by Ramit Sethi - Amazon S3...Part of the Earn1k series to help you earn thousands of dollars of side income — every month. 1 Introduction1 Why earning money is critical to living

Part of the Earn1k series to help you earn thousands of dollars of side income — every month.

by Ramit Sethi

The proven, step-by-step guide to finding ONE profitable idea – and turning it into instant side income

http://earn1k.com/idea-discount-signup

http://findyourfirstprofitableidea.com/

Part of the Earn1k series to help you earn thousands of dollars of side income — every month.

1 Introduction 1

Why earning money is critical to living a rich life

Why you should earn more on the side

The “$100 Test” to find your one guaranteed business idea

Ignore your clueless friends about money

The 3-Step Roadmap to turn Ideas into Income

2 Step 1. Generate Ideas 16

How to come up with ideas

Why you should think about services, not skills

Where to get business ideas from your everyday life

Be a producer, not a consumer

How to expose yourself to new ideas all the time

Step 1: Action Steps

3 Step 2. Validate Ideas 32

The critical step that everyone misses

How to validate your idea using the “Pay Certainty” Test

How to evaluate and eliminate 90% of your ideas in minutes

Getting free help from real experts

The Ask Without Selling Technique


4 Step 3. Get Your First Sale 49

Why most advice about selling is terrible

How much you should charge, anyway?

My 5 Favorite Selling Strategies

The Direct Method

The Middleman

The Internship

The Free Trial

The Barter System


5 Putting It All Together 63

6 Bonus Materials 66

CONTENTS


1Find Your First ProFitable idea


IntroductionIntroduction


Find Your First ProFitable idea


Introduction 2

Why earning money is critical to living a rich life

I want to spend some time talking about why earning money is so important. You’ll see this as a recurring theme in this material: While others jump ahead straight to the tactics, extraordinarily successful people recognize that understanding the why is as important as understanding the how.

In this section, I’ve illustrated why earning money is so powerful — including examples of how you can use new earnings — to give you an intellectual framework that will guide you as you turn your skills into income.

Here’s something interesting I’ve learned from writing about personal finance for over 6 years: Your friends will think it’s weird that you’ve paid to learn how to earn more money. They might make fun of you, telling you that you’re being scammed. But most people are, by definition, ordinary. And when you start earning $500/month, or $1,000/month, or even more, they will suddenly have astonishingly different reactions: “I wish I could do that,” they’ll say. Or, “You’re so lucky... you can take a trip every month.”

Lucky? Hardly. You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. You’re going to change the way you think, from a me-focused approach to a market-focused approach.

But it starts with understanding why virtually everyone talks about cutting back on minor expenses... and virtually nobody talks about earning more.

Introduction




Introduction 3

There’s a reason most personal-finance pundits don’t talk about earning more:

They don’t know how.

They work 9-5 jobs with ordinary salaries. Virtually all of their strategies involve cutting back on things — often things you love. How often have you heard an “expert” say:

“No, you can’t spend money on lattes” “No, you can’t afford those shoes” “No, you can’t go on vacation”

Who wants to live like that?

Yes, frugality matters. If I hear another person earning $40,000 buying a $250,000 house, I am going to ingest 400 meth pills, ride the Gravitron, then submerge myself in an icy bath of Formalin to make the doctor’s job easier.

I have a different approach.

To live a richer life, spend extravagantly on the things you love... as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.

To do that, I use the CEO Strategy:

Cut costs + Earn more + Optimize your spending

Notice how cutting costs is just a small part of the total equation?

The truth is, a high salary solves most financial problems. You can save more. You can spend more. And interestingly, the more you earn, the easier it gets to earn even more — with less time.

To live a richer life, spend extravagantly on the things you love... as long you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.

Why earning more beats frugality




Introduction 4

“But Ramit,” people cry, “a high salary doesn’t mean anything if you can’t control your spending!” Of course. But what’s harder: getting a high salary or controlling your spending?

If those critics are honest, they’ll admit that they’re simply lobbing that argument to justify why they don’t earn more. I have systematically and dramatically increased my earnings over the past few years. And while I certainly spend more than before, I still control my spending — and there is simply no way I would have been in this position had I only focused on cutting costs.

There’s something critical to understanding why earning more is more important than cutting back.

There’s a limit to how much you can cut. But there’s no limit to how much you can earn.

Let’s look at these two examples of Jack and Jill’s money approaches.

I made almost $20,000 in new sales in the last week.

In Earn1K I learned that you don't need to know everything to be an expert, you just need to know more than the people paying you.

I also raised my prices 20-30% for my previous technical work and made sure I'm doing top-notch work that will earn more referrals. I'm working almost half the amount of time I did a year ago. Now I'm even more confident that I'll always find someone who needs me, and I know that it will be worth my time.

Richard earn1k alumni

The more you cut back, the harder it gets




Introduction 5

Jack decides to cut back:

After a few months, what else can Jack do? He’s cut 20% off his budget. But now he’s left with several tough choices: Should he cut back on going out to eat 5 times per month? Or his $10/month Netflix account? Or maybe he can stop buying a new shirt, which he only buys once/year.

Not only is Jack stuck, he’s created a situation where he’s resentful of his money, since it’s actively depriving him of the things he loves.

How long until he yo-yos back into spending more?

Compare this to Jill. Jill decides to cut back a little, but focus on earning more:

Jack would have to cut back on 100 lattes or 6 months of cable just to save what Jill would earn in a month. Of course, if Jill doubled her hourly rate, she could easily make an extra $400. But Jack would have to struggle to save another $400 on top of what he’s already given up.

Action Amount Earned per Month

Finds something she likes, spends 5 hours each weekend and charges $20/hour

$400

Total: $400

Action Monthly Amount Saved

Drink 1 less latte per week $20

Buy groceries in bulk $30

Go out 4 fewer nights per month $200

Cancel cable bill $50

Eat out 5 times a month instead of 8 $100

Total: $400




Introduction 6

There’s a special wrinkle in the CEO Model: When it comes to “Earning more,” you could negotiate a higher salary, switch to a higher-paying job, sell a product, sell a service, sell your old stuff on eBay... there are a million examples.

Which should you do? At some point, all of them. But we have to pick and choose our battles carefully since we have limited time and resources.

When you earn money on the side, you get several unique advantages:

· it protects you in case you lose your job. Just like diverse investments, diverse income streams help minimize your risk and can some pressure off an unexpected job loss. (Think about it: If you’re earning $2,000/month on the side and you get laid off, how would you feel? Compare that to your co-worker, who has nothing to fall back on.)

· it gives you options , like the option to run your own business someday. Or to experiment with a new field of work while keeping your day job, rather than taking a leap of faith on something you’re not sure about.

· it’s intellectually stimulating. This stuff isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. That’s why you see people whining about finding their magical idea, but taking no concrete steps to learn how to do it. The fact that you’ve taken action separates you from 99% of other people.

· you can earn money on the side for the rest of your life. If you earn $1,000/month, or $2,000/month, or even $5,000/month, you can earn that money on the side for the rest of your life. You can decide how much time you want to spend. But once you crack the code of turning your skills into income, you can always tap into that whenever you need it.

Why You Should Earn More on the side

You can earn money on the side for the rest of your life.




Introduction 7

And if you eventually decide to take your side earnings full-time, the sky’s the limit on what your lifestyle can look like:

· susan su is a freelance writer and marketer who worked with me on several projects, including Earn1K. Despite a busy schedule, she has the flexibility to always take time off in the middle of the day — every day! — to go to yoga class and run errands while everyone else is at work.

· lea and Jonathan WoodWard have been traveling around the world since 2007, all while raising a very young child. They both started as freelancers working abroad and now also sell products via their website, Location Independent. Their cost of living is less than it would have been had they stayed in their home country, the UK.

· elizabeth a. started as a business consultant for several years. Her experience landed her a high-paying job at a major consulting firm, who even paid her to go to business school. She recently started her own technology business and now runs it full time, occasionally consulting on the side for fun.

Three different amazing lifestyles, but each of them started with the same thing: a profitable business idea.


http://locationindependent.com



Introduction 8

We’ve talked about why earning money is far more powerful than trying to cut back on small costs. But what can you do with the extra money? Let’s get specific with 5 of the most common uses of extra money. And let’s assume that you’re making an extra $1,000/month on the side.

1 Rapidly pay off debt

That’s over $10,000 in savings on interest alone.

