Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

Let me ask you a question:

What if the world as you know it was made up to keep you trapped?

Trapped in a job you don’t like, with debts you cannot pay off, no matter how much you work.

What if you’d been set up to spend more then you earned?

And that no matter how much you earn, you’d always spend more then you had, and you’d always be running to try and get out of debt.

What if every one you knew lived in that same reality?

And that every time you talked to them, they’d tell you about the cool new TV they just bought, or maybe show you their new $80,000 car. Of course, they have two girls who both go to private schools, and fee’s have to be paid, so obviously everything is a monthly fee. The car is $500 a month plus insurance and gas. The school is easy term payments. So is the mortgage. Hell, the couch is interest free for two years and the tv payments aren’t due until 2012, so the holiday on $4,000 of credit card debt to Cancun looks affordable after all.

Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

I was just reading about a guy called Frank Lowey. You may have heard about his small shopping chain called Westfield.

You know what his biggest strength in his own words was? Not affording himself any luxuries until he had made it.

I personally make over 6 figures, and, I’m happy to say I don’t own a car. I don’t have monthly repayments on a single thing I own. And I basically own my bed, my computer, a few clothes, an ipod, and a snowboard.

Get out of the employee CULT mindset of CONSUMING shit - and get into the entrepreneurial mindset of CREATING shit.

Ask not what business can give you, but what you can give to your business!

LET GO of materialism. It’s over rated anyway.

I would WAY rather have huge income and huge asset gain then go and blow money on “stuff”. And so would every other guy I know who is worth talking to.

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I have a confession to make: I abuse social media.

Not because I spam it… or… at least… not because I spam it because I’m greedy or lazy.

No. My abuse stems from a different source. I lack time.

I lack the time to participate as a proper contributive member of social media. And then I complain about the poor quality results I find in my favorite social news sites.

I’m the worst kind of social media abuser: I participate solely for my own promotion, and then expect the site to somehow work effectively without my genuine input as a contributive member.

Here’s a list of the abusive things I do:

1. I vote for stories without reading them. I know I shouldn’t, but I know I need to vote for other people’s stories because I want to seem like I’m an active member. I’m not really - I don’t have the time to be.
2. I sometimes vote for every story. Heck, that gets my name in front of everyone, and it seems like I’m spreading love - not just spreading myself. Which is what I am really doing.
   
3. I submit only my own stories. Never anyone else’s. I’ll vote for other stories sure… but… I’ll never submit them.
4. I collude with people who think how I think. Or at least, people who pretend to be like me.

I do more things than this. But these are the main things I do that come to my mind.

I don’t really feel guilty either. Why should I?

Business is hard. Even when the money is flowing in, there’s more problems then when there is NO money flowing in. There’s always an employee out of line, a project running late, an adwords campaign that’s failing, a competitor one upping me in the serps.

There’s always something else I could be doing that would bring me more money. And an easier life.

Sometimes I think that I should focus on giving… and I want to… and if the day comes where I’m far enough ahead - I will…

… I definitely will…

(Can you recognize someone else in there? Maybe even YOURSELF a little? I know I see some of myself in there… maybe not all of it, but some of it…)

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What’s with all the people posting “Content is King” everywhere?

When I scroll through a lot of the comments I’ve gotten recently, I see this marching band of people repeating “Content is King” like some kind of droid army.

Let me ask you a question: if content is King… what IS content? Can you define it?

Content is a generalization word that really means STUFF ON A WEB PAGE. So when you’re writing “Content is King”… what you’re really saying is “Stuff is King”. Which is meaningless. It’s so general it could be anything.

So allow me to assign some values to “Stuff” so that we’ve got some kind of a map to work with when we produce content which brings traffic… or generates leads… or creates sales… or gets people talking back you on your blog to create community… or gets people to opt in… or gets people linking to you… or…

HANG ON - I JUST REALIZED THAT WE NEED TO HAVE A LIST OF OUTCOMES WE WANT TO ACHIEVE BEFORE WE CAN START CREATING CONTENT - actually, I didn’t just realize that, I just felt like shouting a little.

Anyway, let me list for you a few things “stuff on a web page” can achieve (in random order):

• Social Media bookmarks - both links and traffic.
• Getting feedback and social proof
• Creating community
• Getting real life word of mouth viral traffic - people talking about you between themselves.
• Creating a bond and trust between you and your reader.
• Getting people signed up for future contacts - through opt in forms, RSS feeds, giving you their phone number, or whatever.
• Generating one way links.
• Influencing someone enough to have them fork over some of their hard earned cash to you (or your business system).
• And much more…

The thing is though, you need to understand that each out come is not only different, it requires a different approach and a different communication toolkit.

