This message is brought to you by . . .

One of the strategies for making a living via the web and passive income is to build an email list and then develop a relationship with that list around some niche or interest.

I have a colleague who has built a 10,000+ list over the course of several years. She did it initially by offering a free report on the niche area. It was a good report and lots of people wanted it and told their friends about it. They traded getting on her list for the free report.

Next she did a series of free teleseminars. That got her even more people. Gradually she began to offer some things free (more free reports and live teleseminars), but if you wanted premium stuff, like the ability to download and listen to the teleseminars whenever you want and to get professional continuing education credits for them, you had to purchase them. She has several people who work for her. She pays their salaries and for health care policies for her full-time people. She has a dedicated server. She works her buns off night and day to deliver high-quality, great offerings. And she makes a good living at it. During a time when many similar businesses are in danger of failing, her business is thriving. I’ve learned a lot from her that has helped my business.

She sent out several emails about each offering. And then some people complained. “You are sending too many emails.” “It’s all business and marketing.” Stuff like that. [Of course, the people who complain are a minority; more people write and say they appreciate her offerings and generosity.]

I was fascinated by this. I have gotten a few (very few, really) of the same kinds of emails when I began to email my list more than once a month.  The comments were similar. My response: I give people on my list a bunch of free stuff every month. And this is largely how I make my living now-over the web and with passive income. How hard is it to unsubscribe if you don’t want the emails? Or if you don’t want as many from me, how hard is it to use your little finger to delete the emails you don’t want? (That is why God – or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs – invented the Delete key, right?)

I was thinking back to when I grew up. Watching television was free. Only it wasn’t free. You “paid” for that free service by watching some ads. Enough people bought stuff from those ads that the TV stations could stay in business and create more new stuff and broadcast it. The ads paid for the equipment and personnel to deliver that free stuff. In the UK and some other countries, I understand, one has to pay a license fee for TV. It’s not “free.”

Same thing with radio. Radio seems free but you contend with ads. AND . . . drum roll, please . . . the same thing with those of us who offer cool free stuff to our groups, email subscribers, communities, “target market.” Those pitches we send out pay for the servers and services, our time, the research we do, the emails we answer, the training we get, the books we read, the time we take to create the free and paid offerings, etc. etc.

I have answered thousands of questions about my work, about getting published, about becoming a speaker, about web-based marketing by email. I have put out lots of free valuable training and information to people on my list. I get a crushing amount of email each day, week and month. I pay lots of money each month to have the support systems in place to do all that. I spend hours of time on it. All unpaid.

I love giving stuff away for free. It makes the dopamine squirt into my brain. It’s more and more possible in this age of digital products and the Internet. My impulse is that when I learn or stumble across something new, cool and valuable, I want to tell everyone about it and get them to know about it or learn to benefit from it too. I want to continue to do that and make a good living doing it.

I know many of us are too busy and get too many emails and we don’t want any more. I know it’s a slight inconvenience for some.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not whining or trying to be snarky. Just upfront about this issue. I am incredibly grateful to people who have chosen to sign up for my email lists (about 7,000 so far). I feel blessed that my work is so widely known and read. That I got on Oprah. That my 30 books have been published and gotten out into the world. That I have been invited to speak in so many countries (27, I think, since someone counted them one time from a list of my workshops).

But, about the commercial aspect of things, I say: Get over it. Get used to it. This message was brought to you by . . . all the stuff I sell online that gives me the time to write these posts, write and give away free ebooks, handouts, slide programs, inspiring quotations, cool video links, book recommendations, music recommendations, useful research summaries, etc.

I’d be interested in your response to this. Please leave a comment below in the Leave a Reply box. [Hint: If you don’t see the place to comment, click the Comments link just below this post.]

Location-free

I am visiting relatives today. And doing a teleseminar.

Teleseminars are a great way to generate income form anywhere. I make thousands most months from doing teleseminars.

If you are not yet doing teleseminars, why not?

It’s not that hard, if you know what you are doing. I stumbled around for several years not knowing much. Finally I learned and mastered the medium.

