Making Money Online

This morning I was reading about the tough economic crisis facing Europe, and also the rest of the world at the moment.

This reminded me of what I was reading last week, and the week before, and the one before that…

Seriously, it seems that there are not many good news on the horizon when it comes to the state of the economy.

Naturally, it makes sense to start looking for ways to make extra cash. Did you know that even during the great depression of the 1930s, some industries thrived? Interestingly, the entertainment industry did pretty well during that time.

1) Start an Internet Business

A lot of people seem to think that because the economy is not doing so great right now, that it would not be a great time to start an Internet business. The truth is that it’s not a great time to start any kind of business!

To me, it makes a lot of sense to start an Internet business right now because of the freedom that the Internet Lifestyle allows. If you ever lose your main source of income, you’ll always be able to rely on extra income from your Internet business.

If you don’t have anything set up at the moment, you could be missing the boat when the economy start picking up again.

2) Offer Your Services to Internet Business

If the thought of starting an Internet business doesn’t appeal to you, there’s an easy way to make extra income while staying at home: offering your services to existing online businesses.

Even in my business, I’m always looking for quality contractors for graphic design, customer service and other projects.

Ask yourself how you can be of value to other small businesses. Is there a way you could improve their systems?

By asking yourself how you can be of value, you’ll never run out of work.

Skills that you can pick that are always in demand include:

- Graphic Design
- Web-mastering
- Virtual assistance
- Proof-reading/editing

You can sell your services through third party companies like www.elance.com, but you can also secure a job with a company that you’d like to work for.

3) Become an Affiliate

You don’t need to start an Internet Business to make extra cash online. You can sell other people’s products through affiliate programs.

All you need is a mailing list where you send some good content regularly. To build a list, I recommend placing ads on Google. Another strategy is to build a content-rich website and convert your traffic into subscribers.

Then, send out regular content-rich emails to your list, but also include some promotions for affiliate programs.

Select affiliate programs that convert the best for you. Go to www.clickbank.com for some ideas. Also check out my own program at www.healthandprofits.net

With this setup, you don’t need to create your own products, and you eliminate any need for customer service, bookkeeping and typical major business expenses. You just receive checks in the mail!

4) Write Your Own eBooks

eBooks are a great way to earn extra income online. They don’t sell automatically, but they can be repackaged in many ways. Plus, if you write a good eBook, you can always find someone to sell it for you as an affiliate, if you give them a good-enough commissions.

How do you write an eBook? Aim at writing 1000 words a day. In just 30 days you’ll have your entire eBook written! For a bigger eBook, count 60 days.

For the full-details, the best course on the subject is “How to Write and Sell Your Own eBooks in 24 Hours or Less,” available at:
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html

5) Start selling Kindle eBooks

I recently experimented with selling Kindle eBooks. In June of this year, I made $255 in one month selling Kindle books online. In July, that amount increased to $305. Then every month it kept on increasing. Last month, I sold over $800 worth of Kindle eBooks.

I’m not planning to give up everything else that I do and only sell Kindle eBooks, as it’s not enough to make a living for now, but it’s nice to see that the demand for Kindle eBooks is definitely growing.

Now there are Kindle stores in the United States, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. Plus, anyone anywhere in the world can purchase Kindle eBooks at any of those stores. If you publish a book in one store, it becomes available in all other stores in the local currency.

I did a full one-hour presentation on how to start selling Kindle eBooks.

To view it, just sign up for a one-month trial for the Do What You Love Success Group, and you’ll be able to download it from the member’s area. To get started, go to http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

I’m going to say something a little shocking today. Here it goes:

“I think one of the stupidest all-encompassing statements I’ve heard pushed over and over again in personal development fields is the notion that you have to make a living with your passion!”

Okay… I’ve said it. Let’s all take a deep breathe in!
Now the reason I’m bringing this up is because I recently got an email from a reader. He says:

“Really, it sounds stupid but, for the life of me I cant really say I have a passion. I’ve read books, taken tests, I look at what I like and I just cant see that others would need to know some of the things that I know. My biggest question is just – how do I know what Im really passionate about?”

I know you’re going to say… Fred, don’t you talk about making a living  with your passion?

