Archive for May, 2010

I’m typing this from the 19th floor of an apartment in Waikiki in Honolulu. My wife and I will be visiting three Hawaiian islands for 12 days each for our honeymoon.

Before that, we spent almost six months in Costa Rica — and I have myself spent most of my winters there for the past 4 years.

I’ve also visited Hawaii on a couple of occasions before, but more importantly Hawaii has been on the radar more than a few times as I was looking for a place to get away from the harsh Canadian winters.

If you’ve thought about moving to a tropical paradise — either part-time or full-time, there’s no doubt that you’ve also considered Costa Rica or Hawaii — or both — for obvious reasons.

Costa Rica is a famous destination for US and Canadian retirees, and Hawaii  is the only true “tropical paradise” in the United States.

The two places are worlds apart — but each has something unique to offer for the right person.

Let’s start with Costa Rica.

Costa Rica: Who Is It For?

The kind of person who will go to Costa Rica and be happy living there will be someone who’s a true nature lover.

You don’t go to Costa Rica to enjoy first-world services, amazing cultural events or even a low-cost of living.

You go there because you enjoy spending time in nature, seeing animals, visiting beaches and tropical waterfalls, catching sight of birds, and spend a lot of time outside.

If you’re not currently spending most of your free time hiking and out in nature, then Costa Rica is probably not the right place for you.

Here are the main pro’s on Costa Rica:

1) Nature. Wild nature is unparalleled. A big chunk of the country is protected by national parks, and there’s a lot to explore in such a small country. Finding your own deserted beach or waterfall is relatively easy.

2) Diversity. There’s over 12 distinct micro-climates, and you can go from balmy tropical weather to cooler, spring-like climate just by changing your elevation.

3) People. Costa Rica’s people are affectionately called the Ticos and are very welcoming and friendly. Even if you don’t speak much Spanish, you’ll easily feel at home.

4) Tourism. Costa Rica is not new to tourism, so there’s a relatively big infrastructure for anything tourism-related. Some might see this as a negative, but if you want some fun things to do, you’ll at least have many options. The farmers markets have also grown to support tourism as well so you can be thankful for the abundance of tropicalfruits being sold everywhere.

5) Climate. I do NOT recommend that you move to Costa Rica to any of the coastal areas because the weather there can be very hot and humid and not at all comfortable for the long term. If you plan on living in Costa Rica for an extended period of time, consider living in the central valley where  the climate is a constant spring-like temperature year round.

6) Cost of Living. Costa Rica can be cheap but can also be expensive depending on how you live. Some things are definitely cheaper, such as fruits and vegetables, taxis and labor. Other things such as cars, imported items, electronics and gas are definitely more expensive.

7) Political stability. Costa Rica enjoys a certain political stability with its famous “no-army” policy. One thing is for sure, you don’t have to fear a revolution or political unrest in this country.

The cons of Costa Rica:

1) Roads. 10 years ago, the roads in Costa Rica used to be REALLY bad. Since then huge progress has been made and the roads are much better, but don’t expect big American highways.

2) Infrastructure. The rest of the country’s infrastructure is several years behind the rest of the developed world. Cell phone coverage works but forget about reliable internet and 3G coverage. You can get high-speed internet, but it might not always work. Power outages are frequent, but they rarely last more than a few minutes to an hour.

3) Mad Drivers. Costa Rica has one of the highest automobile accident rate in the world. A lot of the deaths are from pedestrians getting hit by cars. The roads are not lit, extremely pedestrian UN-friendly, and the vast majority of drivers are extremely careless and seem like they got their licence in a cereal box! This is the kind of country where to feel safe on the road you get the biggest car you can and drive defensively. Don’t plan on cycling in Costa Rica as it is too dangerous, and only walk in safe areas — not along main roads.

4) Bugs. This is more a problem if you live by the beach. Ants and all types of critters are everywhere and it’s a constant battle to try to keep your food from being eaten away by them. If you live in a cooler climate in Costa Rica, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem.

5) Crime. This has never personally affected me, but you read about it in the newspaper all the time and it seems serious enough to pay attention. There’s a big problem in the country to keep criminals in jail or out of the country. Home invasions are a daily occurrence in the central valley, and the police are not prepared enough to stop it. Most Costa Ricans will tell you that the one problem they wish their government would take care of the most is crime.

