Archive for December, 2007
Renewable Wealth - First Revenue!
I checked my Google Adsense logs today, and saw that RenewableWealth.com got two clicks, earning me 71¢. Frankly this surprised me - the site has almost no content, and other than my posting here, I have done nothing at all to promote it. Yet already I’ve earned back almost 20% of my investment.
It appears that it won’t take long at all for me to double my stake with this method, and this tiny little trickle of revenue should continue indefinitely.
Then What?
And what will I do with the tiny sum of money it generates? Reinvest it, of course. 71¢ in a day isn’t much on its own. But imagine if I put up 100 more sites like this. Say they each averaged 71¢ a day. (A rather pessimistic estimate, actually.) That would produce $71 a day. Not enough to buy a yacht, perhaps, but that is $26,000 a year in purely passive income . Who couldn’t use that?
If You Can Do it Once…
Seeing as it only took a couple of days to put this site up, I could have 100 sites up in a few months. And if I can do 100, why not 500? Assuming they all average the same, that would produce $355 a day, or $129,575 a year on autopilot. It might take a couple of years to do this, but so what? $129,000 in passive income is enough to free you to do just about anything you want. You could take big risks without having to worry about going broke. That kind of passive income would give you the freedom to shoot for millions, or pursue your dreams, or do nothing at all, if that’s your thing.
Slay Your Inner Nay-Sayer
This method may not last forever. Heck, it probably won’t. But if you’re smart, and save, and diversify, it won’t have to.
The Inspiration
So how did I learn about this technique? There’s a little-known membership service called Super Apprentice, which is dedicated to this idea. It is run by Dave Moore, one of the very few straight-arrow, honest, real heroes of the Internet Marketing business. The service takes the concept a lot farther than I have covered in my brief discussion here, and provides a bunch of tools which automate much of the process, allowing you to publish revenue earning sites rapidly and efficiently. You should check it out if this concept appeals to you.
The service is not free, so I built RenewableWealth manually, in order to stick to the rules. It would have gone a lot faster had I been able to use the tools the Super Apprentice service provides, but c’est la vie. When I build my stake up enough to cover my membership, I’ll start using Super Apprentice to bump things up a notch. In the mean time, I’ll stick to Rule 6 and keep plugging away with what I have.
Can You Feel It?
Do you get the feeling things are starting to get exciting? I have now parlayed my dime into an actual revenue producing business. It’s on a very small scale, of course, but it can be replicated indefinitely, without a single additional dime being added. It is now self-sustaining, and it is quite literally only a matter of time before I have a million dollars. All that is required now is to work to shorten the time needed.
More importantly, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t do the same.
Blessings upon you and your family
For all who read this, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, asalam-u-alaikum, and blessed be. Whatever road you follow, let us all join in hoping and praying for peace.
And while I hesitate to mix politics with a simple holiday greeting, or with the message of this site, I fear I must. Our nation has reached a critical turning point in its history.
If peace, prosperity, and freedom are at all important to you, I urge you to support Ron Paul in your state’s upcoming primary election. If you don’t know who he is, just read about him. Check his record. Listen to what he has to say. That’s all it took to change me from being apathetic and cynical about the future of our republic to energized and hopeful. It can do the same for you, and it will, if you simply listen to the message with an open mind.
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
— John F. Kennedy
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Ask yourself what the “mainstream” political candidates offer you other than fear itself.
The Republicans offer your fear of shadowy threats from overseas that “hate our freedom.” (Why can’t they conceive of the notion that perhaps they hate us because we occupy their countries and prop up brutal dictators?) They offer you fear itself.
The Democrats offer you fear that you cannot survive without the government there to protect and support you. They offer you fear itself.
Meanwhile both parties offer staggering amounts of your hard-earned tax dollars to the corporate interests that finance their campaigns and keep them in power. But to you and your family? Fear itself! Nothing more.
In 2006 the voters of this country overwhelming voted to send the GOP bums home, hoping for a dramatic change in course. What has changed? Nothing. Nothing at all. We’re still in Iraq, still going bankrupt, still seeing our freedoms eroding more and more every day. For the love of God and all that is holy, we’re actually debating whether water-boarding, a favorite tactic of the Spanish Inquisition, is acceptable in America! How can we have let things slip this far?
Ron Paul is the only candidate who offers change. True change. He wants to give the Republic back to you and your family. His message is simple, honest, and consistent: freedom, and an end to the American empire. But don’t take it from me. Just google his name. Watch a few videos on YouTube. Visit his site: RonPaul2008.com. Decide for yourself. Don’t let the bobble-heads on TV tell you who is a “legitimate” candidate. Don’t let them dictate who has a chance and who doesn’t. Don’t let them cow you into apathy. Think for yourself, and decide for yourself. For God’s sake, decide for yourself now, if you ever want to do so again.
Peace be with you this holiday season. Peace be with us all.
The Next Step Revealed
Well, it’s official. The next phase is begun. Those of you who read the previous post have probably guessed by now that the next step is a Web site, and it’s up. How did I manage this with only $6.04? Well, it’s amazing how far $6 will go on the Internet nowadays.