For some reason, people sometimes get the notion that my course is about “Making a Living With Your Passion” when it’s actually titled “How to Make a Living in the Natural Health Movement.”

I talk about doing what you love a lot, in fact my website is dowhatyoulove.com, and that may sound similar.

I know you hear it all over the place… “Live With Passion,” that’s even something that Tony Robbins used to say a lot.

People torture themselves with this concept of “passion” and never get anything done.

When we think of passion, we think of Mozart, we think of rock stars, maybe  charismatic CEOs like Steve Jobs, of amazing thinkers of all ages.

Then we look at ourselves and think… wow, I can’t compete with that!

Then the worst thing of all is these tests that help you determine what  your “passion” is.

In reality, nobody is born on the Earth with a passion. A passion may be something that you develop, or something that grows with you with time.

For example, I can’t say that the field of “raw foods” or health is my “passion.”

I can’t say that “Internet marketing” is my passion.

I can’t even say that I have a “passion” for traveling.

Of course, I’ve experienced “passion,” well, in various ways… But specifically when it comes to work, I think passion should instead be called “determination.”

You’re Passionate About What You’re Good At

Have you noticed that if you’re good at something, you have fun doing it? For example, I just found out I love watching hockey games, but I couldn’t skate to save my life. Throw me in a hockey game, and I would hate it.

However, I tend to enjoy certain activities with which I earn a living, such as writing, speaking foreign languages, or running my Internet business. I consider myself fairly “good” at these things and therefore I enjoy them.

When I’m good at something… I tend to enjoy doing it more.

When you first get started making a living on the Internet, it’s likely that you will suck at everything, including:

- Copywriting

- Web design

- Outsourcing

- Writing

- Brainstorming

As you work on these things more and more, you’ll get better and have more fun doing it. You’ll even develop “passion” for these things, as you spend more time learning about them.

Pick Something You’re Interested In

When you get started making a living, you shouldn’t be blindly be looking for your “passion.”

It’s actually okay to not feel that throbbing feeling of passion for any specific topic.

It’s even okay to be interested in multiple topics!

However, ultimately you have to pick one for your website and your business.

I suggest to my students to pick the thing they feel they have the most knowledge in, instead of just looking at their feelings, trying to see if they have any “passion.”

If I were to force you, right now, to sit down and write me a 2000 word essay on a topic, any topic that you could talk a lot about, which one would you choose?

You see, you don’t have to be “passionate” about something. You just need to have knowledge and be interested in something.

Jim Rohn once said that if you read just one hour a day on a particular topic, you’ll become an internationally reknowned expert in that topic in only 5 to 7 years.

By reading one hour a day, you can probably read a book per week, or close to it. Multiply that by several years and you’ll have read hundreds of books.

I think that if you read hundreds of books on ANY topic you might not be a Ph.D. but you’ll know enough to call yourself an expert.

Passion is something you develop. It’s something that can strike you all at once, something that can leave you, and something that can come back.

Don’t worry if you’re not clear about your passion. Just get started!

PS: If you can’t wait to get started, I recommend joining the Do What You Love Success Group and get your $1697 package for just $9.95. Go to:

Do WHat You Love University

I’m about to redesign my website www.dowhatyoulove.com in the next few months, and I asked myself what is the goal of my business “Do What You Love.”

Yesterday I attended a great conference called “The Art of Marketing” here in Vancouver, with really awesome and high-end speakers such as Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuck, Mitch Joel and Avinash Kaushik.

If you don’t know who any of these speakers are, then it’s probably a sign that you’re not following what’s happening in the marketing world closely enough and you probably should start reading a little bit more!

One of the speakers, Bill Taylor, spoke about the importance of creating clear values for your company.

He gave the example of the bank ING Direct, who’s sole purpose and value is to: “help people save more money”

With that value in mind, it’s very clear why ING has been so successful and has refused to get in the bandwagon of many financial products that have recently crashed (think: sub-prime) or even offer credit cards, because it wouldn’t help people save more money.

My values for DoWhatYouLove.com are very clear and simple:

Help you make a full-time living working part-time.

I proved multiple times that it’s possible to make a full-time living working only 2-3 hours a day. For example, last year I traveled around the world to over 25 different countries and only worked 2-3 hours a day on average.

