If you’ve ever made, or I guess even watched, a video on Youtube there is now a huge opportunity for you to make money online with Youtube.

You don’t need 10 million views on your main channel like I do, all you need is a video camera, know how to set up a Youtube account and an idea of how videos come across on Youtube.

Then it’s really simple:

Just offer to make videos for local companies, hotels, restaurants etc.

That’s it.  It’s really simple!

How it works…

The key is that most business owners are far too busy to even know what Youtube does, let along know how to set up a channel and upload videos.  If you have that knowledge it can be invaluable for them. And anything that makes them money they will be happy to pay for! Customers love video and really seeing a product or service before they buy.  Plus Youtube is now the second biggest search engine in the world.   All this makes it something that every business needs, but not everyone knows how to do.  Until you come along that is!

How I started…

Although “local internet marketing” has become a bit of a boom, I only started this by accident.  Last year I was staying at a friend’s resort in Thailand.   And I wanted to put up a video on my Youtube channel to show my blog readers where I was staying.  Here it is: Samui Accommodation.

But it had an unintended side effect.  When I went back this year they were saying how many more customers they’d had because people had seen the video on Youtube when deciding where to stay.  It brought them trust and showed the customers exactly what they were getting.  They were very happy.  So was I.

Hmmm… so I had another go with another friend’s hotel (as you can tell I pretty much live in hotels), this time setting up a whole new channel for them: New Zealand Accommodation.

And I’ve also set up channels and made videos for lots of other places.

Youtube is still young, so this probably won’t work in a few years time, so get your skates on now!

Things to be careful of…..

These are some of the hints and tips I’ve learnt (usually the hard way!)

1. Brevity: Keep the videos short. People switch off after a minute or so.

2. Honesty: Do it in one cut.  It makes editing easier and shows the real thing, you didn’t just cut out any bad things as you can see everything!

3. Be authentic:  If it’s a commercial channel for a business, that’s cool.  But don’t put ads on a personal channel.  I found this out the hard, and ironic, way as one of the videos I wasn’t paid to do was for New Zealand Wine. As we weren’t doing it as a commercial project I thought it would be a cool video just to put on my personal channel (New Zealand wine is great!), but everyone thought it was an ad and hated it!  Don’t mix business and pleasure I guess!

3. Fun:  Smile and have fun with it!

There are also plenty of other tips and “secret sauces” to making this work well, but I think I’ll keep those to myself for the moment! ; )

But if you have a camera, can get people to smile and talk well then have a go, it’s a great way to get paid and you also end up with lots of fringe benefits, we got given free T-shirts, Bungy Jumps, Jet Boat rides and all sorts of other things if we filmed them and let them use the clips on Youtube!

Whenever I tell people about the Location Free Lifestyle, invariably if they are working they’ll say “I have no time to travel.”

I have no time

My answers to that is….  ”Really?  I have 24 hours in a day, do you have less than me? ”

Wellm we all have the same amount of time each day, it’s how we choose to use it.  What do you choose, the 2 hour commute and 8 hours behind a city desk each day?  Or spend the 8 hours working by the beach with zero communute time – that you can then use to go swimming in the sea?

As we’ve seen in the other posts it does take time to set these things up.  But your time is your own, and you’ve only got a century or so left so make the most of it!

So why work?

And at the same time when I talkt to people who spend all their time travelling they always say “why work at all?”

Many, many people spend almost their entire time travelling around the world.  They work a bit, save some money then head off.   They’re not just beach bum hippies, but all sorts of people including ex accountants bankers and lawyers.  They often say, why not just travel instead of working in different places?

The anwers to this is “purpose”.  Yes I love being by the beach, seeing amazing things and meeting amazing people.  But at the same time you have to a have a purpose in life.  What do you leave behind and how can you help other people?  Without that it can become tedious and meaningless to just travel around, especially when that’s all you can talk about with people!

Yesterday was great for me to just spend the whole day slobbing around the pool.  But at 3 this morning I woke up wanting to do more, so started work.  If you love your work, and you spend the time finding something that really makes a difference in the world then you really want to do it!

And if you’re going to do that you might as well do it online, with wonderful friends in beautiful and more often than not cheaper, places all around the world!

