as well.

The worst part is recovery. Thinking you're a failure keeps you there.

Use the book with a "grain of salt", it needs adaptation for your personal situation.

But, it beats the **** out of my several masters degrees when comes down to reality.

The book also, accidentally?, points out the failure of Goal Setting, which is key to your survival.

'Nuf said. DO!

-David

[DavidHH]

In my previous post, I stated, blandly, my success. I had many more.

None of them matter,because I mostly lost all the "things" other people might think important.

Guess what? I'm busy losing more of those things, and am happier.

I'm focusing on one self-improvement technique for myself, and will then market it to the so-called gurus on the subject.

What's great is I'm free of guilt and pain (don't need yours!), and have a viable test for people who promote information products.

Everbody wins. I took a loss and turned it around when suicide seemed a real option.

Please, if you've NO experience, just read the book and practice what it tells you to do. A month WILL turn you around.

[jetpacklife]

As with others here, I was already doing well before Tim's book. However, I'd say that I'm working less and making more since the book.

devon, you mentioned that you do web design. I get asked to do that kind of work all the time (I'm not a web designer), so, I'd love to be able to recommend someone. If you have samples and price ranges, I can see what I can do. I'm sure there are a lot of people here who could use your services as well.

[Overcoming_Negativity]

davidd,

I'm one of those "real people" that you want to hear from.
I'm also a negative person and I analyze things to death.
However, after flipping through the book, We (hubby & I ) decided to jump into the deep and run with Tim's plan. I have my own technology consulting firm (but that is work as Tim pointed out) And, no its not successful yet nor bringing any real money yet, hell we only have one client!
Anyhow, we've started to think about our muses and are in the works to put into practice our first deal using Tim's step-by-step plan. I will post the results. So, keep tune. :)

[webgal]

Mike- I appreciate your posting that guide. I've not looked at it yet but bookmarked it. I have done google ads but I can always learn something new. I want to start it from "day one".

After reading this thread I'm not down in the dumps however, I am inspired to trim my muse to a more doable size. It has been growing by leaps and bounds and I think I need to put a fence around it. I had to get a handle on what I was doing so I sort of started it and then started on the website and then went back and forth. I'm going to make an effort to start advertising 10 days from now. So I've given myself a deadline to meet. That's what I'm used to anyway.

And while I create ads I also design websites and it has been pretty slow for that industry.

I, too, have doubts but I'm pushing forward. I have a goal of $500 per month to start, not $50,000. I figure that's reasonable enough.

[PaintGuy]

It does work.

Personally it's working, but I over analyse & it's taking longer than I'd like. I recently talked with a lady that's making $50k a month from a simple membership site (1000 people paying $50 a month).... it took her 3 months to get there! It blew me away


Mike what type of membership????

That is remarkable.

Also, when people say that someone is making $50k/month, how much of this should one expect in profit?

For example, I generate over $80k/month in my "brick and mortar" business... but I'll tell you that I am NOT making anywhere NEAR that!

But Very interesting book and thread...

This book has though, helped me. Before I read this, I read E-Myth. The two combined have really inspired me to get my butt in gear and work ON the business and not in it. I am getting my bills paid and I work about half of the day, the other half I "Muse"....

14 months ago I started a paint contracting business(not on the internet).

Things seem to be going quite well with estimators, project managers, painters, outsourcing our book keeping, etc so that I don't always have to be the one selling, estimating, painting, etc.

Then reading the book made me realize how sweet it would be to just own a website that does it all(without having to rely on employees).... The website sells for you!

How inspiring!

Therefore, I have been thinking of writing an e-book.

I turned 25 this month and my company has painted over 250 houses in 14 months.

Think a subject revolving around starting a business out of college would attract any readers/buyers?

Any suggestions or thoughts?

Any search terms that might work, seems like that is probably a very competitive "niche".

Look forward to your feedback, and getting to know more of you on this board.

Sincerely,

Ethan

[MisterSuperBad]

As of today (1 October 2007) this topic has been read a thousand times (1010, as of this moment), yet has generated only ten responses, from no more than a half-dozen individuals, two of whom report positive cash flows from their muses. One of those lost a thousand dollars a month by reducing his work hours, but added fifteen-hundred by reorganizing services within his current business, for a net gain of five-hundred. The other positive cash flow person reports six-hundred dollars. A third person says testing indicates he "could have" made a significant number of sales.