6) Inefficiency. This a wide-spread cultural issue I would loosely call ”inefficiency” although it would take pages upon pages to fully describe and explain in details.

The main thing to understand is that in Costa Rican culture, harmony is valued more than honesty. Here’s one example to describe this. You hire someone to fix your internet. You are told it will be done within a day. However, for some reason there is a delay of some kind (it doesn’t matter what it is). Instead of telling you the truth (honesty), the internet guy will either avoid the situation completely by not calling you OR make up some sort of story to preserve the ”harmony” of the situation and not upset you with the details of the delay.

Of course, none of that is truly understood on the conscious level by Costa Ricans because it’s on the cultural level.

Because of that and other reasons getting anything done can be terribly inefficient and trying to find out the truth of what’s ACTUALLY going on, very frustrating.

7) Language. For some people it’s a problem, for others not. Most Costa Ricans don’t speak English but about 10% of the population can speak decent English.

Hawaii

A great way to describe Hawaii would be first-world comfort in a tropical paradise environment. But this comes at a price.

Here are main pro’s of Hawai’i

1- Beautiful & magical scenery — In spite of the Americanization, Hawaii remains a beautiful place that is truly special.

2- Genuinely nice people — Hawaii’s people are very kind and seem to smile easily. They are also relaxed drivers with some good manners on top of that.

3- Infrastructure — It’s the United States, so the infrastructure is 1000% better than a Costa Rica or even Panama. You can get pretty much anything you need and expect it to work. Because the island of Oahu is small and there’s only a few roads into the big city, traffic can get pretty bad.

4- The ocean — If you like any type of water sport, Hawaii is for you. I’m talking about snorkeling, wind-surfing, Kayaking, swimming, etc. Because the ocean is everywhere, there are so many more options than Costa Rica when it comes to enjoying the ocean.

5- The weather — I find Hawaii’s climate perfect. The temperature hovers between 20 and 29 degrees Celsius year round (Between 68 and 85 Fahrenheit), and if you hate rain you can find a spot of the island that will be pretty much rain-free year round.

6- Safety — We find Hawaii very safe compared to Costa Rica. The crime rate is much less and if you leave your stuff on the beach you don’t have to be paranoid about it getting stolen. I think the fact that it’s an island also makes a different. It’s hard to get there, and if you become undesirable, it’s also difficult to hide anywhere.

7- Shopping Possibilities — Because you’re in the United States, you can pretty much find anything you need (if you’re on the island of Oahu). This makes it very easy to run an Internet business from a tropical paradise.

Negatives

1) Cost of Living. Nobody moves to Hawaii to save money. The fact that you’re on an island AND in the US makes things more expensive. However, in my experience it’s NOT as expensive as you’d expect.

Certain islands are more expensive. Maui is notoriously known as the most expensive island, but Kauai and the Big Island are cheaper. Oahu (where the big city Honolulu is located) also has some great housing deals.

Now you have big chains like Costco that have made Hawaii more affordable.

A lot of things are priced similarly as they are in the US, such as restaurants and electronics, but groceries are more expensive.

The islands’ shops are also not full of affordable tropical fruits unless you shop at  farmer’s markets, and even there the prices will be similar or more than what you’d pay on the mainland.

Honolulu is not the world’s most expensive city. Several cities such as Los Angeles and Toronto are significantly more expensive than Honolulu, but it’s not as cheap as somewhere like the Midwest.

2) You’re on an Island. Some people can get island fever when they realize they are on a big rock and the road ends where the beach ends. But if you’re tired of the scenery, you can hop on a plane for another island for just $60, or fly back to the mainland for around $250+.

3) You’re in the US — That’s either a positive or a negative depending on who you are.

Maybe you’re American or Canadian or accustomed to American stores and conveniences, in which case you will find yourself right at home with places like Jamba Juice, Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods etc.

Or you’re not American and the idea of mass consumption on a tiny island makes you want to wretch… in that case you may want to check out the outer islands like Kauai and the Big Island if you’d like to keep to yourself and visit small local towns.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to be on the outer islands for a long stay because of all the conveniences available on Oahu.