For example last night was the Michael Jackson memorial.  I happened to be in Japan, which meant it would start at 2AM.   All my friends with regular jobs were having to rush around trying to beg their bosses for the next morning off.  For everyone that was location free, we just worked till midnight (I finished up recording my latest CD – yeah!) then headed off to the bars at 2 o’clock till dawn.   We still do the same amount of work, well maybe a lot more, but if something unmissable crops up, you have the flexibility to be there.

So where do we start making money online?

This is the question I get asked more than anything!  Have a look through the previous posts on this site, especially the ones marked “Make money online”

And one really, really excellent free course I can recommend is the one by Shoemoney.  It’s heavy going, not for the feint hearted, but it has real ideas that do work.   Why is he giving it away for free if it’s so good?  I think it’s so you’ll think about signing up for his website tools when you do start, which is a pretty good deal, you get all the info for free and then get a choice if you want to pay for it later! Sign up here.

This is part two of my China Workshops, see here for part one!

Open or closed?

Many people have no idea how to sell their products, their ideas or themselves. So today I got each person in turn to try and sell me the easiest possible item: chocolate cake!They nearly all failed in the first sentence. They let me say “no”.

As we are bombarded with sales people all the time we’re naturally conditioned to say “no” whenever we are given the chance. So the first person asked “Do you like chocolate cake?” “No, thank you, goodbye”. It took several people before they got why this wasn’t working. Any closed question i.e. one that can be answered with yes or no will always receive a “no”. Try it and see!

Although one girl did try hard by asking “With this chocolate cake you can get any hot girl. Do you want a hot girlfriend?” sadly we’ve all been conditioned to say “no” even though many of us would probably realise later we should have said yes!

So if you do ask any questions.they have to be open questions, i.e. where it’s impossible to say “no” because the language part of our brain won’t let us! What sort of chocolate do you like the best? Which of our gorgeous cakes would you like? How many lessons shall we book today?

Then one girl started down the “it’s very cheap, we have a promotion” track. This never works. The instant reaction is “oh, this mustn’t be good if it’s discounted. I don’t want chocolate cake that no one else wants”. Social proof, if it’s cheap other people mustn’t like it. Therefore I don’t like it.

Cost nor product matter at all!

The first thing is to realise that it doesn’t really matter what the cake is about nor how much it costs. All selling is is the transfer of emotion. Your job as a seller, especially online,  is to get the image of the feeling that the product will bring firmly into the buyer’s mind. They have to see it, experience it, feel what it’s like to have this gorgeous, delicious, moist chocolate cake gently crumbling as you move the fork, passing the soft, fresh cream and the exotic wild strawberry jam layers. They have to imagine the luxurious taste as the first delicate chips of dark, fragrant chocolate caress your tongue. If your mouth is watering now, you want it. You don’t care what the cake is made of or what it costs, you want that feeling now!

It’s the same with anything you buy. You don’t buy a car because you want a car. What you buy is the feeling of freedom.  Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee, they sell the energy and the feeling the ambience creates.

As a salesperson, and that’s what you are,  you have to figure out what you are actually selling. What feeling you are selling. Then using words, images, videos you put the clear emotional image of this feeling in the customer’s head and you’ve made the sale. Every time.

Click here here for part one. ]]> http://www.locationfreelifestyle.com/how-to-sell-anything-to-anybody/feed 0 http://www.locationfreelifestyle.com/lessons-learned-from-my-first-business-aged-13 http://www.locationfreelifestyle.com/lessons-learned-from-my-first-business-aged-13#comments Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:35:40 +0000 admin http://www.locationfreelifestyle.com/?p=282 As with your next business, my first business started because of a need amongst my friends.  We always used to want to buy the latest computer games but before the internet you had to wait for a month before the magazines like Crash or Amiga Format came out with reviews so you could see if the game you wanted was any good or not.  You could just buy a game without reading a review, but more times than not it would be terrible and you’d wasted your hard earned pocket money.

I figured that we could write a review “fanzine” ourselves, timed to come out in the gap between issues of the big magazines with much quicker reviews, hence we called it  “PREview” that I sold for 20 pence a copy.

Things actually went quite well, I sold it in the school bookshop (just asked the teacher!) and word of mouth amongst friends.  By the time I wound it up I’d made enough money to buy myself a colour TV!  In those days that was quite a big thing.  Not to mention game companies had started sending me games to review.  I had to send them back though.