2 Quit your godforsaken job and work for yourself — doing what you love

Let’s say you’re working at a job you kinda like, but you know there’s more out there... and you can’t imagine doing this for the next 10 years.

Say you need $3,000/month for your basic monthly expenses. You would be willing to quit and do something else, but you want to have at least 6 months of expenses ($18,000) in the bank.

5 examPles How You Can Use $1,000/Month

saving for a living expense fund

If you’re currently saving.. It would take you this long to save $18,000

$200 / month 7 years and 6 months

$1,200 / month 1 year and 3 months

paying off a $10,000 credit card debt at 15% interest

If your monthly payment is...

You’ll pay this much interest

Over this time period

The minimum $11,979 35 years and 4 months

The minimum + $500/month

$1,085 Only 16 months




Introduction 9

Many of my students have done exactly that. Here’s Earn1k graduate Andrew, sharing how he did it:

Two months ago I started doing some freelance work, and that worked out pretty well for me. It was a small job, but I did the best I could, and in the last four days or so, they actually offered me to freelance for them full-time. So now I’m leaving my office job this week, and I’m going full-time freelance as of next week!

Andrew Baber earn1k alumni

What a little extra income can do for your savings

Additional income Value if invested for 40 years at 8%

$100 / month $351,428

$300 / month $1.1 million

$1,000 / month $3.5 million

3 Save and invest the extra money

Sometimes you don’t need the money for anything specific like debt or a new job. You just want to prove that you can do it — and let the money grow for you.

In that case, the numbers are incredibly powerful.

4 Paying off a mortgage

With large numbers like mortgages, putting even $100 extra/month towards it can dramatically change how much you pay in interest. What about $1,000/month? See for yourself:




Introduction 10

First, I doubled my monthly student loan payment. Second, and with 90% of the money I have started aggressively saving in emergency and “fuck you” money accounts. This is not because I would like to be insanely wealthy and retire on a beach somewhere, but because in the past I have made career decisions based solely on money. I do not want to do that any more. My true long-term goal is to never have to make a career decision where money is the prime factor.

One more thing, I am going to go huge for a few days in Vegas when I reach $20k in extra income earned.

Chris Clark earn1k alumni

5 Living it up

Personally, I love Vegas and flying around to take ridiculous weekend trips. Here’s what an extra $1,000/month can do:

· tWo 2-Week overseas vacations, including flights and 5-star hotel

· buy 20 pairs of Jimmy choo shoes

· travel Full-time (almost)

I’m a fan of conscious spending. If you have the money and value trips to Vegas or buying new shoes, earning more can let you spend on the things you love — guilt-free.

What a little extra income can do for your mortgage

Additional income Interest saved if used to pay off your mortgageBased on a 4%, $300,000, 30-year mortgage

$100 / month $28,746

$300 / month $67,393

$1,000 / month $128,549


http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/cheap-travel



Introduction 11

The $100 Test In my full Earn1K course, I cover the process of making your first $1,000 on the side in comprehensive detail from crafting a service, to pricing, marketing, pitching, and even setting up semi-automated referral systems. It’s a complete program for starting and growing your own side business.

But I noticed something interesting: The number one sticking point people have, by far, is finding a good idea to move forward with. Once I help people identify a profitable idea, the rest is relatively easy. In fact, many of my students report that it was easier to double their hourly rates than it was to find their first profitable idea!

In the past I’ve kept pursuing loser ideas which wastes time and is distracting. I’ve learned I don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make a successful freelancing job. If you find something profitable and find a better way to do it, then that’s a perfectly good scenario. I have found at least 3 small businesses that are willing to pay someone to come in monthly and virus check/clean their computers — didn’t think there would be a market for that.

Craig Goodwinearn1k alumni

That’s why I created Find Your First Profitable Idea – because I know that finding a good, proven idea and getting your first paid client is a foundational step in earning more.

Let me tell you what you can expect by the end of this program: at least one business idea that is guaranteed to be profitable. How will you know it’s profitable? Because you’ll have made at least $100 with that idea.

Notice I didn’t talk about how you’ll feel, or how your “spirit” will be lighter, or how your eyes will twinkle and the sun will shine brighter. I talked about a concrete, measurable result for two reasons:

The focus on specificity and measurable results scares away people who don’t want to take this seriously. (These are the kind of people who join woo-woo courses that talk about “spirit” and “growth” and “being free” but never actually guarantee specific results.)

In exchange for being specific, I get to hold you accountable for taking specific actions. This means that in the exercises you’ll read — which are quite challenging — I expect you to follow them closely. We have tested our process well and we know it works... if you follow through.




Introduction 12

Going from $0 to $100 is difficult.

Going from $100 to $1,000 is easier.

And surprisingly, going from $1,000 to $5,000 is even easier.

Once you validate your idea with $100, you’ve crossed the bridge that 99% of people never will. You KNOW that your idea is profitable. Now it’s simply a matter of “tuning” your revenues to grow as much as you want.

When it comes to starting a business, most people have no idea what they are talking about. Yet they will talk as if they know everything!

“Are you really sure you want to pay for a course? I think it seems scammy.”

“How are you going to charge that much? I would never pay that.”

“Don’t you need an MBA/business license to do that?”

“Yeah, I think I’m going to try something like that when I get some free time…”

They will say this with remarkable conviction. Yet if you ask them one simple question — “So how much do you earn on the side each month?” — they will quickly mumble something and suddenly leave the room to take a mysterious phone call.

Ignore Your Friends About Earning Money. They are clueless!

Before this, I was wasting time shotgunning résumés, writing cover letters, making shitty portfolios, making robots from scratch, unsolicited engineering design analyses—-anything and everything to get a new job.

I got zero responses. I was an aimless, desperate mess. I was so discouraged and embarrassed that I just played videogames all day.

You and your team taught me to choose one path, and if I didn’t love it: Fail cheap, fail fast, and move on! Having focused on one field for 8 weeks, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with it! I was able to see actual results (3 job interviews) from persistently focusing my efforts on one goal.

Eugene Yeeearn1k alumni




Introduction 13

Here’s the most common mistake people make when starting to earn money. They fixate on an idea without ever testing to see if anybody wants — and WILL PAY FOR — their idea.

Without paying customers, you don’t have a business, you have a hobby. This is why you see people who believe they have an “amazing idea” and, six months later, they’ve set up a Twitter account, Facebook account, blog...only to find out much later that nobody wants what they’re selling. The worst part is they could have easily figured that out in the beginning, had they taken just a little time to test their idea first.

This is precisely what you will learn in this program. Your idea matters — but the way you test it matters even more. You will not end up like these people because you’ll do the challenging work of validating your idea up front instead of wasting 9 months on a doomed idea. There is a better way, but it’s counterintuitive.

Day 1 Month 1 Month 6

What most people do Take the first business idea they like and run with it. Start getting their business cards and website ready!

Look for work anywhere and everywhere. Try a new marketing tactic every day with no sense of direction.

Either give up completely, chase some elusive “passive income” dream or hop from one bad idea to the next forever (and the cycle continues).

What YOU will do Organize all your ideas first, then evaluate your list to choose the best idea to test.

Take the time up front to validate and refine your idea before looking for work. When ready, start targeted, strategic client outreach.

Invoice your multiple clients while sipping mai tais on the beach (results not typical).

YOU vs. THEM: The First 6 Months




Introduction 14

Your roadmaP How to Turn Ideas into Income

action steP Set Your Goals 10 minutes

There is a better way, but it’s counterintuitive.

It involves rapidly coming up with several ideas, then using several techniques — which I’ll teach you here — to validate your ideas before doing anything else. Your first idea may not make the cut. Your second idea might not, either. But once you find a profitable idea, you’ll know that it’s the right idea for you.

The magic is not in the idea, but in the process of validating it — which virtually nobody else does.

Here’s the 3-step process you’ll use to turn ordinary ideas into real income:

steP 1. Generate ideas: First, you’ll come up with a big list of business ideas, many of them from sources you might not have explored before.

steP 2. Validate your ideas: Once you get all your business ideas in one place, you need some sort of filter. In this step, you’ll weed out the bad ideas from the good until you’re left with the very best.

steP 3. Get your first sale: Once you have a solid, market-confirmed idea, it’s time to find real work. You’ll learn our favorite methods of getting your first client fast – even if you have little or no experience.

I want to remind you that once you have these three skills, they can be applied over and over again throughout your career. New ideas can be quickly developed, tested, and sold to create instant new income streams. That’s where real, life-changing income can be built.