I've just started reading the book. I allowed myself to get distracted by the forums here at the site. While I think there's significant substance in what I'm reading in the book... it ain't gonna be easy! Hey, Tim himself said the two companies that tried to copy his nutritional supplement success, both having significant financial backing, failed and went broke.

Just watching Tim's video clip about Pen Tricks was enough to make me feel like giving up. I don't have Tim's talent... not the coordination to do Pen Tricks, not the mental recall to learn multiple languages, not the strength or athletic ability to kickbox (let alone become a "champion" kickboxer) or dance the tango, not the "people skills" to talk my way into an Ivy League school, and not the business knowledge to put together any kind of business or service that anyone would ever pay to use. Use my strengths? What strengths? Some of us are just "average," or sub-average, all the way around.

Yeah, I know, with my negative attitude I'm creating my own recipe for failure; and by posting a comment like this, I'm dragging the rest of you down with me. Sorry about that. And honestly, I don't want to be this way.

What I want is... well, look: the book has sold ka-jillions of copies at this point. As has been noted, comparatively few book-buyers even bother to register at this site. Of those few, however, a lot have looked at this particular thread. Over a thousand views. Only ten responses. Only two say they're making progress. Progress in the hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands, of dollars.

I notice that a number of people in the various topics who are making progress already had reasonably successful business ventures underway, or had managed to accrue at least a small real estate portfolio or other assets.

What I want is for a few "real people" to tell us that the plan works for them. No, not "I was living out of a shopping cart under a bridge, and I parlayed my welfare check into forty-grand a month." And not, "I liquidated my six Los Angeles rental properties and moved to Costa Rica." I want to hear from those twenty-five thousand to sixty-thousand dollar a year wage slaves who figured out how to pay off their ten-grand in credit card debt and car loans, quit their forty-plus hour a week jobs without losing their homes, and managed to start living the life of their dreams. Even if they're not quite there yet, those are the people I want to hear from. Is it working for you? Are you getting close? Are you getting anywhere? Is the only money you've seen the five bucks you got selling your used copy of Tim's book on eBay?

I think that's what the originator of this thread was getting at. How difficult is it to achieve your target monthly income? From the sparse response to this thread, particularly in light of the huge volume of hits it gets, I have to conclude: pretty darned difficult!

Please don't flame me, guys. Yeah, I'm a "noob" here. And no, I'm not a "rah rah" motivational seminar type. Despite my "concerns," I don't mean to be a naysayer. I'm just wondering... is this approach realistic for everybody? Is it realistic for anybody? Were Tim... and Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump, born with something many, or most, of us lack? In one of his books, Trump says he thinks certain people are just born deal-makers. They see possibilities, and they have the "gift" for convincing others to work with them to make things happen.

Kickboxing, tango, languages, entrepreneurship, best-selling authorship, and nifty sleight-of-hand pen tricks, and not even thirty years old. About the only thing I'm ever gonna top this guy in is age.

C'mon... somebody, please... share a success story!

my advice to you is to stop looking for the negatives in everything. If you are going to do that at least balance it out with the positives.
1) those companies that failed probably learned a good lesson about how to succeed.
2) people are making good progress here. these are success stories.
3) you are not in a competition with tim.
4) few people will actually apply everything in the book and gain from it. its the 90/10 rule. 10% will reap 90% of the benefits. If most people won't compete its more for us.

[jetpacklife]

If you're broke and need money, get a job. If you get some free time, learn about the internet and how things work. It's not going away anytime soon.

I think this book is somewhat help for those with a job and that are under employed. That is, those people that haven't managed their job well and are stuck with a dull routine.

The book does not replace a real life education is website programming, design, economics, math and marketing. Don't think that you know everything that Tim knows now that you've read the book.

[EelKat]

well, I have not yet achieved my goal of $1,000 per month, than again, I do not do as much promotion or work on my website as I probably should be doing either. At the moment my income varies from $90 - $200 a month. *sigh* I have no one to blame for that but myself either, though, because I've been a bit lazy about actual promotion and marketing. I keep putting stuff off and saying "I'll do it tomorrow" YIKES! I think though, that if I got with the program and started massively promoting and marketing that my online business would do much more in sales and ya, I can see my $200 a month jumping to at least $5,000 a month if I just put a little more effort into it.