But I learned a lot of things in this first business:

Peope will pay for something that will save them money

It’s much easier to sell something where you can give a definite price on how much it saves you.   PREview cost 20p but it could save you wasting a whole 9.99 on a bad game!

Ignore the naysayers

I was selling the magazine at a schoolmate’s dad’s computer shop.  I’m not sure how I managed this, I think I must just have asked.  Anyway as usually happens when somebody starts doing something well the naysayers start getting jealous.   This school mate came in one day shouting to everyone “Ha, we had a customer come in yesterday, he picked up Richard’s fanzine and thought it was free!  He didn’t think it was worth 20p! HA HA!”   Of course all of his mates were lapping this up.  And some of my friends who were working on the magazine got a bit down by it.  But I wasn’t bothered at all.  My feeling was, yeah but other people are buying it at 20p!  That says much more than one person who doesn’t.   You’re never going to be able to please everyone.  Isn’t that the famous Bill Crosby quote?   “I can’t tell you the path to success.  But the path to failure is to try and please all the people all the time”.

Positive people do positive things.

Everyone who has ever done anything in this world was a positive person. Otherwise they wouldn’t have done the things they have!  Ignore the negative people.  Surround yourself with people are are actually getting on and doing things.

Great people talk about ideas.
Average people talk about things
Small people talk about other people.

.

Having said that …

Technology always lets you down

In the beginning the magazine was photocopied.  This was real copy and paste with glue and sellotape and a master copy that looked something from Indiana Jones’ Diary with all the bits taped and stuck on it.  Then I heard about a new way of colour printing.  That sounded cool!  Of course before the internet you couldn’t check things out online, so I asked lots of questions and it seemed legit.  So I started promoting that from next month we’d be in full colour!  I told everyone.  Then I found how how the system works, you have to hand copy over the master using a series of coloured carbon papers!  Oh dear.  But the deadline was too near so I woke up very, very early on the Sunday morning and tried copying out every copy of the magazine.   It certainly looked “different”, I’m sure it would have won an original art competition,  unfortunately you couldn’t read hardly any of it!  That sort of killed things off a bit as going back to black and white after all the hype wasn’t really on.

So,  realise that technology always breaks and always have a back up plan!

Look at every way to create revenue from your product

When I set the price of the magazine I came up with 20p as it simply cost less than this to photocopy.  Always allow a nice profit margin because there will always be extra costs you’ve never dreamed about.  What I didn’t realise is that most magazines, back then at least, didn’t make most of their money from the cover price, but from advertising inside the magazine.   If I had known this I could have gone round local business and sold adverts and made a lot more money.

This is the same with many businesses, they just “leave money on the table”.  For example you could be creating more revenue by adding private advertisers to your site, writing a book, recommending other people’s services, creating a membership site etc. etc.    The content is always the main thing, finding people’s needs and then satisfying them, but if the finances are tight then always keep an eye open for other ways to monetize what you do.   Always read up on the biographies and business info of other people and companies.  Find out how they make money.  If you have a site or small business already, it might just be one simple idea that catapults you into the big revenue league!

It’s never too early or too late

Some of you will be reading this now and your subconscious will be making up excuses as to why you can’t live a location free lifestyle.  It will be things like “Richard started when he was 13, I didn’t so I can’t do it” or “He had a head start before the internet came along, I’m too late now”.   Ignore those.  The best time to start up a business is always now!  Imagine what I could have done with my games previews if I had had the internet.  Well you don’t need to because there are hundreds of sites now making millions of dollars.   Does that mean I should have waited?  No, because I not only made a bit of money (a colour TV is a big thing for a 13 year old even if it is second hand) and helped out my friends (we all saved valuable gaming time by only buying the best games from each others recommendations!)  you learn so much from just starting a business.  Most people fail a couple of times, or more likely things just fizzle out, but that’s where you learn and those are the stepping stones to your much bigger success in the future!  So get started. Now!

By contrast I first started this “location free lifestyle”  site as something not too serious.  I know people who live like this, and people who want to live like this, and I know anyway can do it, but I also know that most people in rich countries won’t do it.

Today I realised that I might be targeting the wrong people. This site might be more serious than I could have possibly imagined.  Maybe I shouldn’t be aiming at the richest, but the poorest areas in the world.  For this “location free lifestyle”  could be the way out of poverty for millions of people.

