Archive - May, 2006

A couple new things I’m into….

May 30, 2006 in Business, E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship, Misc, Projects, Technology, Time & Money with 0 Comments

I wanted to share a few new possible revenue streams I’ve created for myself. They may never bring any income, or they may turn out to be new sources of income! Either way, I’m doing them and excited about them. You may find these to be opportunities for yourself to explore and I recommend you do so!

First, I got an invite to be an Ether Beta Tester. Ether is pretty cool. It’s a pay-per-call phone service where you can pay to call and actually speak to people on various topics. My topics are Google Adsense, Adwords and E-Commerce. The way it works is people will pay to call me for a certain length of time. During that time, I’ll answer questions, talk to the person and hopefully give sound advice.

Ether then takes a cut of my “cost-per-call.” They ask you to set your own fees. I set my time at $49.95 for a 15-minute phone call. I chose this price point for 2 reasons. First, I think that’s a good amount of time to quickly go through Adsense placement or look at your website and give you some helpful tips on how to improve things. We don’t need an hour. Secondly, if I give you even 1, 2, or 3 tips that you take into consideration and it boosts your Adsense income from .10 a day to $1.00 a day! Then you’ve made a wise investment!

I may try different price points and times in the future but for now I thought this would be a decent starting point. I’ve found various “experts” charging much, much, more. I was able to find one guy charging a few hundred for an hour of time. I guess if you could get totally sound advice that actually paid off, it would be a wise investment!

Anyways, if you’re interested in calling me to discuss your Adsense sites or E-Commerce efforts, all you need to do is click the “call-me” link in the right hand menu.

The other opportunity I’m trying out is Lulu.com
I read about Lulu.com is the most recent copy of Business 2.0. The idea is cool. Essentially, if you’ve written a book, you can instantly publish a paperback, hardcopy or digital copy for no cost. Lulu.com will store your book and when it’s ordered, they will bind, create and ship your book. You are paid about 85% of the cost at which you set. The other costs are provided to Lulu for shipping and binding costs. Pretty cool right?

I think so! There are others doing similar things but I find Lulu.com is way ahead of the rest of them. Lulu.com is essentially a self-publishing warehouse. You can become a published author in about 5 minutes (after you’ve written the content) I like the way it works especially for Digital Products. If you create an e-book and need another avenue to get it out there then Lulu.com is the answer. I’m tempted to order my own bound copy of my own book just to see the finished product.

I’m also excited since I have so many books, documents and reports that I plan to get up on Lulu.com in the coming days. I’ll share the links with you. You may be interested in purchasing.

[tags] lulu, ether, adsense, adwords, internet marketing, revenue, income, e-business, ebiz [/tags]

Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

May 29, 2006 in Misc with 9 Comments

This is just a little idea that I had today. If you want to participate, please do. If not, no harm done.

The idea is simple. We’ve all had ideas which at one point we thought could be “the next big thing.” Most of us, including myself will never turn those ideas into a reality. And of those who do, many will still fail in terms of generating any sort of income.

Here’s the idea. Let your idea go. Pass it along. That’s right! If you had an idea and you never developed it, or had the time, or had the urge to follow through, maybe you could let it go? I realize not everyone will be ready to take this step. Many of you will. Many will find it therapeutic to release that idea thats been in the back of your head.

The reason I decided to do this was because today I had a few emails back and fourth with one of the top marketers of our day. He had posted a simple yet basic idea for a web business on his blog. The idea was fantastic. I emailed him and asked, “how could you publicly post such a great idea? take it and run with it man” To this he responded, “the best ideas do things when you let em go….” This really got me thinking about the numerous web ideas I’ve had over the years only to let them slowly fade away into thin air.

I started to see his point, why not let em go? Maybe somebody can do something with them! Let em go completely! Give the idea away for good! Even if somebody takes your idea and becomes wildly successful! Just let it go. Imagine seeing one of your ideas actually created and successful! Would you be jealous? No! You gave the idea away to move on. You’d probably be thrilled just to see your idea come to life!

Here is my idea to give away. It’s nothing amazing our groundbreaking. I do believe if done correctly you could set up a site and find hundreds if not thousands of online marketers to utilize the tool. You could sell a cheap paypal subscription fee of say $6.95 a month….