Remember, your immediate goal by the end of this program is to have one good idea that has earned you at least $100. Once you have that, it becomes much easier to scale that into $1,000 and beyond.

For now, I want you to write down some of your medium and long-term goals. Having these goals is an important form of committing yourself to something, and I want you to commit right now to earning more money.




Introduction 15

How much do you want to be consistently making, outside your job, 6 months from now? Be specific. “As much as possible” isn’t useful or specific enough. Pick something like the following specific goals: $200 a month within 3 months, or $500 a month by April, or even $1,000 a month by October.

Why do you want this extra money? What’s your end goal? You’re probably not just doing this for fun. Are you doing this to pay down debt? Fund a trip somewhere? Build the skills you need to quit your own job? Having an ultimate goal beyond just the money will help keep you motivated when things get tough. You’ll be able to remember why you’re putting all this hard work in — it’s to achieve your larger goals.

To me, for some reason, goal setting sounded a lot like “just believe in yourself and you’ll go far lol!”. Now I’m understanding how it actually gives focus and direction and is a basic tool for getting results. It makes me think that the reason people have a hard time being specific was because we didn’t have the habit of making clear goals. Just with goal setting my behavior has gone from watching TV and bullshitting around my house, to making serious progress to earn money. So far I’ve earned $200 doing my current freelancing gig.

Abraham Sanchezearn1k alumni




Step 1: Generate Ideas




Step 1: Generate Ideas 17

Step 1: Generate Ideas

Let’s get started. Remember, here’s the 3-step process you’ll go through:

The first step is to brainstorm a bunch of ideas and get them down in one place. Unfortunately, most people don’t even get this first step right.

What most people do What YOU will do

Find every reason possible to reject the process:

“I don’t even have any ideas!”

“This idea will never work.”

“I don’t have enough experience do this.”

“It’s already been done by someone else.”

“What about taxes and stuff?”

Get every idea down on paper, regardless of how silly some of them might sound. Ignore objections at first, which will allow you to think creatively. Realize that ideas that sound bad might turn out to be good, and vice versa.

YOU vs. THEM: Brainstorming Ideas

steP 1 steP 2 steP 3Generate

IdeasValidate

Your IdeasGet Your First Sale





By the end of this section, you’ll have an organized list of at least 50 business ideas, and ideally many more than that. They won’t all be good (in fact, many of them will be terrible) but I’ll bet there’s at least a few that will be. Those are the ones we’re after.

Indie wedding DJing

I brainstormed all my skills and picked DJing because it was a skill that I knew I wouldn’t have to develop before selling it. I then sent out a survey to acquaintances and figured out that most people generally won’t pay a lot of their own money for a DJ, unless it is for a wedding. That was how I picked weddings as a starting point.

Indie music is what I know best and I had included some questions in the survey about if people were interested in hearing that type of music at their events. I overwhelmingly was told that this was a good idea… at that point I knew I had something.

Since that time I have played at 5 events and have another 6 booked so far for next year.

Justin Jacquesearn1k alumni

Membership-model business consulting

I came into this week having no idea what to do for my side business. Working through the activities helped me to focus on my skills and look toward developing a consulting business focused toward businesses that are looking to grow and maintain enrollments and memberships and attract new customers. (i.e. Golf courses, dance or music schools, gyms, minor league teams)

Amy Calhounearn1k alumni

Making custom crochet plush dolls for collectors

I was already making these dolls for fun in my spare time. I realized that my movie/game/comic-book based character dolls were getting a lot of interest from my male co-workers and that these guys (male, 20-40 years old, geeky, earning $40k and up per year, and used to spending $60-$200 on “collectible” items) were a great target market. You can’t sell handcrafted yarn dolls to women; they aren’t generally into specific characters the way men are... But male geeks employed in tech jobs who consider themselves collectors? Easy sell.

Maggie Wangearn1k alumni





brainstorming How to come up with ideas

Most people make this step way too complicated, usually because they’re looking for ideas that are clever and unique. If that’s your goal, that’s great, but it’s definitely not a prerequisite to making money.

One of my favorite personal finance books, The Millionaire Next Door, observes that most rich business owners work in “dull-normal” industries: carpenters, dry-cleaners, vacuum services, etc. Not exactly sexy, but what would you rather be: sexy or rich?

The same applies to freelancing. Here are a few real-life examples:

· John z. did well on his SATs, so he started doing college prep tutoring for high school students. He got as many clients as possible, then started rapidly raising his rates until only his top clients remained. He now charges $80/hour, meaning he can work just 10 hours a week and still earn $40,000 a year.

· Jackie schmidt is a violin instructor and Earn1K member. You wouldn’t think that art/music teachers could earn much at all, but with good positioning and a smart referral strategy she procured $81,000 in new business in 8 weeks of Earn1k.

In short, if you’re trying to earn money, you can do very well by simply brainstorming ideas that already exist in some way. No need to invent the wheel (although, if you do come up with a clever idea, by all means keep it).

Here’s what to do: get a sheet of paper or open up a text document. I want you to begin by simply brainstorming each and every freelance service you find the slightest bit interesting. Get it all down on paper.

The key to this well is to not edit yourself. Don’t worry if you think “nobody wants this,” or “I’m not qualified to do this.” Write it down anyways. This is an exercise in coming up with ideas – you’ll do massive edits on the list later.

Try to come up with at least 50 ideas, though I bet most of you can come up with more.


!Find Your First ProFitable idea



A quality is something useful about you, like “I’m good with dogs.” A service, on the other hand, is something that solves a problem or delivers a benefit, like “I can help you train your pets.”

It’s key that you start thinking about business ideas in terms of services, not qualities. Most people have an approach to work that goes, “Here’s what I’m good at, do you have any work for me?” And of course, they get ignored because they haven’t taken the time to communicate what problem they can actually help solve.

Here’s a tip: To check if your service is actually a service, you should be able to explain it by saying, “I can help you (some service) so that you can (some benefit).” Here are a few examples of qualities that can be positioned as services:

Quality Possible Related Service

Great with animals

Pet Sitting: “I can help you watch your pets while you’re on vacation, so

you can relax and enjoy yourself knowing your pet is taken care of.”

PowerPoint whiz

Presentation Design: “can help you create business presentations so you

can save time and money while looking good for your clients.”

Good communicator

N/A: Sorry, there isn’t really a corresponding service for this. Being a

good communicator is necessary in order to do business, but it’s kind of

meaningless on its own.

Think about services, not skills





When you find yourself thinking about your skills, always take it a step further and ask, “How can this be translated into a service?”

Also, your service should always tie into some benefit – an end result that the client would actually care about. Let’s say you’re great with Photoshop (skill) so you decide to do web design (service). But your clients don’t care about web design – they care that a good-looking website has increased credibility (benefit). And ultimately, what they really care about the increased sales as a result of that credibility (“end” benefit).

Or perhaps you’re a great test-taker and educator (skill), so you decide to tutor high-school math and English (service). The benefit to your client, who in most cases would be a parent, is that you’ll get their kid into the college of their dreams. And of course the end benefit is the pride and relief they’d feel once that happened.

Pretend you’re the client and ask, “so what?” Oh, you offer project management services? So what, why would I care? …It will save me time, headache, and money? Tell me more!

This seems simple, but clients often don’t make the connection between service and benefit - you make it clear to them. It’s also a great practice for getting inside your client’s head and figuring out what they want, which is all that matters.

Think about services, not skills





Start by examining your own life and the things you do on a regular basis. Start with these 5 areas:

· Your skills

· Your hobbies

· Websites you visit regularly

· Tools or applications you use

· Subjects of nonfiction books and magazines you read

As my friend Ben Casnocha says, what do you do on a Saturday afternoon? Do you read fashion magazines? Then maybe you should look at how you can help out fashion writers/bloggers.

Do you build things out of wood? What problems can you solve for either (1) other wood craftsmen or (2) people who want wood furniture in their homes?

You see what I’m getting at.

You’ll be surprised at how many seemingly mundane activities can be converted into potential business ideas. Even IWTYTBR staff started out by taking regular things they were already doing and simply charging for it:

· Jeff kuo was a student who did a lot of research, so he ended up becoming a book researcher.

· i was a tech-savvy 20-something, so I taught venture capitalists about websites like MySpace.

· matt had dogs… so he started a dog-walking business.

What services can you come up based on the above 5 areas? Write your answers down and see how those can be converted into services. See the table below for an example of what that might look like.

Remember: Don’t worry yet whether it’s realistic or if people would pay for it. Just brainstorm.