Sceptical?  Let me explain, I might be wrong, but then again I might be right…

Why on Earth do the poorest people need the internet?

As I work with schools in some of the poorest areas of places like India, or this month China I always used to get annoyed by millionaire philanthropists from silicon valley going on about the “information gap” about how money should be spent on getting access to the internet for everyone.   Shouldn’t we be spending the money on health care?  On health education? On general education?  On electricity supplies?  Or even the super dream of having clean water?   Surely the last thing these people need is to be able to watch Tom & Jerry cartoons on Youtube?  (Which is what a lot of our kids where doing when we first gave them the internet!)

It’s the “location” part of “location free lifestyle” that’s key

But why are people poor?   When you look at poverty, it’s the economic situation that is the problem,  by definition of the word.   And in many cases that’s because people can’t find jobs where they live,  they have to move to get work.   In China we have people moving hundreds of miles to live illegally in the big cities where they earn low wages and their children don’t get access to free education.   In South America we hear of parents leaving children to go and work in Europe.  The recent controversies with South Asian workers working in Dubai.   In each case it’s because the workers couldn’t find work at home.

Da dah!  Education -> Enterprise

But just a minute, isn’t that was this website is about?  The tagline at the top of the page is “Make money online – live in paradise”   Sometimes in rural areas it really is a paradise, but for most people paradise is their home with their families.   So with a location free lifestyle you do make money online, but the location you choose as being with your family.

So maybe this idea that the poorest need the internet as much as fresh water or safe housing may indeed be true.  Not because of Youtube or mp3s or  online computer games, but because if you do have the internet you can earn a living online.  You don’t need to move and you can stay with and feed your family.

Of course it’s not easy…

Of course there are problems.  It’s nowhere near being “easy”.   But if you don’t have the internet, you can’t do it at all.  If you have online access then at least you have a chance.   It’s not for everyone of course.   Computers are complex and marketing is difficult to understand.  Many of the poorest adults are illiterate and can’t just pick up a book on computing.

But poor people in developing countries aren’t stupid.  They’re some of the most entrepreneurial, enterprising, smart thinking people you can imagine.  You should see some of the amazing money making ideas they come up with.  They’ll come up with crazy things once they are online.  They’re not lazy either.  Kids in the West might complain that McDonald’s is too far to walk to as they sit playing computer games all day, but the kids we teach certainly aren’t scared of hard work.

It doesn’t take long to learn how to make money online, and you can experiment as you go along.  Plus if you are earning US dollars but spending rupees you’ll very quickly lift yourself out of poverty.

It doesn’t even have to be on traditional computers.  In Cambodia we’re using the $100 laptops for education, all linked to the internet with a solar powered charging system.  It would be so easy for these kids to start selling information products online, then their parents and teachers wouldn’t have to work 3 or 4 jobs.   In Africa mobile phones may soon become the way to connect to the internet and they can do just as much as a PC.

Just a dream?

Am I being too idealistic about this?  Of course! And I’ve only just made the connection this evening after watching a story about South American families on French TV (whilst I was in China!).   But what we’ve seen over the last few months is that dreams do come true.   And we’re just starting.  As I said I always thought of this site as an extra, a bonus for the few people who would take up the challenge, or a diary for me to look back on in the future.  But now I’m thinking it could be so much more than this.   I need to concentrate on the “how to” of starting making money online from scratch so that anyone can do it.  If you’re hungry enough.

Everyone’s lives  become richer

Making money online is all about information products, what unique insight, technique, way of thinking can you bring to other people.  There are billions of people who don’t have a way to express themselves like that, but they have so much knowledge.  And I for one can’t wait to see what amazing products they will make and let us all experience.  I’ve seen how the internet can revolutionise education.  Now can it eradicate poverty?

As we say in Japan: Dekiru to omoeba Dekiru.  Or as Mr Obama says it “Yes, we can”.

Be genki,

Richard

www.LocationFreeLifestyle.com

More and more people are realising that any work you can do on a computer, you can do anywhere in the world.  Plus it can be a lot cheaper to live somewhere sunny and warm than back “at home.”