5) The Homeless — Hawaii seems to have a big problem with homeless people living on the beach and in parks.

This is not technically legal, but the city does not do anything about it.  You will often see homeless people sleeping in parks, by the beach or tenting by the side of the road.

The good thing is they don’t often pan handle or cause any trouble, there’s just no avoiding them if you’re heading to Oahu no matter where you are on the island.

6) SPAM — In case you don’t know, Hawaii has a major spam addiction problem (and I’m not talking about the unwanted email kind).

Spam is a horrible-for-you canned pork product, filled with sodium and nitrates. Spam was introduced to the islands during the military occupation of World War II when fresh meat was difficult to get, but for some reason they kept eating it after the war even when they could afford much better options.

In every grocery store in Hawaii, you will find spam in all its forms. You’ll even see spam sandwiches, eggs and spam for breakfast, and my favorite: sushi with spam! (It actually is quite revolting looking)

The word “spam” nowadays means “unsolicited email” and comes from a Monty Python sketch, “in which the customer becomes more and more exasperated by the appearances of “spam” in every menu item”.

There’s no doubt that the health of Hawaiian people would instantly improve ten-fold if spam were to disappear off the face of the earth.

7) The lack of inexpensive coconuts -- Try this: you’re on a tropical island. There are palm trees everywhere. Yet, it’s almost impossible to find a reasonably priced fresh coconut to drink! Some juice bars sell them for an impossible price ($5.95 or higher!), but most restaurants will be happy to just get you canned coconut “juice” from Thailand (filled with sugar). On the other hand, fresh coconuts in Costa Rica are very common and only cost about 50 cents each.

You can buy young coconuts from the health food store, but they are the yellow older variety and will run about $4.95 each in Oahu and $2.95 each in Kauai. At farmers markets we’ve seen them from $4 to $6 each.

You will also see a lot of older brown coconuts being sold, some people even sell them as drinking coconuts in food courts… which is odd since there is little water in them and the meat is hard.

Another option is if you’re lucky to have a friend who can climb a coconut tree… well then that might work for you better.  Who doesn’t love a free coconut?

Conclusion

I live in Canada, but for the past 5 years I’ve been spending most of my winters in the south.

Costa Rica has been a great choice for most of those winters, and I’m very happy to have had the experience of spending so many months there.

At this point in my life, Hawaii seems to meet my needs a lot better and I also really enjoy being so close to the ocean all the time while having access to more conveniences.

My wife and I will be traveling the world for another year and then relocating possibly to Vancouver. But when the winter gets cold and rainy on the Northwest, we might just head to Hawaii for a few months instead of Costa Rica.

What about you, considering your values, which place would you choose?

The following is a short excerpt from my monthly Do What You Love printed newsletter, exclusive to my Do What You Love Success Group members. To find out more about this newsletter and how to become a member to read the latest in-depth issue immediately, click here.

I recently got an eBook from Marlon Sanders, a great Internet Marketer that I’ve been following for many years. His program is called “The Writer’s Secret” and it’s basically one eBook that tells his philosophy for selling eBooks.

Marlon claims that he can usually release a new eBook to his list every 1-2 months, and that eBooks are his main source of income.

The eBooks he sells are often turned into different products and are not called “eBooks”, for example, he has several tutorial-types of programs called “Dashboards” that are basically web pages with little icons where you can follow a step-by-step plan for starting your online business. Each icon takes you to a web page where you can read about the particular step. He also has some video tutorials along the way.

How different is that from an eBook with video bonuses? It’s only the presentation that makes it different, and the branding!

Instead of calling these products, “eBooks”, Marlon calls them “Dashboards” and sells them for $79.95.

Marlon also sells actual eBooks such as the Writer’s Secret that I bought, or his popular Amazing Formula products. Again, it’s just an eBook but in order to boost the sale, he’ll often offer a series of webinars for about $300 for people who want to go more in depth.

Again, the webinars offer essentially the same information as the eBooks, but in a different format and live, which has more value.