Realistically speaking, it’s going to take a bit more time to build a sizable business that allows you to only work 2-3 hours a day, but it’s a clear goal that’s possible.

Many students of my courses and coaching at http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html are clear examples of that.

- Look at Swayze Foster, from http://www.fitonraw.com who’s still finishing her college studies has has build a great website, launched several products and is earning an income from her website that goes way beyond what she could make working part-time.

- Look at Maryze, from http://www.diva-yoga.com, who started a business in French about yoga, while keeping her full-time job working at the government. She’s still been able to earn what some people consider a full-time income from her website.

- Look at Brian Greco, from http://brianonhealth.com/, who’s only 15 and has already launched a website, a recipe book, complete with a sales letter and everything! By the way, he still goes to school and lives at home. He’s done all of this just by looking at some of my pages and methods to create his own online business. Way to go!

I could go on and on, but let’s review how you can build a full-time income working only part-time:

- First you have to prioritize your time. At the conference I attended, everybody talked about the importance of Social Media (think Twitter, Facebook, etc.). I completely agree and in fact learned a lot that I was doing right.

However I believe that when you’re first starting your business and you have limited time, you have to put social media sites under a tight leash as it’s easy to spend a lot of time there while not working on your business.

At first, use Social Media to make connections, ask questions, see what others are doing and learn from masters. Don’t think it’s a priority to build a big Twitter following, Facebook friend list or massive YouTube subscriber base.

- Build your website. Your website should be a blog, no doubt about it, and doesn’t have to be complicated. The main thing you need to do on your website is to provide great content. But now in 2011, keep in mind that content is a cheap commodity!

Everybody has content. In fact, the Internet publishes in a month about has much content as was published from the beginning of written history up to 2002. Every single month! Think about it.

Your content must have two main qualities:

- USEFUL: Be interesting and get people to talk about it
– SHAREABLE: Have a certain quality that makes others want to SHARE it and spread it around.

- Start building your list. Your email list is key! The goal of your website and everything you do should be to build a list.

- Launch your first product! The best product to launch is an eBook as it’s easy to do and is the perfect “intro-level” product. If you can’t create your own product, promote other people’s products like crazy.

If you keep a laser-like focus you can certainly make a full-time income working part-time.

If you can’t wait to get started, the following two programs can help you tremendously:

- Learn how to write your own eBook with the course “How to Write Your Own eBook in 24 Hours or Less” — go to: http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html

- For only $9.95, get a month of the “Do What You Love Success Group” and download your introduction package, over $1697 worth of information! Go to:
http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

I’ve been earning a full-time living on the Internet since 2003. I’ve had websites since 1998. In the last five years my business generated over two million dollars in gross sales. I don’t work like a maniac. I enjoy life. I do what I love. I travel to exotic countries every single year for months on end. Any questions? Post them below!

I know it’s crazy, but I’ve always had the dream of being able to live anywhere in the world, including a remote tropical island, and keep making a living doing what I love on the Internet.

I’ve already proved that it’s possible, after having traveled to over 25 countries in the last 8 months alone, including countless islands!

I told you that with the kind of approach is possible… but there’s an important caveat. You need to get excellent Internet access!

Nowadays, everything I do is Internet dependent.

In the last few months, I’ve even written a book and published it, over the Internet alone! I wrote the book in Vancouver, Europe and Thailand, and got it published while I was in Australia. Then when I made it to New Zealand, I finally saw a copy, many weeks after my customers did!

I need fast Internet to communicate with my virtual assistants, upload videos, download and upload documents, and more.

When I get fast Internet, I can be extremely productive (or distracted!), but when I get crappy Internet, the simplest of tasks take so much more time, and it’s very frustrating.

So it’s possible to live anywhere in the world, but if you’re serious about making a living online, you’ll need good Internet access.

In some countries, you can pay for decent Internet access, but generally the speed you get at hotels is pretty bad. So it would be hard to get anything done unless you’re a resident and can pay for decent Internet.

In many countries nowadays, it’s possible to buy a pre-paid “3G Internet” stick for your computer, that works through the cellphone network. I’ve done this in Australia, New Zealand, Greece and Fiji and it worked pretty well in most places.