For example: when I’m bonding with my readers, I like to write super obscure headlines. The total opposite of hype or controversy. My post The Cannibal Consumerism Polarity Dilemma is a good example of a bonding post. It’s also a good example of a peice of writing that creates a paradigm shift - which in turn increases people’s tendency to regard me as someone worth listening to, simply because of the communication skillz it takes to write paradigm shifts.

Whatever.

The point is: when I execute “Stuff on a Web Page”, I am doing it for a very tangible COMMUNICATION/OUTCOME reason - not simply because I think “Stuff on a Web Page” is the right thing to do.  I have a map in my mind of the outcome I’m shooting for - and whether I hit it or not - I’m consciously choosing tools from my toolkit to hit my target.

Notice I didn’t use the word “quality” once. I wonder why that is?

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Wow, how do you like the headline of this post? Cool huh?

I like it anyway.

Anyway, onward to the point of this post:

One of the things that really made a big difference to my abilities as an entrepreneur is when I stopped thinking like a consumer. I stopped thinking about material things I could obtain with money. I stopped reading books about luxury houses. I stopped reading magazines with $180,000 watches in them. I stopped fantasizing about what it would be like to rent a $400,000/week super yacht in the Mediterranean.

I realized that a lot of the self help, goal setting, business success books are just PLUMB WRONG.

Heck, I had lists of lists of everything I would buy when I finally make my $100 million. And one day, I just threw them out. Adios! I don’t want to think about that anymore.

I mean, many people who teach motivation and success encourage you to think about what it will be like “once you’ve made it” right? It’s all about pain/pleasure, and the payoff for going through the hard yards.

But you know what?

If you’re in it for the money, you’ll never be any good. You’ve got to be in it because you love THE GAME.

While you’re obsessing about the Ferrari you’ll drive once you force yourself to read those books on marketing funnels, or effective outsourcing => I’m obsessing about those books subject matter, simply because I like learning and implementing business strategy so much.

And guess what? I’m not alone. The guys I’ve been meeting and hanging out with lately are the same as me, perhaps even more so.

I once cared about the Ferrari, and marble basin, and the heated floors. Now all I care about is THE GAME. The game of business, of acquiring skills, of achieving things for the sheer enjoyment of it.

Not because I want to be a bigger consumer.

Consumers are my target. The more consumers who consume through my business system: the more choices I get to make over the direction of my life. But ultimately, consumers have almost no choices.

And because I realize that I don’t think like a consumer any more; I realize that always focusing on becoming a bigger one would NEVER have lead me to where I am now.

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What commonalities do: Permission Marketing, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, Positioning: The Battle For You Mind, One Minute Manager, Think & Grow Rich, etc. etc. have with each other?

Answer: They were THE book that got the Author famous.

Everything written after the first book is written to monetize the perception the first book created.

It’s how experts get the largest return possible on the time and sacrifices they made to get as good as they are - and I don’t resent them for it one bit.

I just don’t waste my time or money (anymore) reading the brand leveraged books that come after the first one.

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It took me many years of perusing blogs before I started to think that writing one would be a good idea.

For me the tipping point was when I could see that as a reader, reading a blog would be better than reading a book.

And that is only true when the blog has functionality that a book doesn’t.

For example: Good bloggers link to reference sources in each post. If they are writing about something they read about somewhere else, then they link to it.

This allows the reader to go read the source information if they choose - something that a book just can’t do.

Also, blogs encourage consumerism. A very important aspect that hasn’t really been discussed very much. Perhaps this is because the plugins to encourage consumerism are not well known or difficult to install. Personally I took several weeks (of admittedly half hearted attempts) to get my “Related Posts” functionality up and running.

But “Related Posts” is of critical importance to get readers of your blog to consume your content.  It allows the one time reader to peruse multiple posts that you’ve written on topics that interest the reader - it’s like the ultimate content cross sell - constantly engaging the reader with this dialogue:

“If you found this interesting, you may find this other related thing interesting, or this one, or this one, or this one… ”

And… Once they’ve read the next one, they’ll probably read the one after that.

I also think having a “these are the best 5 posts of this blog as voted by its readers” plugin is paramount as well - however - I’ve not looked hard enough to find that one yet. So if you know where I can get it, please post a comment.

Ultimately the more socially judge-able you allow your blog to be, the higher your readership will become. Because it becomes a self fulfilling consumerism, and social proof system - assuming you’ve got an angle on a subject, or a writing style, people want to read.

If you don’t that’s ok too - I write blogs solely to sell stuff, and I don’t spend as much time on the content as I do getting them ranked. It’s just that those markets have short attention spans and high volume sales with lower price points.

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