One of Marlon’s reasonings for selling eBooks is that his market (Internet Marketing) is filled with people who only sell very expensive products, seminars and coaching programs. The price point is over at least $1000 for these products.

So Marlon differentiates himself by selling lower-cost eBooks and makes his money on the back-end with upsales.

In my own market, I found that most people sell relatively low-cost books and DVDs, so I’ve differentiated myself by selling higher-priced and higher-end programs such as big online courses.

However, I still find that eBooks SELL and as long as they are bundled with other forms of media and are not just labeled as an “eBook”, they can prove to be an important income generator for you.

The main advantage of eBooks for me is that they are pretty easy to create.

When I think about writing an eBook, I imagine myself relaxing on my bed with my laptop or even sitting outside and typing calmly as I hear the birds singing in the trees.

When I think about creating a DVD product or organizing a live seminar I imagine myself toiling at 110 degrees weather carrying big rocks to build a never-ending pyramid for a Pharaoh , while being whipped by the slave-master.

Well, not exactly! But the idea of creating a big event or a DVD program does NOT fill me with joy and anticipation.

On the other hand, I find writing easy and something I can do anywhere without stress.

Writing a couple thousand words a day is no big deal, and at that pace you could easily write and sell a new eBook every other month.

Of course, writing takes experience and that experience comes with practice. But if you can touch-type and you have a great idea, writing a 30,000 words eBook is really not that much trouble.

So, how many eBooks are you going to release this year?

Economist Milton Friedman is said to have first coined the now popular saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

Of course, what Friedman meant by that is although some things may appear to be free such as “free” health-care, “free” roads and “free” public library — someone, somewhere — always ends up paying the bill.

We now live in a generation that more than ever seems to have totally embraced the word “free”.

A lot of kids nowadays think the only way to get their favorite music is to download it for “free” on the Internet and then sync it back to their iPod.

They might even laugh at those old people still buying old-fashioned CDs and supporting their favorite artists that way.

As for movies, a lot of people think they are so easily downloadable for “free” on the Internet that there is no reason to ever rent a DVD again. At the same time, we all complain that there are fewer good movies being released, and don’t seem to make the connection between the two.

As for the Internet, everybody thinks that everything should be “free” on the Internet, right?

And how dare some companies charge for a service that was once “free”, such as the Last.fm Internet Radio or online newspapers?

More and more, the masses have this sense of entitlement. They want free healthcare, free public transportation, free Internet, free music, free entertainment — and they get angry whenever the “evil” corporations dare to fight back and charge for their work.

In other words, they have forgotten Milton Friedman’s famous saying and believe they can get a free lunch, every single day, all the time.

Unfortunately, there is still no such thing as a free lunch.

Unless artists can earn some money, they will stop making great music.

Unless movie companies can get paid and hire great actors, they will stop making great movies.

And unless newspapers can pay their reporters and staff, they will stop writing great stories.

Companies Are Fighting Back

One of the biggest failures in old industries trying to adapt to the Internet world is the publishing industry.

We all know that newspapers are not like blogs. A blogger can write whatever comes to his mind and call that “journalism”. But true journalism involves a lot more than just writing random posts, and is also much more expensive to produce.

Think of the in-depth articles by Time magazine, or all the research involved to put out a daily newspaper.

When the Internet became popular, most newspapers started publishing their newspapers for free online, in the hope that people would upgrade to their paid services with more features.

But in practice, nobody did that. Why would you pay for essentially the same service you can get for free?

At the time, there were no Kindles or iPads or other device to read newspapers on the go (unless you wanted to carry your laptop everywhere and try to read it that way), so these companies didn’t really have any other option.

They tried to make some money with online advertising, and because a lot of people still read traditional newspapers, they hope to keep their readers faithful by publishing their news for free on the Internet as well.

Now that we have devices able to read newspapers and magazines on the go, publishing companies are still having a hard time to convince people to buy them that way.

When I got my iPad a few weeks ago, and one of the first things I did was to download a copy of Time magazine in an “iPad-optimized” version.

Time obviously invested a lot of money and efforts in turning their magazine into a beautiful, portable, digital version. They didn’t just take the magazine and turn it into a PDF that looks exactly the same.