Here’s my guide to Internet access, from worse to best.

Abysmal

Most remote tropical islands in the middle of Nowhere have pretty bad Internet. An example would be the Seychelles, a tiny country in the Indian Ocean I visited last year. The Internet access was usable, but pretty slow.

Mediocre

All of Indonesia is pretty much an Internet “black hole!” You can get fast Internet in some places, but usually it sucks. For a developped country, New Zealand also had pretty bad Internet, and the locals even make jokes about it. In Australia most hotels charge a ridiculous amount for Internet access, and their plans are pretty bad as well (but better than New Zealand), however it’s possible to pay for a decent connection if you live there. Greece had bad Internet for the most part, as well as Fiji.

Good Enough

Thailand has decent Internet access in most places. So does Costa Rica and Panama, as long as you stay in a large city. But in Costa Rica I sometimes had problems with Internet going down for no reason. Brazil has decent Internet for the most part, and I hear that Chile is about the same.

Good or Great

Most of Western Europe (France, Germany, etc.) has excellent Internet access. Canada and USA have good Internet access for the most part, and so does Singapore and Panama City.

Beyond Great

I hear the best Internet access in the world is in South Korea, Japan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Scandinavian countries.

Top 10, Best or Worse?

Wonder which countries have the fastest Internet access? According to NetIndex, South Korea is the number one country, with an average download speed of 37 Mb per second! The next best countries are (in order): Lithuania, Sweden, Latvia, Moldova, Romania, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.

As for the top worst country in the world for Internet access, it’s Bolivia!

The top worst “first world” country for Internet access is Qatar, followed by Italy.

The US are listed 32nd on the list of 166 countries, while Canada is 38.

If you’re thinking of relocating to a remote tropical island and make a living online, make sure you check out the Internet situation first!

My recent article on “Evil Capitalists” created a great discussion about an important issue that is plaguing the natural health movement and the world in general.

If you missed this classic post, make sure to check it out at:

http://www.dowhatyoulove.com/angryreader

I want to follow up on this topic, with what I believe is a giant mistake for many entrepreneurs in general, but particularly in the natural health movement.

In one of the comments to my last post, someone wrote:

“after reading your words and all the comments, my eyes have been opened a bit wider to the truth….i’ve spent the last 10 yrs trying to provide every ounce of my energy and expertise for practically nothing in hopes that patients would realize how much i care and want to help. i thought it would put a line of waiting and paying patients outside my door, but i have barely survived and have often come close to closing. i’ve ran myself down, gotten used and abused and worn out, and remain unappreciated.
they SAY they appreciate the service, but seem unwilling to pay.”

This brings me to:

Giant Mistake #1: Undercharging

Everyone that I help in private coaching initially has the same problem: they are unsure about charging a reasonable fee for their product/service. They feel bad charging much for their work and are too modest.

When I push them to charge what they’re worth, many are not at ease. “Will people resent me for it?” “I will probably not make as many sales if the price is too high.”

I assure them that no, it’s quite the opposite.

The more you charge for your products, the MORE people respect you for it. The less you charge, the more you’re viewed as a cheap commodity, and the more people try to take advantage of you and waste your time.

When I urge my clients to raise their prices for their digital products (often by doubling them), they are often surprised to discover that their sales don’t go down. In many cases, they go up!

Undercharging for your product and services essentially tells the world that you’re not worth it. And you can probably find the same information for free somewhere else on the internet.

There’s something fundamental in human nature that we tend to value what’s expensive.

For example, remember the last time you went shopping for a category of item you didn’t know much about, such as a kitchen scale or another small appliance.

If you get presented with two options, a cheap one and a more expensive one, and without more information, you’ll naturally assume that the more expensive one is probably a lot better and might last longer.

Another fact of human psychology as that people who don’t enforce their personal boundaries and make it too easy for people to have access to them (and thereby waste a lot of their time) often get used and abused.

Perceived Value

A few items that are commonly sold already have attributed perceived value. By that I mean that the value of these items has already been determined by the marketplace.

For example, even if I tried to sell a book for $100 with great marketing, it’s just not going to fly. Why? Because the value of a book is generally thought to be less than $30-40.

