While wandering about dodging the hordes following their usual frantic Saturday routine (and wondering why I was joining in…), I thought I’d show you a place that is quite close to my heart in many ways, the weekly Farmers Market here in the city of Bath.
You see it was here in 2005 that my wife Licia and I started our journey – with much uncertainty and a fair few nerves – along the road to running our first ever business. My Italian wife Licia was an ‘aspiring’ chef at the time and she wanted to try her hand at selling her home-produced, Italian-inspired food.
Needless to say, she was a great success at the Farmers Market, which then led us on to setting up our very first cafe/deli also in Bath. The point I want to underline, however, is just how much HARD WORK was involved for very little relative reward.
My business partner Daniel likes to compare what he can earn now online to his ‘pizza days’, when he would work a full day for Dominos with only £50 to show at the end of the day for his time and labour.
For us, working on the market felt a bit like working 2 or 3 pizza days to perhaps earn a ‘net’ £50 profit. The hours were long, often all-night leading up to Saturday, and of course there was a lot of shifting and carrying of tables, fridges (yes, we were crazy…) and other equipment as well as the food itself.
I will always remember coming back home about 2pm on Saturday after the market was finished, eating (very good), counting the takings (even better) and then sleeping for hours to recover. So much for a relaxing day off (I was working my corporate job Monday-Friday, of course…)
What a contrast, then to the world I now inhabit. That is, full-time internet marketer, teaching people the very best knowledge, information and tips I learn as my journey develops. Although we’ve just started to produce physical products (a monthly newsletter, audio CD and data DVD) for the members of ‘Your Internet Buddies’, its still a world away from the production of low-cost, perishable produce. At least our CDs don’t have expiry dates on them…
In my corporate job, selling specialist software solutions to schools to help children with their learning, many of my colleagues had to sell physical products like computers or networks. Now, although there was no expiry on these either, the profit margins were thin to non-existent. And a Million-pound order isn’t very cool if your overall production costs are £1,000,001…
In contrast, selling software was much like selling information products. The cost of production is low, but the sale price can still be high, therefore with MUCH higher profit margins.
However, software is complex to produce, and has implications for technical supports and updates, so the clear winner of the three businesses, for me, is to package and sell ‘information’.
Information is a strange commodity. It can vary in price from free to multiple millions, and can be presented and shared in many different formats and situations. For example, a $17 ebook can have the EXACT same information as a $97 DVD, or a $497 seminar.
Unlike many other markets, however, the demand for information is only INCREASING each day. We live today in a specialized world of micro-niches, with a million TV channels rather than just 3 (yes, I’m old enough to remember that…), and that’s because technology has made things a lot cheaper, simpler and faster to deliver ‘tailored’ information that cater for people’s specific needs.
The internet offers us endless virtual real estate to create publishing empires and all for free or insanely low-cost (who would have ever imagined that I could publish a video, with an article, to a worldwide audience, all for the cost of some shared web-hosting…).
Internet search engines like Google allow us to get ‘inside the mind’ of someone surfing the web, and actually present our opportunity ONLY to those people who have clearly expressed their interest in the same thing. The potential is mind-boggling…
What strikes me most, however, is when I see people of all ages, even octogenarians, actually learning the basic skills of writing a blog, creating an ebook or even recording a video, and then promoting their website to prospective customers via Google Adwords. They can do this, and do it well, because the basic skills of internet marketing are… shock.. really very SIMPLE! Anyone who routinely uses email can learn pretty quickly how to get a blog set up – and even create a video on YouTube…
Obviously, there real learning occurs if you’ve never run any kind of business before, or had any experience of the world of ‘profit and loss’. If you have, you’re already several steps ahead of the rest, otherwise be prepared to learn from people with experience, who you know, like and trust. I can promise you that working this stuff out on your own is not so much fun. Yes, I’ve been there…
So, if you’re interested to learn more about how YOU could transform your passions and knowledge into profit online, and you’re the kind of person who likes to learn face-to-face, or as part of a group dynamic, then Daniel and I are putting on a very special one-day event in London on February 13th called R.I.O.T 2010 – (R.I.O.T = Recurring Income Online today)
Basically, one member of the audience, picked at random, will have a group of Internet Marketing experts literally BUILD them an online business on the SAME day! We’re going to demonstrate just how literally anyone can get started online – and fast…
When we ran a similar workshop last summer, we took one young student’s idea about creating a fashion tips business, created a site and a product for her, and drive traffic to the site, even making a sale on the same day!
Even if you’re not the lucky person who gets their business built in a day, however, you’ll still get a first-hand chance to learn all the steps of the process, so you can do it for yourself.
So, if you’d like to find out more about RIOT2010 – and also secure some highly-discounted early-bird seats before they sell-out, then check out our special PREVIEW webinar at http://YourInternetBuddies.com/webinar and find out all about it…
But whether we meet there on the day or not, be sure you ask yourself one question… Is your income currently generated ‘pizza-day’ style?
And if so, do you really want to ignore the income-potential generated by a world-wide, 24/7, Internet Marketing business?
