I’m writing it all up on my main blog but I thought I’d just mention a few things from the Location Free Lifestyle point of view.

Obviously being tropical Africa things like Malaria tablets/nets, keeping your jabs up to date and having a good first aid kit (with lots of plasters!) is a must, one of the best things is actually how easy it is to get online.  I was in a well out of the way place so  I went all prepared to have no internet whilst I was there, but also thought, like in most of Asia, that I might be able to find a Wifi internet cafe or hotel at some point.

Well I had no luck at all with that!  However, one of the amazing things is just how far 3G has spread.  Even in really out of the way places.  So the easy thing to do is to bring a 3G dongle for your Mac/PC with you (or an unlocked iphone) and just buy a local SIM card.  Bang, instant internet access in the most remote of places!

Plus you’re paying local rates for the data. Although also remember to bring lots more cash than you think you’ll need!  Obviously don’t expect fast speeds or anything, but using the net on the beach in Africa itself is a very, very cool thing!

And if you want to see what life is like there, check out my main development blog!

Here we go …
After reading your posts on how to set up a business and making money online, I’m interested in starting my own. I apologize for my ignorance but what exactly do you mean by online business? Do you mean a website or blog that sells product, such as your Genki English CD’s?

It’s just like any other business i.e. helping people solve a problem they have (be it needing to be clothed, fed or made happy etc.) and just doing it online instead of a traditional shop, office or store. Selling products or services is one way, but there are many others.

Can one make money by simply keeping a blog?

It’s a bit like saying “Can one make money simply by keeping a shop?” Yes, you can indeed. As long as it is something that people are looking for and wanting and that you have a really good product or service.

I heard that Youtube pays people whose videos attract a high number of viewers and subscribers. I’m tempted to do this but I don’t know how kind of video to put up. I can’t think of anything I’m a master at so I’m hesitant about posting in Youtube.

The trick with Youtube is that it is all new and success is mostly totally random at the moment. So put lots of videos up about different things and see which ones become popular. If these ones are also profitable then you have the beginnings of a business.

What things to do videos on? Either two things: 1) How you solved problems that you have had in the past (maybe learning a skill, changing an ink jet cartridge, finding how to use something etc. etc.) or 2) Do it about the questions that people always ask you (do your friends ask how you got the flowers good in your garden, how you did your nails or where you got your clothes? What do they ask you about?)

My other concern is, countless number of people have started blogs and uploading videos. Is the market already saturated? I’m so far behind, will anyone even notice my site if I am to start one?

The famous mis-quote about patents is “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” This was said to be written over 100 years ago.

There’s always something new to be done, or more importantly a new way of doing things. After all no one has yet seen what you can fully do yet.
The trick though, as you say, is marketing – getting the word out there. So get to the library and get all the books you can on marketing especially every book written by Seth Godin

Could you please give some concrete examples on how to start an online business, what kind of business to start, and how much can a starter expect to earn?

Have a look here for some ideas:

Money wise, it all starts from that first $. Once you’ve made that you just keep doing and innovating!

Sorry for all these ignorant question but I would really appreciate some advice from you! Thank you!

No worries, it’s always good for me to hear what people are struggling with. It hopefully helps me write things that are more useful!

But it’s not really a case of not having time, after all we all have the same 24 hours each day, it’s just that most of us have never been taught how to properly manage our time.  If you know the tricks the pros use, it’s so much easier!

In today’s video I’ll give you two of my top techniques for making boring tasks seem more fun, for getting so much more done each day and a quick tip for how to focus that I learnt from the Prime Minister of Thailand.  Invest the 6 minutes now, I’m sure you’ll see it pay off in no time!

It’s OK you saying how wonderful it is to have a location free lifestyle, but *exactly* how do we do it?

Fair enough, that sounds like a challenge! So ….

1. Learn about the industry

The first thing is just to learn how to market online, what sort of business to open and all the technical stuff.

We don’t get taught about it in school, so you’ve just got to put in the hours to learn it like anything else.

Don’t have the time?  Skip TV/web for an hour a day.  Believe me, it’s worth it.

Where to find the info? Beware of those super courses with hefty price tags.  I’ve spent thousands of dollars on these things and to be honest whilst some of them are quite good-ish, most of them just re-hash stuff you can find for free.

So I’d recommend saving your cash and just investing your time instead.

And where to look?

Well there’s just one site I’d recommend.  It’s run by a part time minister called Darren who just gives really good stuff away for free.  (Partly because he actually makes his money doing other things rather than making his money telling other people how to make money online).  I actually bought a course through his affiliate link this year which would netted him $1000.   What did he do with it?  He gave it away to charity.

So the site you are looking for is: Problogger.net

Yes there is far too much on there.  And yes it will take you ages to read through it all.  But not more than a full season of your favourite TV show. Again, it’s worth it.  ”Buy it, read it, do it” as we say. Except of course it’s free, you don’t need to buy it.