Where to Get Business Ideas From





Are any of these ideas particularly great or original? Not really. But they’re all real services that people out there are actually doing (yes, even dog hiking). Actually, pets have some of the weirdest services associated with them because pet owners are incredibly protective and irrational of their pets — and they’ll pay virtually anything to help them lead a better life.

I find this bizarre as I have no pets and hate animals, but I recognize that I may be in the minority. For example, I know a girl who trains cats to pee

Area Answers (example) Potential Services (example)

Your skills

Speaking English and Spanish

Language tutoring

Designing PDFs eBook design

Finding information online

Web research

Your hobbies

Video games Game testing

Socializing Social skills coaching

Hiking Probably nothing… unless you also happen to be good with dogs, in which case you can take dogs hiking. It’s a stretch, but that’s the point of the exercise.

Websites you visit

regularly

YouTube Optimize web videos

Facebook Helping promote and coordinate community events

Music blogs Write music reviews

Tools or

applications

you use

PowerPoint Create business presentations

Excel Analyze sales data

Wordpress Set up websites for new bloggers

Subjects of

nonfiction books

or magazines you

read

Personal development

Motivational coaching

Health and fitness Personal fitness training

Personal finance Help people cut costs on living expenses





Remember what your goal is: to find that one good idea and make $100 from it.

by standing on the toilet seat. Sounds ridiculous, right? Maybe. But to her customers, it’s not. And she charges $500 per cat.

The point is that no matter how unimpressive your idea might be, if you can list it and validate it, you’ll find it very likely that someone’s making at least some money from it. Later, we’ll talk about picking the right idea later. For now, start brainstorming!

Remember what your goal is: to find that one good idea and make $100 from it. To do that, it’s best to get all your ideas down first, organize them, then filter out the good ones from the bad later. Otherwise, if you just went with the first idea you came up with, it would be too easy to second guess yourself later and jump from idea to idea.

So right now, brainstorm at least 50 business ideas and get them on paper. You can use the table below to start with, but your ideas don’t all have to be inspired from your own life. Know someone who does something cool that you might want to try one day? Write it down.

Do not censor yourself. It’s ok to have stupid ideas at this stage.

You’ll probably get some ideas that you already know you’re never going to do – that’s totally fine. You’re not going to try to make money from all these ideas right now. You’re just getting all your ideas down on paper. Later, you’ll pick out the ones that are best.

action steP #1 Brainstorm Ideas 30 minutes





Area Answers Potential Services

Your skills

Your hobbies

Websites you

visit regularly

Tools or

applications

you use

Subjects of

nonfiction

books or

magazines

you read





It’s easy to simply flip through these exercises and say, “Hm, yeah. I should do that. I’ll try to do it later.”

No you won’t.

My entire business is built upon being brutally realistic about our behavior.

Forget budgets — nobody keeps them.

Tax refund at the end of the year? Good! You would have spent it any way.

And no matter how many times people tell you to stop eating out, you’re going to ignore them.

All of those opinions are counterintuitive and controversial in the personal-finance world, but they’re also true.

Now here’s something else that’s true.

If you keep consuming information without doing anything about it, you will end up in the same place as you are right now.

STOP





anyone can buy a program and skim it. But not everyone can actually follow through with the exercises. They seem straightforward... until you actually do them.

They are actually quite difficult. That’s what distinguishes the people who do them vs. the people who simply consume them.

A consumer vs. a producer.

Which will you be?

Don’t move on until you’ve completed the last action step. Now, take all your service ideas and organize them by top-level fields.

Think of fields as the industries or “buckets” your services can fall into, but that aren’t specific services themselves. Some examples of fields:

· Business Management

· Marketing

· Automotive Services

· Design

· Personal Development

Organizing your business ideas into fields will make your life a lot easier later. So while right now you have a big list of unorganized ideas, here’s an example of what your part of your list might look like after you organized it into services and fields:

A consumer vs. a producer. Which will you be?

Organize Your Ideas into Fields





You get the idea. Pretty simple, but it will make your big list much easier work with. An added benefit is that thinking in terms of fields will help you come up with other, related services. What other marketing services are there? What other writing or pet care services can you come up with? Hint: Google “Pet care services” and you’ll find tons.

Now that you have a big list of ideas, it’s best to organize them somehow. Take all your business ideas and arrange them by their top-level field. Use the sample table below if you like, or create your own.

Once you’re done with that, give your list a quick once-over and jot down as many related services as you can for each field. Try to be as wide (multiple fields) and as deep (multiple services in each field) as possible.

Fields Services

Writing

Writing music reviews

Writing blog articles

Ghost writing

Sales page copywriting

Marketing

Affiliate marketing

Sales page copywriting (Some services will fall into multiple fields, and that’s okay)

Search engine optimization

Instruction

Music tutoring

Language tutoring

College prep

Personal fitness training

Pet Care

Dog walking

Dog grooming

Pet daycare

Pet food preparation

action steP #2 Organize into Services and Fields 15 minutes





Fields Services





You should have enough ideas now to get started, but you should also make an effort to come up with new ideas over time. Smart entrepreneurs are always learning and applying new ideas to their businesses, and I encourage you to do the same.

The two easiest ways to do this are (1) Read interesting things and (2) Talk to smart, interesting people.

Obviously these are good habits to have regardless, but for the sake of advancing your goal to earn more, pay particular attention to new and interesting ways people make money. This can mean reading small business magazines, or learning about a new industry, or trying to figure out what it means when someone says they’re a “workflow process engineer.” Don’t force it, but go after whatever you find interesting and let your curiosity take over.

I read a lot of marketing material, a lot of which I’ll apply to my own business. For example, here’s an article I read on REI’s return policy that motivated me to improve my own product guarantees. Totally different type of company, but a great lesson for any business.

Set aside some time (at least 30 minutes a week) to read something you find interesting about business, marketing or earning money in general. Here are some good places to get started:

My bookmarked articles on monetization

My bookmarked articles on marketing

Each week, get in touch with someone who’s making money in an interesting way. It can be a friend or just someone whose blog you read. Ask them how they got started in what they’re doing. Better yet, take them out to lunch if you can.

Continually Come Up with New Ideas

How to Expose Yourself to New Ideas All the Time


http://www.jondale.com/what-to/

https://del.icio.us/ramitsethi/monetization

https://del.icio.us/ramitsethi/marketing




If you want to start a business, the best $20 you’ll ever spend is to find successful entrepreneurs and take them out to lunch. They can be from your industry or other industries — it doesn’t matter. For example, if you’re interested in hospitality, you could pick up a hospitality magazine and see who’s doing interesting work. Then email them and ask to take them out to lunch.

Spend 90% of the time talking about them:

· Ask them how they did it.

· Ask them what mistakes they made along the way.

· In the final few minutes, you can ask about your idea. Is it crazy? What should you be thinking about?

After you meet two or three people, you’ll start to see patterns that you hadn’t recognized before. And that’s when you realize how powerful it can be to ask others for advice.

Yes, advice is cheap: Most people love talking about themselves. But entrepreneurs have a curious fascination with helping other entrepreneurs succeed. (At PBwiki, a Silicon Valley collaboration startup I co-founded, a bunch of us spend time each week meeting with first-time entrepreneurs and helping them brainstorm…and this is a common thing in Silicon Valley.)

People want to help you. All it takes is you reaching out.

This is a guest post I wrote on J.D. Roth’s blog, Get Rich Slowly.


http://www.getrichslowly.org



Step 2: Validate Your Ideas




Step 2: Validate Your Ideas 33

The Critical Step that Virtually Everyone Misses

By now, you should have a long list of business ideas written down, and you’ll definitely come up with more over time. Let’s talk about the next step: idea validation. You might think an idea is good, but how can you be sure? How can you knoW that an idea is worth pursuing?

Step 2: Validate Your Ideas


IdeasValidate


This is the step that really separates the methodical, strategic entrepreneurs from the ones who just jump in and hope for the best. I’ve seen it over and over: entrepreneurs who, months after starting their businesses, are still trying to figure out why they’re not making any progress. And the answer is usually the same: because their idea wasn’t feasible to begin with.

It’s not easy to hear, but it’s true. Most people could have saved 9 months of heartache with 2-3 weeks of work up front.

In fact, I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. A while ago, I spent several

months developing an eBook on a niche topic that I never ended up selling. The reason? There is no market of people who will pay a premium price for a product on that topic. People simply didn’t value it enough to pay for it. I got overexcited and jumped into the project headfirst, when I should have





done the research up front. I could have saved myself a lot of wasted time and money — and put that time into something more productive

You’re not going to make the same mistake. Instead, you’ll invest just a little time up front to get 99% certain your idea is a winner before pursuing it any further.