What you’re seeing below is my actual brainstorming notes for this project.

IM Tools
could be a browser tool bar or a web 2.0 style site…

The site would be for Internet Marketers and include the following elements and more.
- Keep track of to-do lists. Each day, you put 8 items in the to-do and check them off as you go.
- An expense column – each expense is easily inputted or uploaded and automatically calculated
- An Income Column – all income is easily inputted or uploaded and automatically calculated
- A Daily Total Goals Column which subtracts your expenses from daily income
- A Yearly Total Goals which automatically subtracts your daily totals from your yearly goal or adds them if your losing…..
- A Tagged Sites/Bookmark tool.. While you surf if you see something interesting you can tag it or bookmark it.
- Possibly plugged in the the Adwords/Adsense API
There, It’s gone! If anyone thinks they could develop my idea or take it and make it better, go ahead! I let it go! It no longer belongs to me. Keep a watch on the thread, you may find an idea you want to explore as an online business.

Same as the last post, anybody who comments will be placed in a draw for a $30 Google Adwords credit.

[tags] ideas, idea, business, income, brainstorming, business ideas, websites, seth godin [/tags]

Business Lessons: How being a procrastinator can help you achieve success

May 26, 2006 in Career & Work, Entrepreneurship, Misc, Time & Money with 2 Comments

Today’s post stems from some thoughts I’ve been having over the past few days. This past week, I just couldn’t stay focused on the task at hand. Sure, I got some great blog posts done and yes I created some special offers for my email list, but  all week I procrastinated the tasks I actually needed to get done.

What I began to realize was that I was actually procrastinating in a way that was helping me achieve my business goals, even though I knew I was procrastinating. And the more I thought about it, I found that procrastination in this sense could actually be advantageous to the task at hand.

What does it mean to procrastinate? According to my handy F11 Mac Widget Dictionary, it means to “postpone or delay action.” Fair enough! During the past week, each morning when I woke up I would think about my day and create my list of 8 things to get done. I found myself avoiding the list of 8 things to-do. Instead, I began to do other things and find ways to avoid my to-do list.

As the week progressed I began to notice something about the issue that was currently plaguing me, and is one that constantly plagues entrepreneurs around the globe. Although I was procrastinating, I was constantly finding other and possibly more exciting things to do. But most importantly, I was always working! I can’t find one time where I procrastinated to do nothing productive. Well, OK that’s not entirely true! I forgot to mention the little jam session I had with my fender.

So if you’re not feeling like working on the task at hand, don’t procrastinate and sit in front of the TV all day, find a way to procrastinate productively. I found that by programming myself to procrastinate in a productive way, I could actually get quite a bit done. So if you find yourself procrastinating from doing your regular entrepreneurial tasks, find a new project to work on but keep working. I find that this is one of the greatest parts about being an entrepreneur, the chance to be working on various projects at one time and the ability to procrastinate successfully!

Chances are that if you’re reading this you’re procrastinating right now!

[tags] procrastination, procrastinating, time, wasting time, entrepreneurship, home business [/tags]

Why you shouldn’t start your own business!

May 17, 2006 in Business, Career & Work, E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship, Misc, Success, Time & Money with 14 Comments

Why you shouldn’t start your own business!

After all, over 90% of businesses fail so chances are if you’re reading this and pondering with the thought of starting your own business the statistics are in your favor that you will fail.

As I researched today’s post, I started with the best search query my brain could conjure up. The search term I came up with was “90% of businesses fail” The reason I chose this search query was because I had heard it so many times. You hear it from your friends when you tell them your ideas, your family members, your co-workers and, your current employers. They all do there best to reiterate to you that the statistics say you’re destined for failure.

So I hit submit,  and the almighty google gave me 50,700,000 results for “90% of businesses fail” in an astonishing .85 seconds. I quickly glanced at my first result. Sure enough, we find our first result referring us to a study that concludes the reason 90% of businesses fail is because of lack of knowledge and the skills required to properly run a business.

I believe this is utter nonsense, look around and I’m sure we can find some extremely dumb and non-intelligent people running extremely successful businesses. I don’t claim to be a genius or expert in anything. I only try my best and do whatever I can to achieve success.

There are plenty of other reasons why you shouldn’t start a business. Let me give you a few to make this article even more dismal. Don’t worry, that’s my sarcasm coming through! You’ll have to learn how to read me properly.