(If you also have access to a local library I’d also recommend reading through Think and Grow Rich &  Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

2. What about the start up capital?

Once you’ve learnt all the theory about starting an online business, it’s time to get started on actually making the business.

Again I often hear

But it takes lots of capital to start a business.  Where do I get the start up money?

Well, 20 years ago you would have been right.  If you wanted to start up a taxi firm or a printing company you needed capital and lots of it.

But one of the amazing thing about capitalism these days, whether you love it or hate it,  it’s that you need hardly any money to start a good business.

Shall I tell you how you can get all the money you’ll need to start up?

Drinks.

Yep, drinks.

For just one month give up your favourite tipple. Whether it’s coffee, pop/soda, or alcohol just switch to tap water for one month.  And I can guarantee that in that time you’ll have enough money to start up.  Because really you don’t need much money at all.  All you need is the passion and a website.  Plus the will power to spend the next 30 days learning about how to start a business.

That’s it.

Again it’s all about your world view and whether you really see yourself being location free whilst working online.

If it’s just a “that would be nice” thing, it will be like the Ferrari that you’d like but never get.  Which is fair enough.

Instead make it a definite plan. Make it a part of yourself.  Make your spare time into “learning and doing” time.

There’s every reason in the world you can do this.

It’s nothing hard, it’s just how the world works these days, and I’m surrounded by people doing this all the time.

If you want to be like in the videos on the site, or sunbathing in Japan as I was this afternoon, chuck the TV, check out the sites, down the drinks and get started!

Good luck.

P.S. And if you’re so pressed for time you never watch TV or browse the web, check out my latest video coming soon.

Of course when they first came out that was what had us all excited, a laptop replacement. But being unable to update HTML websites, design flash or edit video sort of made it so I never carried it around with me until now.

But once you get over the fact that you do need and carry both, the iPad and a laptop, the iPad’s strengths shine out much more.

Autocorrect spelling is fantastic. Touching a picture to move it is great. Email is easier to sort and handle (with no gmail failing to sync). Copying text to Pages is infinitely better than Word, no more pages jumping off when you paste in one line or weird fonts appearing when you paste across. Plus everything looks so much nicer than Word!

Presentations are much better with just one small device to carry and you know that the battery meter is accurate and it won’t die or freeze part way through. That type of confidence is priceless.

Everyone can see the screen in meetings and everyone can reach out to touch it and suggest changes and new ideas.

Somethings are slower, like changing between apps, but the time spent waiting on laptops for them to think about doing something when you click more than makes up for it. It also took me a while, whilst writing this actually, to figure out that you need to use two fingers to scroll the text edit window in WordPress. And as I said before there are plenty of big things you just can’t do.

Backup of data is a concern as is the fact that a full iPad takes up a whole chunk of your laptop’s disk when you sync to iTunes!

But overall as more and more tasks get apps to cover them then I can seen me spending even more time working on the iPad. It is so, so nice not having to search for a power outlet or keep the screen on dim just to save power. Instant on and off is amazing. Apps start up exactly where you left them with no lost data or “oh no!” cries if you clicked “x” before saving. Plus it looks and feels nice, like you really are in charge of a spaceship, and the buttons do things when you hit them instead of just whirring the hard drive.

So for the first time in about six weeks I’m actually quite enjoying working in Starbucks (with the exception of a 3 day workshop on a beautiful tropical island I’ve been living in the city since I got back from New Zealand!)

Lets just see now if I can ever do a full days work without having to boot up my laptop at all!

A lot of the videos I took for this site are using an old Casio video camera, which was nice.

But for my main Youtube channel this year I upgraded to a Panasonic GH1 I’ve since gone on to have over 13 million views, which isn’t all due to the camera, but I’m sure it has helped at lot!

The camera is amazing –  and gives videos the very cool “movie look” where the foreground is focussed but the background is  blurred.      I do get asked a lot about it, so if you do anything on Youtube (or just as a Christmas present!)  then I’d highly recommend it.

The picture here is the black one, but I went with the red one, which looks really cool.

It’s taken me a little while to use it, but here’s one of the first videos I took with it:

Conversely real life is usually really fun.  It just amazes me how happy most people really are. In all my travels I’ve met thousands of people and just about all of them are fun loving, interesting and positive people.  You just can’t see their smiles on the internet!

So I’ve been working on a new project to bring some positivity back.  I call it Genki Relax.  Have a look at the video below!

You can find more details on the GenkiRelax.com website, or buy the product here!

Computer:  Panasonic Toughbook (best Windows PC)

Software: Ableton Live ( easy to use, not best sound quality)

Mic: Samson C01U (OK-ish)

Kaossilator: Korg Kaossilator (sounds fantastic!)

Headphones: Shure SE535 ( Amazing, expensive but well worth it!)

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!