If you want to save some stumbling around and get started, check out the training I am doing with Ruth B. of NICABM.com.

http://www.nicabm.com/teleseminar/2010/howtocreateteleseminars//?affid=spkrlBn1101

About teleseminars

Hear me talk about setting up and doing teleseminars and what they might be good for in your work. This one, even though it has already happened, is available still. Visit: http://www.billohanlon.com/Teleseminar/Training.html

Diversifying at your point of vulnerability

I was trained as, and worked for years, as a psychotherapist. Because I have a restless mind, love to learn new things and am bored easily, I diversified my work life over the years. I began to give workshops and write books. Those activities began to be successful, so much so that my clinical practice became a minor part of my income.

But I had another motivation in the back of my mind as I pursued those new directions. I was always thinking about the possibility that depending on only one source of income could leave me vulnerable if conditions changed.

And, lo and behold, they did change. “Managed care” (which really meant limited therapy sessions that had to be approved by an overseer from the insurance company) swept through the field of therapy. I heard my colleagues complain bitterly about how this development had both reduced their income and intruded in a grating way on their autonomy. Some quit the field altogether.

Managed care was barely a blip on my radar screen, though. First, I stopped taking clients who used insurance or let them handle insurance issues on their own. Second, if they couldn’t afford therapy, I saw them for no charge. I could afford to do this since I made most of my income elsewhere.

The point: Identify places where your income is dependent on one (or very few) sources. And then diversify.

Of course, this is one of the things this blog is about: setting up diverse sources of passive, online, affiliate, automated and location-independent income; either to supplement your current income or to replace it entirely.

Where are you vulnerable to other people’s whims or sudden shifts in income? And what are you going to do about it?

Turning webinars or webcasts into passive income

The way to turn a webcast or webinar into passive income is to record it and offer it for sale afterward.

To do this, you either need screencast software (Camtasia for Windows; Screenflow or Screenium for Macs) or you need to have a webinar service that allows you to record the webinar/webcast.

You could also put the recorded webinar/webcast up on YouTube or similar video hosting service to develop your platform or reputation and indirectly profit from the increased exposure.

You could, of course, also offer the webinar as a bonus or free gift to get people to opt-in to your list or buy a product.

Getting down to the MEAT of the matter

When you think about it, you have four commodities in your life that you can influence to create a sense of freedom:
M-Money
E-Energy
A-Attention
T-Time

The world, other people, your job, advertisers, companies, etc. are all competing for your MEAT. It’s you task to manage your MEAT to maximize the likelihood of a life you want to live; Your Life of Freedom, as I have called it.

I came across the ideas of Rob Bennett (http://www.passionsaving.com/), who helps people semi-retire early or retire in gradual steps. He has a concept he calls “Making a purchase from the Freedom Store.” This involves managing your money (saving money by being frugal and plugging money leaks); your time (trading some bits of time now for freedom down the road); attention and energy now for creating desirable future conditions.

I like this idea. Invest time, money, energy or attention now learning some software or web-based process that can save you time down the road. That is a deposit into your freedom account.

Invest time in locating and plugging money leaks now can buy you freedom down the road.

Learn how to create automated income (set up an online shopping cart and store; master autoresponders; create blogs, websites, podcasts, etc. to let people know about you and what you offer that is of value). Set up ongoing sources of passive automated income (like affiliate income or automated systems for marketing, selling and delivering your products and aftersale marketing).

What purchases have you made from the Freedom Store today, this week or month with your MEAT? If you haven’t made any, what plans could you make to start buying your future freedom?

Start as soon as you can.

Shovel Ready?

This phrase, shovel ready, became a common one in discussions about the economic stimulus package Congress passed here in the US recently. It referred to projects that were ready to go.

Which of Your Life of Freedom ideas for creating more free time and more passive income are shovel ready. I have given you some ideas in this blog and you may have others of your own.

It might be time to knuckle down and focus on a particular project that you think you could pull off in a reasonable amount of time or with the money and other resources you have available right now.

Spend a little time thinking about that. If you come up with something, write it down, along with a plan to implement and complete the project.

Oops. I don’t have a business.

I had a startling revelation some time ago. I listen to a lot of audio books (as well as read lots of print and electronic books). Well, I was listening to Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited and my stomach started to gurgle with anxiety.