The other reasons why you shouldn’t start a business are listed below. I’ll comment on them after writing this list.

  1. You have no money.
  2. You aren’t creative.
  3. You can’t think of a business to start.
  4. You’re scared of failing.
  5. You’re disorganized.
  6. You are in debt up to your knees. Related to post #1
  7. Spouse won’t let you.
  8. You’re too busy.

Having no money is a very common reason why many people shouldn’t start a business. After all, I’ll be the first to tell you that if you have thousands of dollars in credit card debt or other bad debs (mortgages are good debt) than these may actually truly be good reasons NOT to start a business at this moment. And if you aren’t creative, or you can’t even think of a business to start then really, what’s the point? Besides the mess in your office, the piled up credit card bills, your nagging wife,  your 9-5 job, and the mounting self doubt what else could possibly be a reason not to start a business?

Oh yeah! I almost forgot, remember what we started with? Over 90% of businesses fail! So the stats say you’re screwed. What’s the point?

Many other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers would end the article right here. Your chances of success are pretty much none, zip, nada, goodbye. So why continue with this post?

Well because, I have something to tell you…. They are all wrong.

IN FACT, Your odds of becoming successful on your own terms are actually much better than you think. I’m not kidding. Sure things may be tough, but it’s more than possible to be wildly successful. Let me try and show you how.

Right off the bat, forget the 90% of businesses failing statistic.

Its garbage, its a sham, its hogwash, its jealously, but mostly its fear!

The majority of the times you hear this statement from other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers what you’re actually hearing is the sound of fear. I’m not kidding!

As funny as it sounds, most people including other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers are scared or jealous that you might actually make it! They are afraid that while you go on with a much greater chance of creating and controlling your own destiny, their own destiny will be created by an employer. So next time you are told the awful statistic when you tell someone you’re going to start your own business, look them strait in the eye and conjure up the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes you can make and say “well I guess thats the chance I’ll have to take.”

Don’t break eye contact, be strong, and with your nose sniff like a dog. Then you’ll know what fear smells like. It’s their fear.

What about the rest of the reasons why you shouldn’t start your own business?

Well, they are all plausible and valid reasons. You may just have to rethink your strategy because they can all be overcome.

For example, if you have no money and are in debt up to your ears then it may not be wise to invest in a heavy capital intensive business from the gecko.

For example, if you’re heavily in debt but have a dream to start your own magazine, it may be wise to start online before investing 100k in a printing press. If you’re looking for the greatest opportunity for the lowest bang for your buck then I suggest starting a web business. This could be as simple as selling junk on eBay. In fact, if you haven’t tried selling on eBay you really should!

Just grab some junk from the garage, snap a photo and put it on eBay. I bet you’ll sell it. I’ve watched my father sell pieces of scrap metal. Yes, scrap metal. It’s hilarious and millions of people are making it huge every day on eBay selling the most bizarre items.

Would if you aren’t creative and can’t think of a business to start? C’mon! This is just a lame excuse! Start anything then!

We ALL have something we like. Start a blog about Gardening if you love gardening, put some Google Adsense on there and just write! Don’t worry about Search Engine Optimization or traffic for a while! Just forget about it and write. I can almost guarantee you’ll start to see some clicks here and there.

Don’t get caught up in the hoopla of trying to make millions of your website the first week. Just write good content. If you build it, they will come. This has never been more true than on the web. Except you can’t just build a field, forget about it and expect them to come. You’ve got to make an extraordinary field! Surrond it with corn stalks, build stands, install a scoreboard, hire popcorn vendors, get the best dirt you can find, and make it  a little better every day.

If you’re totally disorganized, starting a business can be the perfect way to teach you organization skills. There are so many unique tools and websites out there these days to help with the basic functions of running a business! They can also help you stay very organized. Even if your desk is a mess, you’ll at least look organized to your customers.

If you run into the situation where your spouse won’t let you start a business, chances are your spouse feels that way for a reason. It’s not that he/she doesnt think you’re smart enough.

For example, you may be asking if you can quit your job and try and start a web business. This is the wrong approach. You need to start your  business in your spare time and spend some time nourishing it, learning and teaching your spouse about what you’re doing. Eventually, you’ll start to make money and soon that money will turn into more money and soon you’re spouse will see the advantages of you running your business full-time.