Don’t do any research on their field, industry or target market.

Do your homework before seeking out clients, so you know what the field looks like before you try to play in it.

Don’t talk to real, qualified people about their ideas. Brainstorm ideas in a room, alone, never sure if they’re right.

Talk to the experts who’ve already been there, whose insights could potentially save you weeks or months of wasted effort.

YOU vs. THEM: Validating Ideas

When you explain the idea of validating your idea before you invest significant time, you can hear the same reaction: “Yeah... that is interesting. Maybe I should do that.” It’s like telling someone they should lose weight. They “know” they should... but they won’t.

Why Don’t People Do This?





In our research, here are the most common reasons people don’t do customer research:

· Afraid of discovering their one idea will be proven to be unprofitable... and then what? (In reality, the idea is not your secret sauce, the validation process is.)

· Not sure how to actually do customer research (so they avoid it entirely)

· Worried about having to talk to people they don’t know (“What will I say?”)

· Not sure if they are serious enough about the project to do things like customer research

Notice how every first word of those bullet points is negative? That’s because avoiding customer research is never a reasoned, logical, conscious decision. It’s driven by fear and nervousness.

And that is what you will avoid.

By the end of this section, you’ll have taken all your ideas and identified which ones are good and which ones aren’t. We define “good” very simply: A “good” idea can get you 3 paying clients. Simple.

See, the problem with having so many ideas is you’re just not sure which will pay off. And nobody wants to spend 9 months pursuing a futile idea — only to discover you’ve made $0.46 in Adsense money — so we get stuck before we even start.

To do this, we’re going to use something I call the “Pay Certainty” Test, a technique that will let you eliminate half your ideas in less than 15 minutes.

When you apply the “Pay Certainty” Test, you can quickly “score” ideas to see if they have any real possibility of ever paying off — before you ever spend any time developing them.

how to validate Your ideas The “Pay Certainty” Test





Here’s how it works.

Take each of your ideas and write them on a piece of paper. Next to each idea, write down who would pay you for your service.

You should have a page that looks something like this:

Idea Who would pay?

Social media consultant for law firms Law partner

Motivational consultant 20-somethings looking for new jobs

Freelance nonprofit fundraiser Nonprofit executive directors

Music instructor Parents of ambitious children

Great. Now apply the “Pay Certainty” Test.

For each person who would potentially pay you, ask yourself:

· Is my prospect Willing and able to pay me for this service? Do they have money and do they want to spend it on my service? (The Demand Question)

· Am I Willing and able to provide this service to my prospect? Am I knowledgeable enough to provide this service? (The Supply Question)

Prospect willing and able to buy

Me willing and able to

provide

Good Ideas





This lets you instantly eliminate half of your ideas... that would never have earned you a dime.

Example: The “Pay Certainty” Test in action

Social media consultant for law firms

· Does a law firm partner have the ability to pay? Of course. Law firms have more money than god

· Does a law firm have the Willingness to pay for social media? Hell no. Law firms don’t care about social media. They recruit and market through other means.

· verdict: eliminate idea

Motivational consultant for 20-somethings looking for career change

· ability to pay; No. Most 20-somethings don’t have a ton of extra money to spend, especially on a motivational consultant. (Except for rare people like you, who are willing to invest in self development.)

· Willingness to pay: No. Even if they have money, when was the last time you had a 20-something friend say, “I really want to pay for a motivational consultant?” That’s right, never.

· verdict: eliminate idea

Music instructor for ambitious children — client is mother

· ability to pay: Yes. Parents of ambitious, successful children tend to be more affluent than those of average children

· Willingness to pay: Yes. Parents will spend virtually anything to ensure their child is successful, well-rounded, and gets into a top college

· verdict: great idea. pursue!

The “Pay Certainty” Test lets you rapidly eliminate bad ideas that would have never earned you a cent, and focus on the most promising ideas... ones that will almost certainly earn you significant amounts of money on the side.





The “Pay Certainty” Test lets you rapidly eliminate bad ideas that would have never earned you a cent, and focus on the most promising ideas... ones that will almost certainly earn you significant amounts of money on the side.

Here are a few more examples of how you might evaluate an idea using the “Pay Certainty” Test:

· You have a great service that you’re willing and able to provide, and your prospects love the idea too. The only problem is, they have no money to pay you for it. They’re Willing but not able to pay, so the test fails.

· You would love to do personal fitness training, and your prospects are willing and able to pay for such a service. Unfortunately you have no knowledge about personal fitness whatsoever. The test fails because you’re not able to provide the service (at least not yet).

This is so important to do, and yet it’s often glossed over by people who instead spend time worrying about other things, like whether they should register an LLC. Don’t skip this step!





The “Pay Certainty” Test: A Closer Look

Again, the “Pay Certainty” Test means that in order for an idea to be good, both you and your prospects have to be Willing and able to do business on it. Let’s look at each of these parts in detail:

The ProsPect must be willing to buy.

This is probably the most important piece of the equation, and unfortunately often the most overlooked. I bet you could throw out a lot of your initial ideas by just carefully thinking through this one question.

For example, I recently had someone ask me for help with his idea: He wanted to pitch well-known bloggers and offer to help them fix minor errors on their blogs (typos, formatting issues, etc.) on an ongoing basis. A noble service, and as a blogger, I’d say it’s definitely something that would be nice to have. But I asked him, “How important of a problem is this to your target market? Is your service something they’d care a lot about, or are they doing just fine without it?” When I framed the question to him like that, he quickly agreed that it wouldn’t make much sense to pursue.

Any time you have a business idea, ask yourself: Do people want to buy this? Do they want to buy it enthusiastically, urgently, even desperately (intense desires = more money)? And finally, what type of people (read: niche) wants to buy it most of all?





The ProsPect must be able to buy.

All this means is that the prospect has to have money. This sounds obvious, yet I still get stuff like this all the time:

“I want to help low-income families with their personal finances.”

“I want to work with students to get them more financial aid.”

“I want to write grants for non-profits. They like the idea but can never pay me. Help!”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for helping the disadvantaged, but they’re not who I’d target if my main goal was to make money. If you never get paid, you don’t have a business — you have a hobby. If your goal is to earn money, I recommend you avoid doing work targeted at non-profits, undergraduate students, bootstrapping startups, teenagers, people going through bankruptcy, or any other group that has little to no extra spending money.

Is it possible to make money by serving one of these groups? Could you catch a fish in the Sahara desert? Maybe, but it’s better to go fishing where the fish are. So go where the money is. Clients are easier to work with and the difference in pay can be dramatically higher – in some cases 10-100x more.

You must be willing to provide the service.

This is probably the easiest question to answer, and can be rephrased as: Would you enjoy doing this? If you think you might, that’s often good enough.





If you’re not quite sure, just go for it. One thing people don’t realize is that one of the quickest ways to enjoy something is to Win at it — so if you start earning thousands/month doing something, you’ll probably like it a lot. Counterintuitive, but true.

Also, chances are any idea you choose will have its ups and downs anyway, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. It’s not like you’re picking a career for life – your service can and probably will evolve, and you’ll enjoy it more as you work with better clients over time.

You must be able to provide the service.

This part throws a lot of people off, because we tend to second-guess ourselves. After all, we think, I’m decent but I’m not really an expert. Aren’t there a bunch of “real” experts out there who can do this way better than me?

Answer: Yes, but it doesn’t really matter. The truth is, there’s alWays going to be someone more skilled than you. Don’t worry about it – what matters is that you can deliver to your clients the value you promise them, not that you meet some arbitrary measure of expertise.

That said, you do need at least a basic level of competence before you start selling your service. Try to figure out what that minimum baseline is before deciding whether or to move forward with an idea. The nice thing is, just because you’re not able to provide a service today, doesn’t mean you won’t be some time in the near future.





Remember the two questions: (1) Is the prospect willing and able to pay? And (2) Am I willing and able to provide?

You’re actually going to run the “Pay Certainty” Test twice: First you’re going to do a preliminary gut check to quickly eliminate your “bad” ideas and choose the one you think is best. After that, you’re going to talk to real experts in order to validate and refine that idea. That’s because you have 50+ ideas right now, and you want to cut it down to just 1 best idea. Let’s do it.