They built a completely new, intuitive interface and navigation that takes advantage of the touch-screen of the iPad and makes it completely natural and fun to read a magazine on the device.

And for this, they charged $4.99 for one issue of the magazine.

I thought it was a fair deal because I know they have to get their investment back, and also because they cannot hope to earn the same amount in advertising on the digital version as they do with the printed version.

Yet, a lot of people were complaining about this price.
Why would I pay $4.99 for a digital magazine when I can subscribe for one year for just $19.95?

In reality, $4.99 is about the same price you’d pay for at the newsstand, but you have the advantage of portable, interactive interface and instant gratification. Complete with streaming photos and even videos.

But people don’t see it that way.

What companies are now finding is that they are having a hard time convincing people to pay for a service that was once free or really cheap.

Move the Free Line?

Eben Pagan is a very well-known Internet Marketer who is well-known for his concept of “moving the free line”.

What he meant by that is: give your best stuff away for free.

Eben thought that if you impress your audience with great free content, they will more likely want to upgrade to your paid content to get more of what you give away.

Although the concept works to some extent in practice, it can also fail miserably.

I have subscribed to Eben Pagan’s various mailing list and did not personally find that he “moves the free line” that much. Most of his ezines are pure promotions for his products and outside of his big product launches, you won’t find a lot of “free” stuff on his website.

A lot of marketers might be telling you to move the free line but often they don’t even do it themselves, because it just doesn’t work as well as advertised.

One of the worst thing you can do is build your own website by giving your content for free ALL the time, and then try to sell products to your readers after.

Often, they will resent you for it. You will get a lot of hate mail and it will be very difficult to turn that list around.

For example, a friend of mine has a great podcast on raw food he’s been running for a few years.

It’s a true high-quality podcast, and his website is top-notch. He gets thousands upon thousands of downloads per show, and has a decent amount of visitors to his website and signing up for his list.

Yet, in spite of all of this, he’s having a hard-time monetizing that list and he’s not able to give up his day-job yet.

When he tried to introduce a premium “paid” version of his podcasts, his sales were really low.

He found out the hard way that people are not willing to pay for something they were used to getting for free, even if it has more features and perks.

What Should You Give Away For Free?

The question for anyone starting a online business is: what should you give away for free?

On the one hand, you don’t want to just send promotions and come across as a greedy marketer.

On the other hand, you don’t want to attract an audience of freebie seekers that will only consume your free content and resent you for trying to sell anything and earn a living.

I do think it’s beneficial to give away some great content in the form of articles and great videos, but overall these pieces of content are more about building a relationship with your readers rather than actually giving away your best secrets.

You want your readers to feel a personal connection to you and also through your blog posts and video know what you’re about.

But when it comes to delivering your most complete and revolutionary content, the place to do that is within your paid products. If you give away your best stuff, your readers will not even appreciate it as something valuable.

A blog should have interesting news, stories and videos that relate to your topic, but your true “how to solve a problem” content is what you sell.

Another possibility to add to that is to post excerpts from your paid products on your blog. For example, for my Raw Vegan DVDs I posted short, 2-minute excerpts from the DVD series so people could get an idea what it was about, and had great success with that.

The purpose of the excerpts is more to build credibility and being transparent about the quality of your information.

Avoiding Freebie Seekers

One big problem that many people run into is that they build a great list of readers — but nobody buys anything from them because all they are used to is getting free information.

It’s very difficult to transform a list of freebie-seekers into a list of excited customers.

The way to avoid that is to sell from the start.

When your website visitors sign up for your mailing list, present them with your best offer immediately. This is when they are more likely to be interested in buying it anyway.

Give them a great free bonus in exchange for signing up to your list, but also show them immediately that you have some great products to sell — right from the start.

If you don’t have any product to sell yourself, then promote as an affiliate a product from an author that jives with your philosophy.

You might occasionally get some people who complain about your marketing, but it will be far less than if you give away everything for free and then suddenly, a year later, come up with a product that you try to sell to them.

You essentially — right from the start — want to filter out the people who are only interested in getting free stuff, and try to attract the genuine truth-seekers who are willing to pay you in exchange for your hard work and great content.