I never recommend leaving a job, (even though it sucks and you’re miserable) until you have a decent plan and have started your venture on your own time.
I hoped you enjoyed today’s article and it motivated you a bit and showed you all the reasons why you SHOULD start a business.

[tags] success, money, entrepreneur, motivation, blogs, business [/tags]

What does it take?

May 16, 2006 in Entrepreneurship, Misc, Success, Time & Money with 2 Comments

This article was actually the end of another article but I decided to make it stand on its own because it started to grow and I didn’t think it did it justice as a conclusion to another piece.

So, what exactly does it take to be a “work at home” [tag]entrepreneur[/tag]?

I’ve seriously had to check myself and maintain a certain way about me to keep it up.

First, it takes a great deal of very, very, very hard work! You can’t give up after a few weeks. When I first began to build an online income, I used to spend hours on end, in most cases working till 4 in the morning, just trying to make a buck or two! I would work my butt off to get a sale. If it meant me sitting on Messenger for 2 hours with a potential customer to close a sale, I did so. Now however, I have some rules that I implement. You should try them too.

What if you still have a job and are trying to reach this point? That’s fine! We all need to work. Even if you give yourself a modest goal to try and get a few things done each night after work, I suggest you do so.

Don’t go nuts and stay up until 4 a.m. Not if you have a husband/wife or kids. It’s not worth it yet. Use a little rule I learned early on which I call “Fleming’s 8.” Just take a little sticky note, or use a word processor, and write 8 things you want to do when you get home from work.

Here is an example “Fleming’s 8″,

E-Mail Mark about Creating a New Site
Post a Rent-A-Coder Project for Article Writing
Clean up Text on “How it Works Page”
Check PayPal for Failed Payments and E-Mail Customers
E-Mail Mel about Affiliate Payments
Check Forum and Moderate Forum
Write a Blog Post
Send an E-Mail Broadcast

Sounds simple right? When you get home from work, do those 8 things. Do them. Finish them. And then throw away the page. Then, immediately after you’re done, write 8 things you want to do tomorrow. Some items may be on your list daily. That’s fine. Just make sure you aren’t carrying over unfinished items, unless you just can’t get them done today.

This is really a matter of training yourself to be an [tag]entrepreneur[/tag]. You’re creating a work schedule and you’re also setting your own deadlines. Get them done and meet those deadlines.

Here are a few other regimens I implement daily.

1) I get up at 6:00 AM every day.

2) I dress for work. Just because I work at home, doesn’t give me the right to wear jogging pants and sweatshirts. Dress professionally and you’ll feel like a professional. Sure you may feel odd getting into a dress shirt and dress pants at home, but it’s what will set you apart. If you have a job that’s messy, put on a nice shirt and feel good about yourself before you get to “your list of 8″
3) Finish my 8 things, and create a new list.
4) I outsource what I can’t do myself (I’ll write more on this later, because you don’t need, or want, to spend a fortune on outsourcing. Always bid low when outsourcing. They will tell you if you’re off the mark to think you’ll get your job done for that. But if you bid too high, they will take your money and do your job quickly)
5) Try and make things a routine. For example, I try and get my 8 things done between 9-5. If you work, it will be a bit tougher but try to do them between 6-8 or 7-9. Then you quit and live your life. I was somewhat of a workaholic for a long time, but I now try to take weekends off and finish my own work at 5. I may have to hop online in the evening, but I try and keep regular hours. I suggest you do likewise.
6) Set your goal and know that you will reach it. No matter what happens. I suggest starting with small goals like I did. I wanted a constant $1.00 a day, then $2.00, then $5.00, then $25, then $100…..Set it. Feel it. Do it. That’s it.

7) It takes money to make money, but don’t go nuts. I’ve had members of my membership sites spend $19.95 a month, make 6 websites, start making a little money and then give up. They lose their hosting, close their sites and give up! This is crazy to me! They actually lost much more than $19.95. Wasted domain registrations. Wasted time. Wasted effort! They lost a lot more than $19.95.
Do something, and stick with it. I joined programs 3 years back for $30 a month, $40 a month, and I’m still paying those fees. Some of them are income generating programs or forums I belong too. I may only get there once or twice a month but they are worth every penny. Don’t quit! Especially after you’ve put your [tag]money[/tag] into these programs. This is the worst decision!!