The gut check is simple: Run the “Pay Certainty” Test against your whole list of ideas and separate the good ideas (the ones that pass the test) from everything else. Remember the two questions (1) Is the prospect willing and able to pay? And (2) Am I willing and able to provide?

Most of my students can instantly eliminate half their initial ideas using this simple technique. Think about how much time you just saved on futile ideas: If you spent 6 months executing each, you just potentially saved years of missteps. Is this exact? No. Is it a very, very rough approximation? Of course. Sure, you’ll be doing some guesswork, but that’s okay. We’re going for speed here, not total accuracy.

Action Step #1: The Gut Check (20 minutes)

Do The “Pay Certainty” Test now, using just your gut. Then write down the ideas that pass onto their own, “good ideas” list. Don’t worry about the other ideas, they’re not permanently rejected - they just didn’t make the cut today.

When you’re finished, you should hopefully have at least 3-5 potentially profitable ideas. Now pick the one idea you think is best. That’s highly subjective – maybe one idea is the most profitable, while another idea

the “PaY certaintY” test

First, Do a Gut Check





would be the most fun. At this point, there are no wrong answers, so just pick one to try for the time being.

If none of your ideas passed, try being a little more flexible, especially on the supply side (i.e., which idea you would be able and willing to provide a service for).

For example, let’s say you want to help businesses set up new blogs on Wordpress. The only problem is you don’t know how. Well, how long would it take you to learn this? A few weeks? A few months? If it’s anything less than 2 months, I’d pick this idea, take a month to learn it and then start selling it right away.

At this point, you’ve selected a single good idea. At least, you think it’s good. Now it’s time to find out for sure. You’re going to do this by talking to 20 qualified experts on the subject. Start with 3. These experts can be either people who would buy the service (prospects) or people who provide it (service providers).

Why is this important? First, so you can validate your assumptions about supply and demand are correct. But also because right now, you probably don’t know what you don’t know. Right now, you’re a newcomer who’s operating from a very finite point of view. By talking to just a few experts, you’ll get a much clearer view of the big picture and you’ll see what you’ve been missing. A conversation like this can seriously be the difference between thousands earned or lost.

Talking to other experts can be nerve-wracking, but I’ve got you covered. First, let me share some case studies of students who validated their ideas — including how they did it. Then I’ll give you specific steps to do it yourself.

the “PaY certaintY” test

Now, Ask the Experts





Case Study: How talking to experts helped David Saint cut his losses on a bad idea

David’s service idea was to film kids at their baseball games. That way, parents who were at the game could sit back, enjoy themselves, and still take home high-quality footage of their children playing ball. When I first heard this, I thought it was a great idea. Parents will pay anything for memories, right? But I’m not the expert: his prospect is.

So David went to an actual baseball game and shopped his idea around to some of the parents there. In short, they told him no. One parent said, “There are so many games, they all just kind of run together.” Who would ever expect a parent to say something like that? I’m quite shocked actually.

After talking to the experts, David said to us: “I got this idea a month ago. I spent all this time thinking up all these complex packages and pricing models and blah blah blah. Until I finally asked the customer if they wanted it and they said, ‘Meh.’ Lesson learned: first figure out if people want it.”

Getting an idea rejected doesn’t feel very good. But at the same time, it can be a relief – at least you avoided what would have otherwise been a huge sinkhole.

Case Study: How Aron Choi found an idea even better than his best

Other times, people won’t reject your ideas outright, but will instead suggest better alternatives. Aron wanted to use his photography skills to create high-quality marketing materials for real estate agents, particularly fliers promoting open houses. He found the contact information for a local real estate agent and sent him this great email:

Hi David,

My name is Aron and I wanted to see if you would have 5-10 minutes later

this evening to answer a few questions about a real estate related business I

am working on. I am currently just brainstorming various ideas to do some

freelancing on the side, and wanted to get your opinion about what type of

demand might be out there before jumping in.





[Add your own line explaining how you found their information, like “I came

across your website while doing some background research on the industry,

etc.]

I’d love to hop on a quick call sometime later today if you have a few minutes.

Thanks for your time!

– Aron Choi

Later that day, David and Aron talked on the phone. Here’s a key excerpt:

Aron: I was thinking of starting a freelance business handling offline

marketing materials for busy real estate agents, which would include

photography listings and creating fliers for them.

David: Let me tell you something. It’s tough to break into that market. There

are very experienced photographers out there you would have to compete

with, and there are also applications out there for creating fliers. You know

what would really help, if someone could help me find people who are

looking to sell or buy a house. I would be willing to split commissions with

you if you could help me find potential clients. I have to finish up some

work…please email me and we can find some time to talk again Friday or this

weekend.

This is an awesome example that shows just how powerful a short conversation with an expert can be. Not only did Aron learn something about his industry (that there was an established and competitive application process), but he discovered an even more critical desire of his target market (that they needed direct leads and were willing to pay good money for it).

He even got a follow-up opportunity with someone who now sounds like an interested prospect. This is the type of thing that can happen when you Ask Without Selling, another important concept I teach in Earn1K.





Here’s are 3 surprising things you need to know about meeting experts to pick their brain:

People want to help you — even if they’re often in the same industry.

When most people meet someone they want to learn from, they inexplicably spend time talking about themselves... which defeats the purpose of learning from the other person.

There is a specific way to ask questions and get great answers. We call it the Ask Without Selling technique.

When you ask someone questions without selling, you are there with a 100% focus on understanding their needs. What keeps them up at night? What are their top 3 challenges? If they could have a magic solution, what would it look like?

By withholding on the natural tendency to try to sell your service, you can actually have higher sales — because you’ll only suggest a solution when you knoW it will solve their problems. Compare this to sleazy salespeople, who try to shove their product/service down a prospect’s throat as quickly as they can.

Looking back to the example with Aron and his real-estate business, had Aron simply pitched David on his original idea, David would have probably just said “no” and Aron wouldn’t have gotten any of the great feedback he did.

The Ask Without Selling Technique





Think about it! What happens when you go to a website where they’re offering something that’s not specifically for you? Where it could just as well be for a 14-year-old girl? Be honest: What do you do?

Exactly. You close the website instantly and move on.

If your pitch isn’t precisely personalized to your prospect’s needs, it will fail. And to understand exactly what they need, you must ask without selling.

Below are some questions you can ask your experts to extract the information you need. Remember what you’re trying to confirm: That prospects are Willing and able, and that you also would be Willing and able.

Questions to ask prospects

· Have you ever paid for something like this?

· What’s your typical budget for these types of projects?

· How high of a priority is this to you?

· What factors are the most / least important to you when deciding who to hire?

· What has been your biggest frustration with service providers in the past?





Get in touch with 3 experts (the more the better). Get on the phone with them or take them out to coffee. It’s a small time investment that will pay huge dividends.

With the help of your experts, decide whether your idea passes or fails the “Pay Certainty” Test. If it passes, read on. If not, take a step backwards. Go back to your list of good ideas from the previous Gut Check, pick a new idea, and repeat until you have an idea you’re confident about.

Remember: At this point, you should have taken your 50 ideas and filtered it down to the very best one, using the “Pay Certainty” Test. In the next section, you’ll give your idea the final test by earning at least $100 with it.

Questions to ask providers

· What types of clients tend to be most receptive to this idea?

· How and where can I get in touch with prospects?

· What’s a reasonable rate to charge a client for someone at my skill level?

· Here’s my plan. Would you do anything differently if you were me?

· I’m new to this. What would be the most effective way to learn this skill on my own time?

You don’t need to prepare a laundry list of questions. Do your homework, show real interest, and most people would be more than happy to tell you everything you need to know.

action steP

Ask the Experts 3 hours




Step 3:Get Your First Sale




Step 3: Get Your First Sale 50

Step 3:Get Your First Sale

We’ve come to the final step in the roadmap:


IdeasValidate


By now you should have one solid, expert-approved business idea. But we’re not done yet. There’s one final test your idea needs to pass, and that’s getting your first paid sale of $100 or more. That’s what we’ll cover in this section.





Most Advice About Selling is Terrible

Do a search for “how to get your first client” and see what I mean. These days, it seems like the popular strategy for getting clients goes something like this:


Use a haphazard mix of 101 promotional strategies: attending conferences, writing press releases, painting ads on their cars, and basically working to optimize a business that doesn’t exist yet. Has no idea what’s working and what isn’t.

Use 1 or 2 methods to reach out directly to your targeted prospects. Observe what works best and improve it.