I found a registrar that was having a promotion: .com domain names for $3.99. As for the hosting, well, I already had a hosting account set up which allows unlimited addon domains (This site, for example, is hosted there). So I added the new site to the account. Some may think that’s cheating, but remember that Rule 8 allows for a little flexibility with resources you already own, as long as it doesn’t cost you anything. I have a set bandwidth quota for the hosting account, so if the new site causes me to go over, I’ll have to pay for the added expense out of my stake. Otherwise, adding the site costs me nothing, so it doesn’t break the rules.
So you’re probably curious by now as to what the site is. It’s called Renewable Wealth. It’s a site that is dedicated to sustainable investing, a passion of mine. We will be focusing on finding profitable investments in alternative energy and green enterprise. Further, I’m implementing a revenue sharing program, so active members of the community will get a share of ad revenues generated from their contributions. I’m hoping this will encourage more people to come and share their ideas.
The site is built on 100% free, open-source software. So the total cost of launching it, apart from my time: $3.99. That leaves me with $2.05 remaining in my stake. I’m excited about the prospects for this project, especially since all of its earnings will be going into my stake for the game. I hope you will come and join the conversation.
So now what?
I have grown tired of reselling used books. While I’m quite certain that I could easily use this method to get up to a pretty big stake, it’s a hassle to find, post, wrap, and ship them, and it’s getting boring, so it’s time to move to something new.
I have $6.04. In a sense that’s a pretty extraordinary sum - I have increased my starting stake by over 6000% in a very short period of time. That’s the power of trading value for value. But as you can see, I’m starting to run up against one of the inherent limits of any business - time. You see, if it takes me an hour to do all the work necessary to buy and resell a single used book, I am really only earning an hourly wage for doing so, and a pathetically small one at that.
The Magic of Leverage
So how do we get around this problem? The answer is leverage. We must find a way to work once, but be paid many times for it. There are many ways to achieve this. Having people work for you is one - you do the management job once, while being paid for the work of many. However, $6.04 is not going to get me very many employees.
Another method is to use debt - you borrow someone else’s money, and invest it in a way that generates more profits than the interest you pay. In a sense this is another way of profiting from the work of others, in the form of the money they have been paid. Using debt is not against the rules, but you must be able to pay the interest out of your stake, and again, I don’t see any banks lending against $6.04 any time soon.
The Ultimate in Leverage
So how can we create leverage with so small a stake? The answer lies in the Internet. The vast fortunes that it has created are due to the fact that it is the most efficient creator of leverage in the history of human civilization. How does this work?
The answer is that if you write something once, then publish it on the Internet, you can create and distribute what is for all intents and purposes an unlimited number of copies at little to no cost. If you provide advertising or promote a product on that page, then so long as some non-zero percentage of your visitors clicks or buys, each page view is worth a certain amount of income (on average). Now it may be (and probably will be) a very small amount of income, but the power of leverage is such that even the tiniest amount of income can make you very, very rich if it’s leveraged sufficiently. In other words, if you can grow your traffic sufficiently, a single Web page can generate practically unlimited income. Don’t believe me? Check out Million Dollar Homepage. The creator of that site found a way to work once, and be paid $1 a million individual times for his efforts.
Archimedes famously said that with a large enough lever, he could move the entire Earth. We need not be so ambitious. We’re only trying to double a $6 stake, here. And I have a plan for how to do it. More to come soon.
Stop buying stuff!
You’re destroying the planet, you’re keeping yourself poor and miserable, and screwing up your life. Don’t believe me? Watch this. Think about the true costs of the useless crap you buy every day that fills up your closet and eventually ends up in the landfill. Learn about, study, and ponder externalities. How many are you (at least partially) responsible for?
Ask yourself this, and answer honestly: Would you really be all that bad off if you gave up everything you own except basic kitchen fixtures, a bed, and a modest roof over your head? (Ok, you can have some more basic furniture and a simple wardrobe, but you must buy it all used at thrift shops. And you can have basic utilities, so long as you don’t overuse them.) Would that ruin your life? Would it really have any appreciable effect on your well being at all? Most people derive 90% of their happiness from their family and friends. And to fill in that last 10%, you can get unlimited entertainment, enough for a lifetime, free at any local library, along with a free Internet connection.
Now consider how much money you’ve blown over the years on items that aren’t on that list. Imagine if you had saved it all, and invested it at a modest 8% return. Seriously, run the numbers and see. For most middle class Americans, the result would be more than enough to create a lifetime of financial independence.
It’s not too late. You can just stop. You really can!
In fact, I ought to launch another site called “Million Dollar Closet.” The rules would be the same, except your starting stake can come from selling crap you already own on eBay or Craig’s list. The hook - no buying ANYTHING new until you have a million in the bank. You can buy food (but not at restaurants), pay your bills, and pay to repair stuff you already have, but that’s it. I’m confident most people could get rich in much less time than they imagine this way. So why not do it?