However, digital information products, coaching programs and counselling or other services have no established perceived value.

We know that there are therapists that charge only $50 an hour, while others charge $300 an hour. In most people’s minds, the cheap therapist is not as “valuable” as the expensive one.

It’s okay to sell a few items with established perceived value, but to make a living you generally have to also sell other programs where YOU establish the value based on what you think you’re worth.

And let me tell you… it’s better to try to be perceived as “valuable” than “cheap.” People will respect you for it.

People Don’t Value Free

The reality is that nobody really values something that’s free. I don’t mean that every exchange in life has to be based on money, but generally there is some sort of exchange.

Often, the true cost of something is hidden. And when that something is offered for “free,” people don’t value it as much and tend to take advantage of it.

For example, in Canada where I’m from, we have a huge problem with our Universal Health Care system.

Although a lot of people think it’s “free,” most people are aware that it’s paid for through our high taxes.

Yet, a lot of people think it’s free and try to use it as much as they can. That puts a tremendous strain on the system in Canada, which is now one of the least efficient of the entire Western world.

When something is free, it’s not only undervalued for its true costs but people will also take advantage of it and take more than they need.

If you charge the TRUE cost of a product or service, you’ll attract the right clientele who is willing to pay for it.

Quality People

When your products are cheap, you attract cheap people.
When your products are expensive, you attract quality people.

I know it sounds like class warfare, but it’s true.

It’s been my experience and other entrepreneurs will certainly agree.

I get the most customer service from people who place the smallest orders, and the least customer services and the happiest customers from those who place the largest orders and buy the most expensive products.

I once had a conversation with Dr. Doug Graham, author of the book 80-10-10 Diet where we talked about his pricing.

Dr. Graham charges $600 an hour for a consultation, and he’s raised the price of his fasting retreat in Costa Rica over the years from $3000 for 45 days to now $10,000.

All of his events are priced higher than everybody else, but at the same time he sells cheaper books for people who cannot afford the events.

One day he told me, “I try to make myself less available. If I charged less for consulting, I would have to do it all the time. By charging more, I can make my work load more manageable.”

He also told me that when people pay for 30 minutes of consulting, he generally gives them one or two extra hours of email consulting for free. He doesn’t advertise that, but does it out of the goodness of his heart.

So charging more doesn’t mean that you can’t overdeliver. In fact, it will make you much more likely to overdeliver, because you’re taking care of yourself first.

Sell From the Start

One of the worst mistakes someone can make in Internet Marketing or business in general is to not sell from the start.

Some people think they can start a list and give away a lot of free content to grow it. Then at some point, they will release a product and sell it to their list.

This is a giant mistake!

When your list gets in the habit of getting everything for free from you, they might resent you when you try to sell them something. They will think “this isn’t what I signed up for!

It’s especially difficult to turn this type of list around.

What you should do instead is to make sure you have something to sell right from the start. Don’t wait too long to start selling products, as it may backfire against you.

The core of any business should always be about selling something. If that part is not clear when you start your business, then you should wait and make sure you have a good plan on what to sell.

Life Is Expensive

Let’s face it, life is expensive.

People think that you get more respect if you live a life of poverty and try to help others at the expense of your own needs. Giving away all your free time, helping others financially, giving the shirt off your back etc.

In my experience, the opposite is true. The more personal success you have, the more respect you gain, and the better the quality of customers you tend to attract.

Don’t be a slave to poverty mentality!

In the end you can help more people if you are successful at what you do. If you can barely keep your business afloat it’s only a matter of time before you have to close up shop and not be able to help anyone at all.

Most of us want to make a difference in the world, but nowadays life is just to expensive to be able to live in poverty like a saint and be recognized for it.

If you can’t wait to get started, make sure to check out my program on how to write your own eBooks.

It will teach you exactly how to write and sell your own eBooks (including how to price them), from start to finish in just 24 hours! Check it out and take advantage of our Christmas sale. Go to:

http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html

A few years ago, a guy wrote a book called “The Number.”

I didn’t read the book, but got the gist of it from a friend.

The idea was simple: the author wanted to calculate how much people have to save in order to enjoy the same standard of living during their retirement.