YOU vs. THEM: Selling Your Services

In other words, “do awesome stuff and let people come.” Sure, this can work for some people. But in my experience, it’s neither reliable nor particularly effective compared to your other options.

Instead, I recommend being as direct as possible, especially if you’re just starting out. That means finding prospects and pitching them with the intent to sell.

??? Profit!

Do cool things

Tweet a lot

Be part of the conversation

Be awesome

Be helpful on the forums





My 5 Favorite Selling Strategies

Sometimes doing free work up front will make you more in the long run.

Remember that your goal by the end of this section is to get your first paid sale of $100 or more. The following are my 5 favorite ways of getting your first client.

A few will get you paid from starting day 1, while others require you to put some extra work up front before you start making money. That’s not a bad thing though – depending on your situation, sometimes doing free work up front will make you more in the long run. We’ll look at each scenario individually:

· The direct method

· The middleman

· The internship

· The free trial

· The barter system

1. The Direct Method

The direct method is the simplest method of all: Reach out to the people you want to work for and pitch them your service directly.

Where can you find prospects? It depends on your target audience, but you can find almost any type of person or business that you’re looking for online:





· Yelp for local businesses

· Technorati for blogs

· Inc. for startups

· Google for everything else

Make a short list of prospects and email them with your offer. You’re not asking them to buy – just if they’d be interested in hearing more (over the phone, in a meeting, etc.).

Remember, your goal is to reduce risk. I get email pitches from people all the time offering to work for me, and they’re almost universally bad precisely because they don’t do anything to reduce my risk; mainly, the risk that reading this email will be a waste of time.

Here are just some of the thoughts that run through my head when I receive an email from a stranger:

· Who the heck is this and why should I care?

· Is this person smart or dumb? (This is why you always write clearly and concisely)

· Most importantly, WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?)

Here’s an awesome example of an email I received from a reader, taken from this blog post, with my comments in bold. In this case, he offered to work for free, but you don’t have to – it can work just as well either way:

Subject line: I want to work for you for free [Best subject line I’ve ever received]

Hey Ramit,

Love your site, especially the articles about automation and personal

entrepreneurship. It’s because of you that I have multiple ING Direct

accounts for my savings goals, a Roth IRA, automatic contributions, and

asset allocation all set up. [Good buttering me up]

I’m a web developer for [Company], a site that gets around 50 million hits per

month. I used to do freelance work exclusively, and I’m preparing to make


http://www.yelp.com

ttp://technorati.com/

http://www.inc.com/

http://www.google.com/

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/finding-clients/




the switch back to doing freelance work. I work in Ruby on Rails, doing

everything from the database to the front-end, and I’m especially good at

rapidly prototyping new ideas and projects. [He’s in my head: I’m always

looking for talented developers and he’s clearly one of them]

I’d love to have the chance to do some development work for you, completely

gratis. If you like my work and have some paid projects for me down the

road, that’d be great of course, but I’d be happy just for the opportunity to

network and receive a little advice. I’m sure you have a project or two in the

back of your head that you haven’t had time to prototype yourself yet; let

me do it for you! [I LOVE IT!! As a matter of fact, yes I DO have some side

projects I’ve been wanting to do]

You can give me a call at ###, or find me on Google Talk under this address.

You can also check out some samples of my work here: [website]

Thank you!

The beauty in the direct model is in its simplicity. For example, if you email 20 prospects and none of them get back to you, you know the solution isn’t more blog widgets or a nicer-looking logo. It’s that you need to experiment with changing either your service, your target market, or your email copy to improve what isn’t working.

On the other hand, if 5 out of 20 prospects respond positively, you’re probably on the right track. Follow up with them, pitch them your offer in person or on the phone and get them to start paying you!

I was super psyched to get my first client last month from a cold email. After the client’s email reply, I gave a half hour presentation, and the following week a small quick project came up. The week after that, a larger project followed.

I’ve already completed 2 projects with that company for $3,000, and have done $9,000 in freelance this year thus far. I hope to get 5+ new clients by the end of this year, in addition to generating more referrals. Hopefully sometime in 2011 I can quit my job to become an independent teaching artist. Right now its tough balancing all of it but it is leading to a more fulfilling lifestyle!

Cary Ngearn1k alumni





The short answer is you should charge your clients as much as you can. The practical answer is that it doesn’t really matter, because no matter what you charge your first client, your goal should be to raise your rates as quickly and aggressively as possible. There are a couple ways to do that:

· Start by charging a standard rate, then raise them 20-50% every year as you get better at what you do.

· Increase your rates 50-100% for every new client referred to you. Do this until people start saying no, then backtrack until you find the sweet spot.

· Take as many clients on as possible, then gradually raise your rates until everyone drops off except your most loyal and highest-paying clients.

Here’s an example of how you can experiment with setting your rates. My friend Ben Bleikamp works a full-time job as a product manager, but sometimes takes on web design projects on the side. When he first started, he had no idea what to charge, so he just threw a random number out there. First it was $500, then $5,000, then $10,000. He eventually figured out that $5,000 was the most that clients would happily pay him, so that’s what he started charging.

How much should you charge anyway?





2. The Middleman

One of the hardest things about being a new freelancer isn’t just selling to clients – it’s locating them in the first place. You can have an easier time with both if you use a middleman and “piggyback” your success off of their own.

Here’s how to do it: Identify who your end clients are. Then identify businesses that are ALREADY selling to them that are complementary to, but not directly competitive with your own. Now pitch your services to the middleman, rather than going direct to the end client.

Think about it. These middleman businesses already spent time and money acquiring a bunch of clients – the same clients you want. Give the middleman a reason to hire you, and you’ll get access to the clients.

Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say you’re a wedding photographer and you’ve decided that your end clients are local brides-to- be. Well, who out there might already be selling to the same end client?

· Wedding planners

· Florists

· Caterers

· Bands

· Wedding dress companies, and much more

Let’s say you decide to look for wedding planners. You find a planning company in your area and notice they don’t have any of their own photographers. Perfect. Send them a quick email along these lines:

Subject line: Interested in adding wedding photography to your service offering?

Hi,

I’m a wedding photographer also located in the (your city) area. I noticed

you offer your clients several different services, and wanted to see if you’d

be interested in adding professional wedding photography to that list by

working with me. That way, you could save your clients the trouble of finding

their own photographer, while at the same time adding to your bottom line.





I charge $40 an hour, and you’d be free to mark my rate up to your clients

however you prefer. If you’re interested, please take a look at my work

samples and get in touch!

Sincerely,

David

You may need to tweak the offer or try a couple of different middlemen until you find an arrangement that works best. Either way, remember that these middlemen are now technically your clients – so make to give THEM what they want – it will make hiring you that much easier.

Christine O’Kelly is an accomplished freelance copywriter who was struggling to find clients early in her career. She was answering every Craigslist ad she could and getting nothing in response. Frustrated, she finally wrote a short email to 5 different marketing agencies and offered her services to them instead.

Those emails took her only 25 minutes to write, but she got a call back the same day. That first client was the first of many that ended up earning her over $100,000 that year.

The middleman strategy doesn’t only apply to freelance businesses – you see it being used everywhere. For example, those coupon packages you sometimes get in the mail. That’s a bunch of local businesses all partnering with the marketing company that mails the coupons, because the marketing company has mailing access to the end client (you).

Take notice any time you walk into a gym. On the counter, there’s probably a bunch of business cards for personal fitness trainers, yoga classes, the nearby martial arts studio and smoothie shop, and promotions for various products and supplements – who all use the gym as a middleman to get access to their members.

Whenever you’re trying to reach a target market, think about who else already has access to that market. Then come up with ways you can reach out to those middlemen and help their businesses.


http://selfmadechick.com/




3. The Internship

What if you’re not even good at what you do yet? What if all you are is interested, but you still need an opportunity to learn the ropes and prove yourself?

Well, you can sell that too! Regular companies hire interns all the time for this exact reason. Interns get value in the form of experience, and in some cases, money. Companies get value from the work itself, but more importantly, from the opportunity to evaluate which candidates they’ll want to hire full-time.

The same concept can apply to freelancing. You don’t need to be an expert. Instead, position yourself as a smart, eager and capable beginner and give them an offer they’d be foolish to refuse. Clients are often more than willing to give you a chance – if you give them a good reason to.

My former assistant Melissa used to handle all of my business administration, but she wanted to start doing more. One day she told me she was interested in finding advertisers for my newsletter (I wasn’t running ads at the time), and would I be willing to give her a shot?