Why? Because Gerber was lecturing people like me telling us we have deluded ourselves into thinking we are entrepreneurs and business owners when, in fact, we merely offer professional services. What makes a business and an entrepreneur, he said, was having a business that had systems and could operate independently from any one person. It had to be something that could be sold at some point without losing its value.

Gulp. I earned much of my income from speaking at the time, with some coming from my book royalties (which were driven in large part by my speaking; letting people know about the books or “back of the room” sales of them at my workshops and speaking engagements). If I got ill or injured; if I died; if the planes stopped flying due to some pandemic or attack; I was going to take a big hit in my income.

When I wanted to retire, there was little income that would come in without me putting in direct time or effort or showing up. My business was me. He was right. I wasn’t an entrepreneur or business owner. I was doing very well in my business, much better than I had even dreamed abut when I started it. I had been on Oprah when one of my books was featured. I was speaking all over the world getting paid lots of money per talk. Things were going well. But Gerber’s point hit me hard.

Right then and there, I resolved to make a business with systems that would carry on without me and that would have automated marketing, sales, order fulfillment and income. Thank God for the Internet because I didn’t want to have a lot of people working for me and take the time to manage or supervise them. I set to work on creating online and digital products, affiliate income and automated “back office” systems like an online shopping cart, autoresponders, websites, blogs, online articles, online videos and audios, etc.

Now, several years later, I can look Gerber in the eye and call myself an entrepreneur.

What would happen to your income, you family or the people who depend on you if you became incapacitated or the country or the world suffered a crippling blow? Plan ahead now. Set up Your Life of Freedom before it’s too late.

Teleseminar upgrade

I got into this Internet-based income stuff a few years ago and learned it a little at a time. The first thing I did was create some products; some ebooks and audios. They did pretty well and allowed me to free up my time to learn even more and create more free time and passive income.

I am now in a long-distance relationship; my girlfriend lives in Seattle and has a practice there. It’s easier for me to go visit her than it is for her to miss days in her practice (and income) to come visit me. Luckily I have that luxury since I have set up both passive income sources and location-independent ones.

The best location-independent source of income I have discovered is a teleseminar. I began doing them a while ago and initially used a free service (http://www.freeconferencecalling.com/). I would do a free teleseminar to create a mailing list of interested people and then try to get them to buy some related product (like my online bookwriting course). That worked okay, but wasn’t that lucrative. I was training people to expect free stuff. So I began doing paid calls in which I charged for the call, but would promise people they would get the recording afterwards if they were too busy to get in the call or they couldn’t make the scheduled time work. That was good, because I made money on each call and still a few people bought other products after the call.

Then I realized that since I had recorded the calls I could turn them into audio products or get them transcribed and turn them into ebooks or reports. That worked a bit better and I made more money. Until the day I scheduled one of these calls, charged for it and the recording function on the call didn’t work. Worse than that, it was a series of four calls and two of them didn’t record, even though I had tested it again in between the calls to ensure that it was working after the first one didn’t record. I had to spend lots of time recreating the calls. What a pain!

So, I decided to stop being so cheap and invest in a paid service that would work better and have a few more features. I found it in Instant Teleseminar. They built a cool web front end for the call, automatically recorded it as a backup in case I forgot to push the record button and also let me give slides and other links as part of the web site. People could listen over the web or on the phone. They could hear a replay after the call or get a download. I could have up to 250 people on the call rather than the previous free service’s limit of 100 people. Everything was automated and worked really well.

Then they upgraded the thing (and renamed it to NConnect). It’s even better now. You can see who is on the call. People can “raise their hand” to ask a question or make a comment and you can manage that (if you’ve ever been on a call without that ability, you know sometimes several people try to talk at once and that wastes precious time). As the host, I can raise the volume of other people on the call if their voice is softer or not coming through well. It has a noise suppressor in the line so it is much clearer.

As you might be getting the impression, I love this thing. I have signed up to be a referral person for it (and I make a referral fee for anyone who signs up and sticks with it after the free trial), because I am going to tell everyone interested in making location-free and passive income about this thing. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial (make sure you schedule some call and use it right away-even if it’s only to have a friend interview you to get a recording and create a product right away so you can see how easy to use and great it is). If you plan to do teleseminars with any frequency, this thing is really worth it. It’s really easy to set up, learn and use. I got a call set up my first time on it in a few minutes.