For example, if someone wanted to retire at 55, how much would they need to keep the same standard of living until their death?

I don’t remember what the exact number was, which was the average that most people needed, but it was fairly high.I think it was over one million dollars. And since the book has been publish, I suspect the number would be higher.

I think you can come up with a similar “number” for doing what you love.

Can you figure out how much you would need, on a monthly basis, if you worked for yourself and made a living on the Internet?

You have to take into account some new factors. For example, perhaps that working for yourself will enable you to write off a lot of expenses, which will lower your taxes.

You might also be able to lower your expenses in other areas, such as all those business suits you will no longer need, and maybe you might even get rid of a car if you don’t need it for long commute (or simple spend less on gas).

Maybe you’ll also start traveling a few times a year like I do, in cheap places like Thailand where you can enjoy a great lifestyle for less.

I could easily imagine someone spending three months a year in Thailand, six months in North America, and maybe three months somewhere else, and spending less overall than if they stayed home the whole time!

In any case, you’ll come up with a number.

That number is your goal. That number is your target and the source of your determination.

Now the question is… how can you reach that number with your online business?

You could divide that number by a number of sale.
For example, let’s say that your number is 5000 a month. Then to get there, you might need to sell 500 items at $10 each, or only 50 at $100 each.

You can already see that it will be a lot easier to reach your goal if you have products that are priced higher.

What’s your next step?

Sign up for the Do What You Love Success Group and get a complete education and coaching on doing what you love online.

I’ve been doing this for over 12 years. I know what works and what doesn’t.

Join our community at: http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

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.

For years, Internet marketers have relied on audio products for their back-end information products. The typical funnel of many marketers included low-cost, mass market books or eBooks on their front-end, and big packages of audio CDs on their back-end.

If you attended almost ANY business seminar just a few years ago, and took a look at what the speakers sold at the back of the room, almost all of them were selling big packages of CDs.

Compared to books, CDs had a much higher perceived value. One CD could typically be sold for $25, so a big package of 12 CDs could easily be sold for $250 or more.

At the time, everybody bought CDs. If you wanted music, you bought a CD. If you wanted to listen to personal development information, you got some CDs to play in your car.

Now fast-forward to 2010, and we’ll notice that CDs are on the way out. In my last survey to my list just 2 years ago, I found that at least 50% of my subscribers owned an MP3 player. Now in the age of smartphones, iPhones and iPods, the number of people who don’t own one of these devices is increasingly low. According to 24/7 WallSt:

Digital downloads accounted for 40% of all music sales in 2009, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

According to The Big Picture:

Another year, another collapse in CD sales.

For the eighth time in nine years, U.S. album sales declined. That’s according to data compiled by Nielsen SoundScan.

Album sales fell to 373.9 million units, a 12.7% decline from 2008. Total sales fell a whopping 52% since 2000. CDs still account for almost 80 percent of all album purchases.

Paid online song downloads continued to grow, but at a pace that was too slow to make up for lost CD sales.

Why do CDs still account for 80% of all album purchase? The answer is piracy. Most people get their music digitally, but more often than not, without paying for it. (By the way, I’m personally 100% against online music piracy and always purchase music on iTunes.)

A friend of mine, Paul Durham, is a full-time musician who publishes his own music for his amazing band Black Lab (see his strategy and listen to his music at www.blacklabworld.com).

He told me that 5 or 6 years ago, he still made 80% of his income from CD sales, and 20% from download. Now it’s the other way around, with iTunes being his main source of income (iTunes gives 70% of profits to the recording company, in this case, he gets all the profits since he’s self-publishing).

Even in my own life, although I sometimes still bought CDs for the extras (if it’s an artist I really liked), I’ve become so used to listening music digitally that I purchase almost all of my music on iTunes.

If I get a CD, I will immediately rip the CD and only listen to the music digitally on my iPod, only keeping the CD as a backup.

CD sales are going down, but with the average album selling for $9.95 on iTunes, the perceived value of digital audio has also gone down.

A big package of CDs still has more perceived value than a digital download of the same audios. But when faced with the choice between a package of downloadable MP3s at a lower price, and a package of CDs at a higher price (plus shipping), most customers now choose the digital download (at least that’s what I’ve found in my field).