At first, I was skeptical because very few people I know are good at that type of thing. But she mitigated all my risk by offering:

· To do everything on her own (No time commitment needed from me).

· To do it on top of her current workload (It wouldn’t affect her work quality).

· If things didn’t work out, we’d drop it and I’d find someone else (What did I have to lose?).

Well, I gave her an aggressive goal and she crushed it, securing multiple paid advertisers in a matter of weeks! Today Melissa works with me doing marketing and other revenue-based projects, and I’ve gotten a new assistant to fill her old position. Am I glad she “sold” me on her idea despite her inexperience? Absolutely.

Of course, if your service is already high-risk to begin with, you’ll have to alter your approach. Nobody in their right mind would hire a novice to manage their business database, for example.





In that case, consider an apprentice-style arrangement where you offer to work someone who already knows what they’re doing. For example, if you’re interested in managing paid advertising campaigns, reach out to a company that already does that and offer to do work for that department. Or get in touch with a more experienced consultant and offer to help them in exchange for mentorship.

I’m a big fan of internships – they open up so many opportunities that wouldn’t ordinarily be available given your current skill level. For example, I was Seth Godin’s first ever intern and got to work on his book (which became a NYT and WSJ bestseller) and got to meet multiple Fortune 500 CEOs. Charlie Hoehn was another one of Seth’s interns and ended up doing work for myself, Tucker Max and Tim Ferriss – and now he has more work than he can handle. And many members of the I Will Teach You To Be Rich team started out as interns, and are either still earning money here or have left to earn money elsewhere.

Whole businesses are grown and careers launched using this model, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same.

4. The Free Trial

To many experienced freelancers, “free” is a dirty word. Never ever work for free, they say. After all, you wouldn’t ever ask a dentist to fix your teeth for free, would you?

No. But there are plenty of legitimate ways businesses use free, such as:

· A lawyer who gives free initial consultations.

· A membership website with a free 30-day trial.

· A food stand that gives away free samples.

· A blogs with hundreds of free articles, plus free personalized advice given in the comments.

Working for free is risky because there’s always a chance a bad client could screw you over. But when done carefully, it can be a great way to get your business up and running fast.





To avoid trouble, approach free work with these 2 caveats:

· Only offer it to people you approach. If someone approaches you and asks you to work for free, I would turn them down.

· Always ask for something in return. That can be referrals, mentorship, or a promise to start paying after 2 weeks if they’re satisfied with the work. Compensation can take many forms, so think about what’s most valuable to you.

A little free work, even 30 minutes, can go a long way. One of my Earn1K students, Jordan Reasoner, shares his story:

Another student, John Meaney, started teaching a specialized fighting program to a very niche market: martial artists with over 15 years of experience. Since the idea was so niche, he started with one free beta client to test out and give feedback on his service. When that proved to be a success, John opened his service up to a qualified group of leads and 80% of them became paying clients. He started off charging $40/hour, but became so busy he had to double his rates.

I started working on things yesterday. My freelance business is doing marketing for service-based businesses in central Michigan (such as carpet cleaners, cleaning services, remodeling services, etc.).

I emailed 20 of [my leads] each day with a short sales letter I wrote that basically offer them a free 30 min marketing consultation with me and no strings attached.

I have had 4 people schedule the calls with me via email. During the calls I give them massive value, and finally I provide them with 3 things they can implement right away.

Each of them has then called me back the next day to ask me to work for them implementing my suggestions... without even asking for a cost! So I threw out $100/hr and they took it!

Jordan Reasonerearn1k alumni





Remember that you’re trying to reduce risk for your clients as much as possible, and often the biggest risk for clients is financial risk – they don’t want to spend money on someone who’s not proven. Reduce or eliminate that barrier, and the offer becomes much easier to accept.

5. The Barter System

Bartering is such an old-school system of exchange that it’s easy to forget we still use it all the time. For example, when a blogger and I agree to exchange guest posts, that’s barter. When a book author offers my readers a special discount in exchange for me writing a review, that’s barter. In both cases, we’re giving each other what the other person wants, and it’s not money.

You can apply this to your freelancing business as long as you know:

· What you have that others want

· What others have that you want

Neil Patel became one of the most respected SEO consultants in the world in his early 20s, and he built his business using the barter system. He approached some of the biggest names in the blogosphere he could find and offered to do SEO on their websites. In exchange, they would agree to write a blog post promoting his service, but only if they were happy with the results. A few said yes, including Tech Crunch, Guy Kawasaki and Mashable, and Neil’s business took off overnight.

Here’s another example might apply to you. Let’s say you design great websites, but you suck at writing. Well, there are probably tons of great writers out there who suck at designing websites. Why not reach out to one and offer an exchange of services? You’d both end up with beautiful, well-written websites, and no money changed hands.

And guess what? You’ve just got your first client! You can both add the work to your portfolio and even refer new business to each other right away. Who cares if your first job was unpaid? Your future clients won’t.

Andrew Howard used a combination of the Barter model and the Middleman model to get his first client. He wanted to provide computer security consulting for very high net worth people (think athletes, movie stars, etc.), but didn’t have a good way to get “in” with these people. But he





action steP Start Selling! 1 hour per week

did know that they usually worked with wealth managers to handle all their assets.

So Andrew reached out to a wealth manager and offered to do a very small, but valuable computer project for him. In exchange, the wealth manager would agree to recommend Andrew’s security services to his high net worth clients. One such client agreed, and that was that.

That’s the power of having one good idea.

Get out there and start selling! Each week, make a list of at least 5-10 prospects and reach out to all of them. You can batch this and do it all in an hour or less. Email is the quickest method of outreach, but don’t limit yourself to that if you have other ideas.

Test everything. Try different models (direct, free, middleman, etc.), headlines and email copy. Keep what works and improve what doesn’t. When in doubt, always be asking yourself: How can I improve this offer and make it the easiest decision in the world for my client?

If things aren’t going so well and you’re getting stuck, take a step backwards and revisit your earlier assumptions. Are you targeting the right people? Are you offering them something they want to buy? Are you making it easy to say “yes?” If you are really stuck, you can always go talk to your real-world experts (the ones you did the “Pay Certainty” Test on) and get more feedback.

All the Facebook, Twitter, and paid advertising has led to very little money earned over 9 months. This one client has the potential to unlock a couple of hundred prospects with over $2 million dollars - each.

Andrew Howardearn1k alumni




Putting It All Together




Putting It All Together 64

Let’s revisit what we learned:

steP 1. Brainstorm a long, unedited list of business ideas and organize them into a framework of Fields and Services.

steP 2. Run all ideas through the “Pay Certainty” Test: Both you and your prospects must to be willing and able. Do this quickly in your head first, then validate your assumptions and refine your ideas by talking to the real experts in the field.

steP 3. Reach out to prospects and pitch them your service directly, using a mix of different sales strategies. Give your clients more of what they want, and increase your rates correspondingly.

The great thing about the whole process is that whatever you’re working on, you’ll never end up like those people who spin their wheels, wondering whether to keep going or quit. Instead, you’ll take all your ideas and rapidly filter them using the “Pay Certainty” Test. You’ll get the right kind of feedback on your ideas, so you’re confident about the ones you try in the real world. And you’ll earn money using direct, time-tested sales strategies.

If an idea doesn’t work out, no problem. Take it back a step and improve it, or pick a new one from your expanding list of business ideas. You only spend time on business ideas that pass the tests, and you’re never tied down to just one idea.

With practice, any idea you come up with has the potential to turn into income in your pocket.

Putting It All Together





Get the Comprehensive Program on Earning More

This isn’t all the material I have on earning money, not by a long shot. If you’re happy with the content in this program, then I encourage you to check out the full Earn1K course.

You don’t have to, of course. In fact, I’d be just as happy if, after implementing this program, you launched a successful business and never needed another product from me again.

But for those of you who want more, here’s what the full Earn1K program will cover:

· Getting deep into your customers’ heads

· Strategies on pricing and maximizing your income

· Detailed selling scripts and tactics

· More ways of finding leads for your business

· How to “wow” every client you get

· Making the leap to full-time freelancing

Here’s your link to Earn1K.com.


http://earn1k.com/idea-discount-signup



Bonus Materials





Bonus Materials

Here’s your link to the membership area with bonus audios and videos.


http://fyfpi.iwtstudents.com

Documents

by Ramit Sethi - Amazon S3...Part of the Earn1k series to help you earn thousands of dollars of side income — every month. 1 Introduction1 Why earning money is critical to living