Use this link (it costs the same with or without my referral):
http://NConnects.com/ProductInfo/?x=781496

Ignition

Here’s a quotation for you: “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” –W.B. Yeats

I have been thinking lately of what got me going in two successful endeavors I undertook in my life. The first was becoming a paid speaker. When I started, I was shy and anxious. I didn’t like to talk in front of people. But I had several pivotal things happen that ignited a burning desire to speak and gave me the sense that I could succeed.

The first thing was that I became really enthused about the work of Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist with whom I studied and who was one of the most creative, persistent change agents who ever lived. He seemed to believe that everyone could change, if the therapist could approach them in the right way and adapt to that person’s realities and motivations. He told stories, he had people go out and do things, he evoked resources; anything he could to get people to change. He wasn’t hooked on any particular theory or method; he paid attention to what worked and adjusted his tactics if what he tried wasn’t helping. My friends became a bit tired of me regaling them with Erickson stories, so I went in search of new audiences. Seriously, I thought all my colleagues in psychotherapy-land should know about and be inspired by Erickson’s work and I thought the best way to do that would be to give workshops and talks about him.

But there was another ingredient. Around the same time that I was learning about and studying with Erickson, I went to two seminars that ignited my passion to teach and showed me a model for how I would teach. One was the est training. I know sometimes it gets a bad rap, but the trainers were amazing. They stood in front of the group for sometimes 12 or 13 hours a day; they yelled; they lectured; they joked; they charmed; they engaged. I was in awe. I wondered how someone could keep their energy levels that high (much less retain their voice) for all that time. Now that I do speaking for a living, I know perfectly well. There is an exchange of energy that goes on in that room that makes it almost effortless and keeps recharging the speaker’s batteries (when the speaker has found his or her groove, that is, integrity and skill combined with big purpose).

The other seminar I went to was one by Bandler and Grinder, the originators of NLP, in 1976. They were simply the best, funniest speakers I had ever seen. And the seminar was chock full of valuable content. I wanted to be like them when I grew up (well, not in every way, but we won’t go into that here). I wanted to be that kind of speaker. Now, at the time, shy and anxious as I was, I really couldn’t admit to myself that this was even a possibility for me, but something deeper in me (my soul?) seized upon these two models (the est training and Bandler and Grinder), combined it with my passion for Erickson’s work and ignited a rocket in my life that is just beginning to slow down after 30 years.

So, the questions I have for you are:

What ignites you? What gets you enthusiastic and passionate?

Who are your role models? Who are the people who show you that something is possible in the world or show you a path that has heart and appeals to you?

This new direction I am detailing in this blog about how I am creating my life of freedom came from several passions and enthusiasms as well as several models.

First, I love Macintosh computers. I began using Apples back when the first Apple clone (Franklin computers) came out and have only had Apples since then. I stumbled across a series of excellent video tutorials a few years ago that quickly increased my skill and knowledge level on Macs (Screencasts Online by Don McAllister). Don gave me the confidence (and the know-how) to create my own websites with Rapdiweaver, some simple software that even non-techies can use.

Around that same time, I read Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek. I have a major difference with Tim, in that I love my work and it is an integral part of my life and meaning, and Tim wants to put money-making and work on autopilot for income generation adn find his meaning and fun other places. But he really swayed me to think about and be mindful about how I used my time. Working systematically, since I read his book, I have been able to decrease my work time radically, cutting it in half at first and recently in half again, while earning the same or a bit more money.

I also listened to Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited on audio on my iPod and realized that I didn’t have a sustainable business. I would have to trade hours for money the rest of my life unless I saved enough for a good retirement. I began to set up systems of automated marketing, sales and fullfillment as well as digital products. My income now comes in at a certain level whether I work or not. That is the foundation for my Life of Freedom and a little bit about how it came about.

To summarize:

Two elements of setting up Your Life of Freedom:

1. Find your passions and enthusiasms;

2. Find role models to show you that something is possible and what the path looks like and imitate the parts of their path that work for you.