I hope this article was useful to some of you.

[tags] success, money, entrepreneur, motivation [/tags]

The Attitude Requried

May 12, 2006 in Entrepreneurship, Misc, Success, Time & Money with 0 Comments

One of the things I’ve learned about being an entrepreneur or starting and running your own business is that most people don’t have the right attitude. As basic as it sounds, you are plaguing your project from the start. I will admit that I started with this mindset. We all do, it’s because we are born with things like fear and courage although it’s easier to be afraid and give in then to be courageous and not give up. I would go into a project and let my own fears bring me down from day one. But I’ve changed and if you want to be successful, you also need to.

Now, with any project I make a conscious decision to dedicate any time to, I know early on it will be successful. Some may think this sounds cocky. Others will see that what I’m actually doing is consciously telling myself that if I’m going to dedicate any amount of precious time to a project, it will be successful. Now, obviously this is not always the case. Not every project will be successful but if you don’t believe so yourself, you have no chance…Zip, Nada, Nothing. You have deemed your project a failure from day one.

Some are going to find it very hard to take on this mindset early on in your endeavors. This will be especially true if you’ve suffered a degree of failures in the past. However, you must make this mindset change. Again, it’s going to be difficult. However, you must view any project with success in mind. In fact, take it a step further. Vision the project, business, website, whatever, vision it to the end. Vision the steps you need to take to get is started, vision the speed bumps and how you tackle them with ease, vision the end result. If the end result is making a million dollars, vision it. Who cares how absurd your vision is.

Is this making sense? You see, the world is a strange place, and who knows, if you believe something enough and truly envision the greatest outcome of your goal, idea, business, etc… It may just find a way to make itself true.

And what happens if you follow this and fail? Do you just give up? I don’t think that’s a good strategy. Just try again and this time envisions the mistakes you made or the unexpected things that happened and envision how you pass them this time with ease.

If you liked this article and believe that it’s worth more than your $1.00 a month. Please feel free to make a donation to my future children fund on the right.

Welcome to NoahFleming.com Online

May 8, 2006 in Business, Career & Work, E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship, Misc, Success, Technology, Time & Money with 12 Comments

My name is Noah Fleming. I am happily married and live in “beautiful” Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I love my wife, family and extended family. My theory on life, although while nothing groundbreaking, many of us will never put this thinking into action. Life is short so make the best of it. I always look at my parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles and think to myself, we potentially have about 80 years with these people, anywhere from 10-30 years with grandparents. Much of this is assuming we live normal lives that don’t end abruptly for any number of reasons. That being said, I knew very early on in life that I couldn’t spend my days doing something I didn’t absolutely love 250%.

I have been considered an entrepreneur for many years now, I’ve launched various successful small businesses, created websites in a few hours and late sold them as solid profit-making machines for tens of thousands of dollars. I have a strategy of always looking to create various sources of income. I am quite young and for most of my working life, my own personal income has nearly doubled, tripled or quadrupled that in which I made working various jobs. The jobs that made me realize I was bound to be an entrepreneur included things like, paper boy, video store rental clerk, metal stamping  (HELL), brick cleaner (yes, I cleaned mortar off of used bricks), lawn cutter, snow shovel’er, waiter, innkeeper, university teaching assistant, research assistant, catering assistant, non-profit organization communications officer and I’m sure I’ll add to this list when I remember…

Now, I focus primarily on my own businesses and websites. I also place a very strong focus on helping others. I no longer work for anyone except my customers and myself. My goals are simple, to teach as many as I can how they too can make a substantial income online.

I do all this because I believe so strongly with what I said in the first paragraph. I used to work in an office and I lasted 8 months. I can’t imagine anyone has unhappily worked in a position for 10,20,30 years. I just can’t imagine it. Life is too short and these days, opportunities are abundant.

Finally, as my first post concludes which is also the “about me,” I will say this. I don’t ever profess to be a genius at anything or know some mysterious secret about building wealth online. I learned the way we all should, through hard work and many, many, many countless hours up until three or four in the morning striving just to make a dollar or two online. I do however know many things that I plan to share with members of this paid blog.

Anyways, this is NoahFleming.com I hope you like it.