There are other options of course. Some companies are even selling branded-media players (for example: http://www.myseminarplayer.com), or even flash-drives with pre-loaded content.

It’s the equivalent of selling people an iPod with your content on it!

Unfortunately, I think most people would value the iPod or other media player more than the actual content, which they can’t see or touch.

And they might even erase your content to make space for their music, because they value the player more than your content. So I don’t think the concept of branded media players will really fly.
CD Popularity Drops, Video Grows

At the same time, while CD popularity has dropped, almost everyone now owns a DVD player, and DVDs have now replaced old VHS 100%. Also, computers typically include a DVD drive and a lot of people use their computers to watch DVDs.

With the popularity of YouTube and online videos, video has become more and more important. Smart Internet marketers today are trying to push video products in their back-end, instead of relying on audio-only products.

Audio products also have their place, but video now has a higher perceived value.

The day has not yet arrived where DVDs are phased out completely to be replaced by digital video. Even before that happens, they will be most likely replaced by Blue-Ray discs for high-definition video. The bottom line: the physical video media discs are going to be with us for a long time, and their value will continue being perceived as high by the market.

So the reason why you should have video products is that they are perfect products for your back-end (the term “back-end” simply indicates the more expensive and important products that you offer, as opposed to the low-cost, entry level products such as books or eBooks. The term comes from the seminar world, where speakers would sell their products at the “back end” of the room).

How to Create a DVD Product

One of your goals should be to release a DVD product. Here are three main ways to create a DVD:

1) Film a live event, and put it on a DVD
2) Produce a DVD from scratch
3) Use screen-capture video

For more detailed information on how to create your own dvd products IN DETAIL and other internet business techniques check out my Do What You Love Success Group at http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

If you sign up now you’ll get access to our April newsletter
“How To Create and Sell Video Products” for only $9.95 for the first month!

Go to: http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

Find out how to make your own live videos, screen capture videos, the video editing software you need and how to determine what video your market needs.

Until next time!

Your question: What videos on health and alternative living are you most interested in on watching for free online and purchasing on DVD? What do you find the most value on?

This morning I received a comment about my last article which was entitled “I Hate Winter.” The lady wrote:

“Fred, you sent out an email tonight stating that you hate the Winter season. Wow, that one struck me hard because the use of the word “hate” is very serious, and I couldn’t believe it would come from someone who is supposed to very much deep into nature. What’s going on with this picture? I think you need to apologize to nature and all of your members. I did not appreciate that email and hopefully, in the future you don’t send out an email like that to me anymore. I do not like the use of the word, there is too much animosity there on nature.”

Now, it struck me that this person would actually take everything I write quite literally.

“Apologize to nature” she tells me!

You’ve got to be kidding me!

So let me explain for all of you wannabe Internet Marketers the reason of the use of the word “Hate”.

In case you don’t know, I have two websites, and two separate email newsletters.

One is my www.fredericpatenaude.com website and the topic is health and raw foods.

The other one is www.dowhatyoulove.com, and this is the ezine you’re reading now. The topic is “Making a living doing what you love”.

The emphasis here is really on earning a living with your own business, as in “starting your own website and selling products on the Internet.”

For most people, what I do is a dream job.

I write, I publish ezines, I get to do what I love, I travel around the world and I make a living with my passion.

And I’ve been doing it since 1998.

When I was younger, once people found out what I did for a living they would often ask me in disbelief, “And you’re able to earn a living doing THAT?”

Imagine them saying it with an emphasis with the word “THAT”.

They imagined that kid like me (remember I started when I was 21) couldn’t possibly create a life without a job, traveling the world doing something I loved, and earning a full-time living at that.

Another person asked me “Could you feed a family with what your little business earns?”

I translated that as: “Yeah, you’re young and single and you don’t have kids, sure you can live like a bum on 20K a year but I have a family to feed, so I need my day job to earn more.”

Once I looked older, enough people stopped asking me these questions and since they often met me in exotic tropical places, they figured that what I was doing was probably working! Many became really interested in what I did.

Don’t kid yourself, I’m not a millionaire, but hat’s not my goal.

