What I Do, And What I’m Going To Do

What I Do, And What I’m Going To Do

Reader Al dropped by with a comment the other day. He’d noticed that I don’t sell anything on the site and wondered what the hell are you doing?

He also wondered what I do and whether I had other sites.

Finally, he asked why I write this site for free and whether that would change.

So, whilst retaining my man of mystery appeal, let’s answer the question.

What I Do

Recently, I realised the extent to which my business is a sprawling mess of stuff with no rhyme or reason.

I do a lot of stuff online and offline, and that’s the major reason attempts to make money from this particular site haven’t been all that fast in coming. (Despite several people at this point emailing me to say give us something to buy, you moron.)

I will give you something to spend your money on. More on that soon. But what do I do?

In organising the business stuff, there are basically four main things I do:

• High end freelancing services (and now consultancy about online business matters.)

This is where the majority of my income comes from. Most of it is direct response copy, setting up funnels and now businesses of all types come to me for my spectacular knowledge on the aforementioned. Aside from the odd entrepreneurial guy who uses my services site to grab a consultation, this site has very little to do with how I get clients.

Instead, I get them through lead gen sites, funnels I’ve set up and other tricksy little things that I won’t mention publicly.

I charge a relatively high amount nowadays and that’s getting higher as we get more professional. But let’s move on.

• Content Marketing

I have many other sites that make affiliate money, sell ebooks and more. Hence the Niche Site Challenge and most of the archives posts. Affiliate marketing is probably my second biggest earner historically. That’ll change though because there are better business models.

• Physical Products

I have had a dropshipping/physical products store since before I started freelance writing.

I only did a minimum of work on this until recently when James Holt’s success inspired me to give it another shot.

Now I have a couple more stores and more on the horizon because it’s easy enough as a business model if you have the skills and some capital.

• Publishing

I make money from books. I sell fiction and non-fiction. Some of it interfaces with websites and the other models I use. A lot doesn’t and I sell books as a traditional publisher would.

So those are the four main areas I work in.

I also try a million different things because I get bored and find experimenting fun. (Hence taking a break right now to deal with burnout, hand injuries and becoming more professional about things.)

But on experimenting…

Experiments

Sometimes I do stuff that’s experimental in nature and I don’t include that in the business things.

A lot of it comes under the “different services” stuff that I talked about already. I’ll throw up a small lead generation website for something a bit out there, write a couple of blog posts or post on Reddit, and see what happens.

These things tend to be very specific.

Also, another interest generating idea I use is to throw up a quick how-to book and put it on Amazon. So, let’s say you wonder, “Could I make a ton of money teaching people how to use Instagram?”

Write a 50 page book or so about what you plan to do. Put it in Kindle Unlimited or price it at £3-5 and see if people buy it. If you get customers, then it might be worth putting up a site or something. It’s not fool proof, but it plays to my strengths and you can make money from it.

Other weird stuff comes to mind every so often and a lot of it is really rubbish and never works. But the way I see it is that freelance writing was a “one of those weird experiments” and I’ve built everything from there. So for a hundred failures, one success is all it takes.

And you’ll succeed more the more you learn and the more you throw at the wall.

What I’m Going To Do

So, we’ve talked about what I do already.

No doubt, there’s some fascinating stuff in there, but it’s all in the archives. Well, most of it is in the archives. The experiments aren’t unless they’ve succeeded.

But let’s talk about this site and making money.

At the moment, this site makes money through two things: 1) I sell my services, and 2) I have some affiliate links in various places.

But there aren’t any products, courses or anything like that. I don’t sell hard and if you’re on my (sporadic) email list, then you’ll know I don’t sell on that either with the odd exception.

This will change in the future.

Here’s the general plan:

• I will release courses on the major subjects I talk about on the site (starting with direct response, and then publishing, websites, etc.) These will be one-time fees.
• I will have a members program with reports, step by step guides and stuff. This will be a monthly/yearly subscription.
• There will be two levels to the membership program. One will have access to more stuff; one will be more affordable so people can get an idea of what they’re getting.

That sums up the direction of the site so far as making money is concerned in the medium term. I might create other stuff, but probably not. The whole point is to create a business where I have a small amount of customers and have a better, more tangible relationship with them where everyone benefits.

Final Thoughts

So far as what I do and what I’m doing is concerned, this is about as open and honest as I’m going to be.

So far as the future is concerned, I haven’t ironed out the details yet so far as actually delivering this stuff. But I have created a lot of content (that needs typing up. Waiting on the hands for that.)

One thing is for sure though; you’ll want to get on my list, because folks on the list will hear first about any new developments.

They’ll also get launch prices and to be honest, I want to limit signups for the membership programs so those will only be available at limited times through the list.

But let’s close on why I do this:

• I enjoy writing and sharing thoughts
• The blog causes me to experiment
• I want to help guys with actual business stuff as opposed to feel good guru-bait
• Being good at business stuff is not an option and by encouraging people to getting into business stuff and being more independent, I’m saving the world from overreliance on corporate overlords one blog post at a time
• I’m a sneaky silver-tongued businessman and so you’re all going to fall into my sneaky sales trap and sign up for the stuff I’m going to sell in the future

That sums it up with just a little touch of craziness.

Comments, questions, etc. are welcome and once I’m over the burnout and RSI this will be marching full speed ahead.