I know because luckily I’ve been living this lifestyle for the past decade, deciding where I want to live from Italy to Japan, in the mountains or by the beach, and how I choose to work.  I make my living online through websites, Youtube, writing magazine articles on various topics via email as well doing workshops and lectures all over the world.  You don’t have to be a millionaire, far from it,  it’s something anyone, or maybe even everyone, should do.

I figured in the spirit of give and take I’d write up this blog with some of the experiences and places I visit, along with some of the ideas and techniques you can use to fund your new Location Free Lifestyle.  Hopefully it will give you a few ideas and hopefully will inspire a few more of you to share your knowledge and experience. This is still all very new.  I know that I’m still making it all up as I go along.  I’m always wanting to know the best places to go, the bargains that are out there and the ideas that will make funding it much easier.

We’re fortunate enough to live in a time where it’s possible to make even a modest living online, which can then allow you to travel and live in almost any country you could desire. It’s about breaking free from the 9-5, the long commutes and boring jobs.  It’s about waking up in the morning in a beautiful location actually wanting to work on something that contributes and makes you happy.

I’ll try to update the site as often as I can, and judging by my schedule for the next year there should be quite a lot to come!

Please make comments on the posts and feel free to ask me any questions!

With the power of the internet you can make money with even the craziest topics, like video game tips, how to make a parrot talk, or even about looking after one species of tropical fish.   It’s like when you were back in High School and you had all that career advice about the jobs that you could do.  Only this time the jobs are a lot more fun, you get to choose and you get to live in funky locations.  But it is probably the toughest thing to decide, because there are so many options now open to you.

So how to choose choose what subject you want to work with. …

Help me!

It’s all about supply and demand. What can you supply that other people demand?

Does anyone ever come to you with any questions or problems they have?  Maybe something to do with work?  Do any of  your friends ask you about soccer strips or how to break up with their girlfriends?  Or people ask you about how to decorate Christmas trees?  How to dress well?  How to mow a lawn properly?   Bang, that could be your new online business.  You don’t know how big it will be yet, but if at least one person has asked you about it (and assuming you could give them a good answer!) then that’s one sign that people have this need and you could help fill it!

Magazines & Bookstores

Or try  looking  offline.  For example pop along to your local newsagent, which magazines do you regularly buy? Take a look at what other magazines are available for different hobbies.  If there are magazines available it means people are buying them i.e. there’s a demand.  And it also means there are sponsors willing to pay for advertising.  If there’s a demand offline then there certainly will be a demand for the same type of information online.  This means it’s possibly (see later!)  a topic where you could make a living.

For example some of the popular magazines in the UK are:

• Vogue
• Hello
• Ok
• Stuff
• What car?
• Men’s health
• PC Pro
• Cycling magazine
• Living abroad
• Amateur Gardening
• Playstation Magazine
• Future Music
• Family Tree
• Beautiful Homes
• etc. etc.

Now some of these topics will be ruled out because of all the online competition and we’ll take about that next time. But your mission for today is to write down the names and topics of as many magazines (or even non-fiction books) that you are interested in and you think you could write material online in a blog or ebook that would interest readers of those magazines.  It’s even better if you could narrow it down to specific parts or niches of the magazine.

Some things to consider when making the list:

• Could you write about this for ever and ever without getting bored?
• Could you write about this even if you never got paid for it?
• Could you write about this in a way that other people don’t?
• Could you make the topic seem more fun or exciting?
• Do you have a unique way of thinking about this topic?
• What experiences do you have in the topic that you could write about?
• Would you like to be famous for this topic?
• Is this the topic you want writing on your tombstone (or Nobel prize!)

If you’ve answered yes to all those then you might have just found your niche.

Then next time we’ll look at the supply side of things….

1. Get an internet showcase to show off your your best work.
2. A Youtube channel is the best way!
3. Put up tons of videos of all your best material.
4. Get a memorable .com address that points to your Youtube channel.
5. Give this address out to EVERYONE you meet.
6. Put it on business cards, at conferences, trade fairs, at the end of emails, at the end of forum posts or blog comments where you give out really useful info etc.

That’s it!  The idea is that you get famous in your niche, then people get in touch with you.  Think it doesn’t work?  Last year I got offered workshops in India and China, not through my website but because they had seen my videos on Youtube!  It’s the easiest way to set up a “website” for yourself, and of course it’s free!

As I say more to come soon!