Tim Ferriss’ concept of lifestyle design—which he describes in his best seller “The 4-Hour Workweek”
In the book, Tim begins by explaining that the first thing you need to do is to define what your dreams are. Then there are three basic things you need to do in order to reach your dreams:
1. Elimination: This is where everything you’ve read about productivity comes into play. Basically, it’s about cutting out the nonessential and concentrating on those tasks which have the greatest impact on the bottom line (whatever the bottom line happens to be for you). Many of the things Tim recommends in this section of the book will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, such as the following:
- Set clear limits on the amount of time you’re going to spend on tasks. For example, Tim suggests that you force yourself to end your workday by 4:00 p.m., and notice how you begin trimming the fat by cutting out “busy work” and tasks that aren’t really contributing much to the end result.
- Stop multitasking.
- Check email only twice a day.
- Work from a to-do list and ruthlessly edit out anything that isn’t essential. Focus on your priorities.
- Hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door and don’t be afraid to enforce it.
2. Automation: Automation is about setting your cash flow on autopilot. That is, creating passive sources of income which will finance your expenses.
3. Liberation: Once you know what you want, you’ve freed up time through increased productivity, and you’ve created passive sources of income, use the extra time and money to do what you want.
Meet Andrew and Daryl Grant
While doing research a couple of months ago, I came across a 9 Part series on YouTube in which Internet entrepreneurs Andrew and Daryl Grant explain how they make thousands of dollars of passive income online each month with their eBook business, while doing very little work. After watching the videos it occurred to me that this was “The 4-Hour Workweek” in action. Here’s their story:
Andrew and Daryl explain that about five years ago they owned a business which took up most of their time. With two little kids, things were difficult for them. They decided that they wanted to be able to spend more time with their kids, and so they began looking for ways to make money online.
They came up with a process for creating and selling eBooks which has turned out to be very profitable for them, and which gives them the freedom to work from anywhere and allows them to have lots of extra time to spend having fun as a family. In a nutshell, it consists of five steps which are laid out below.
Find Hot-Selling E-Book Topics
The first step Andrew and Daryl follow is to find a hot, money-making niche. They explain that this is vitally important. The idea is to find a nice, tight little niche full of people who are hungry, and even fanatical, for the information you offer. You’re looking for people who spend a lot of time and money on a hobby, or some other pursuit, and you ask yourself questions that will get you inside their head, such as these:
• Where do they hang out?
• What drives them?
• What questions or problems do they have?
The first thing Andrew and Daryl do when they’re looking for a topic to write an eBook about is to generate about twenty different eBook topic ideas. They then narrow these ideas down to about five topics using a specific set of criteria that they’ve developed.
The criteria they use include researching how many people are searching for that topic online, and how much competition is already out there. Since they start driving people to their site with Google ad words, they look for topics for which there are 20 Google ads or less.
Test the Market
Once they’ve narrowed the possible topics down to about five, Andrew and Daryl test the market. That is, they ask the market what it wants. The objective is to discover what are the biggest fears, frustrations, and needs of the people who make up their market.
They do this by creating a tiny little site where they basically say: “Hi, thank you for stopping by our site; we’re in the process of writing a book about ________ . If you’re interested in this topic, please tell us what you’d like to see in the book.” They then have a form for people to fill in. They drive traffic to that site by using Google ad words (pay per click ads).
They know they have a good topic when they get 500 visitors per day through pay per click ads, the ads cost no more than ten cents a click, and about 5 percent of people leave feedback on the survey. If they get this they know they can get $100 net profit per day from that site.
Look for Ways to Stand Out From the Competition
Once Andrew and Daryl know what the fears, frustrations, and needs of the market are, they develop a product that meets those needs. They also make sure to create a product that stands out from the competition. Their goal is to exceed people’s expectations.
For example, one of their eBooks provides advice on how to use alternative therapies for skin cancer. During their research they discovered that there were a lot of sites talking about skin cancer which were full of medical jargon. However, there was very little out there on alternative therapies for skin cancer.
In addition, people wanted to hear stories from others who had treated their skin cancer using alternative methods. So Andrew and Daryl created an eBook in which they filled these needs which were not being addressed by the already existing products. (You can see the site here.)
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is one of the main things that Tim Ferris talks about in “The 4-Hour Workweek”, and it’s something that Andrew and Daryl do extensively. For the most part, they don’t write the eBooks themselves. Instead, they use Rent-a-Coder and spend between $150.00 and $500.00 to get an eBook written.
In addition, neither of them is a techie and they have no idea how to create web sites. Although they’ve done research on which web site designs work best in order to sell products, and they look through the landing pages for products that sell well on Clickbank to get an idea of the copy that they should use, they outsource the building of the niche web sites which they use to sell their eBooks.
Increasing the Income from a Niche Web Site
Andrew and Daryl explain that when they first put up a new web site, the eBook usually either breaks even or not even that. They then allow the market to tell them what it wants once again. By using split test software, they start conducting split tests and aim for a conversion of 1%.
As an illustration, they might change the headline, add bonuses, and so on. They explain that they make sure that when they conduct split tests they only test one thing at a time. Once they have a 1% conversion rate, they start focusing on getting more traffic.
Conclusion
The purpose of this post isn’t to get you to go out and start an eBook business, but to share with you an example of two people who have applied many of the principles which Tim Ferriss talks about in “The 4-Hour Workweek”
What lessons can you draw from Andrew and Daryl’s story which you could start applying to create your own dream lifestyle?
(Hammock Season 2008 is courtesy of wisemandarine).
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