And I also know that I could be making way more than I currently do if I compromised my values and started selling what people really WANT, as opposed to what they really NEED, such as miracle superfoods and supplements.

But compromising my values is really not my thing.

Bottom line, my business is still relatively simple to manage, allowing me and my future wife enough freedom to do what we want.

I’m not complaining. My business often generates in a month what many people make in an entire year, and all that selling information products that can change people’s lives, and without the hassle of a big business that would take up all my time.

I love what I do, and the reason I’m telling you this is that if you’re subscribed to the “Do What You Love Email Tips“, there’s probably a good reason you would want to try to do the same.

So when that lady wrote (and I often get similar emails) criticizing my use of the word “Hate”, I thought I could write up an article with a quick lesson in Internet Marketing.

I Don’t Literally Hate Anything

When I was sitting down and sending my ezines, at first my subject line for the email was “I Forgot About the Winter”.

Then I thought about it for a moment, and realized that this subject line, which I think of as a headline almost, was not interesting enough, and didn’t catch attention.

I don’t spend as much time as I should on all my email subject lines, but I knew this was a bad one.

So I replaced it with “I Hate Winter.”

I thought it would get a bit more attention.

Here’s a lesson in writing on the Internet:

You Cannot Be Boring!

If I look back at the articles I wrote that got the most comments, the most attention, that were the most forwarded and generated the MOST sales, they were all on topics that didn’t leave anyone indifferent.

For example, I wrote an article last year called “Why I’m MAD at the Raw Food Movement” that got posted all over the Internet, and generated probably 10 times as many sales as my normal ezines.

Why?

Because it was controversial. Because I took a strong stand on an issue, even if that didn’t please everybody.

Even then, some people wrote back to me because and were telling me that I shouldn’t be “MAD” at anything, because “anger” wasn’t a good thing!

Why do some people have to take everything SO literally!

Of course, I was not actually “mad” at the raw food movement. I was passionate about the issue, that’s for sure, but there was not a feeling of anger in my heart.

Yet, the title of that article was the best I could have used!

Can you imagine if I had titled my article, “Why The Raw Movement Makes Me Unhappy”…

Same thing for my “I Hate Winter” email.

I don’t actually “hate” winter like I would probably “hate” an enemy that might do something very bad to me.

No, wait a minute… revise that! To tell you the truth, I actually do hate the winter…

At least, that’s what I thought many times as I was freezing and fighting the elements during the heart of the winter in Canada, when just going outside for 5 minutes was a major endeavor!

But you know what I mean. The actual emotion is more “dislike” but the word “hate” sounds more convincing.

The bottom line is this: if you want to make a living doing what you love on the Internet, and if you want to succeed in this field, you’re going to have to write.

You cannot just write boring little articles and tips.

Sometimes, you have to take a stand on an issue and be willing to speak your mind, even if that makes some people angry.

Remember, like Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in his awesome book “The Four Agreements”.

“Don’t take anything personally. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Let me tell you, if I actually worried anytime someone disagreed with me on something that I wrote, I wouldn’t have had any time to live my life.

When I get an email like the one I just showed you, I just smile! Or laugh. I certainly don’t take things personally.

I’ve been doing what I do for too long to know that there are always people that take things too literally.

Like the great marketer Dan Kenney once said, “If you haven’t offended anyone by noon, you’re probably not working!”

If you’re telling me that nobody ever disagrees with you and you NEVER get any negative comments anywhere, then I will say, “you’re probably not earning a full-time living doing this.”

The one thing I know for sure that every full-time Internet market has in common is that they get negative comments from people who take things personally.

In fact, get four or five Internet Marketers in the same room and they’ll probably start ranting about the craziest comments they’ve ever received!

In conclusion, I will not apologize to Nature, because I’m sure Nature is pretty indifferent to my little email newsletter.

I’m quite certain that I did not offend “Nature” enough to take its revenge upon me and bring snow and cold all the way down to Costa Rica to punish me!

What do you think?

I noticed that a lot of people are making terrible mistakes when it comes to build their online business. One of them is to focus too much on design instead of content and structure. Check out this 10-minute video as part of my ongoing “Do What You Love Video Blog”:

I’m looking forward to your comments.