Wednesday September 19th, 2007: Issue #842
Apologies for sporadic Kickstarts this week.
On Monday I had to leave home early to spend the day with my friend who’s mother recently passed on. We had the unpleasant task of registering her death and making arrangements for her funeral. David has nobody else to share the task with and after all, what are friends for.
Yesterday, when I had hoped to write a catch-up issue, I had to travel up to London for a business meeting. So time quickly evaporated.
Today, Delia and I have spent the morning in hospital with our youngest daughter Charlotte, who has been suffering with severe persistent headaches for almost four weeks. We finally got an appointment with a pediatric consultant who was very nice and quite reassuring.
He took lots of blood tests and will decide on Friday what the next steps will be. Meanwhile, poor Charlotte can’t even take painkillers because none of them work on it. It seems that one strong possibility is a virus, which can take several weeks to pass. Let’s hope it is something that simple.
Now I’m home and trying to catch up.
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I had two phone calls from one of my credit card companies the other day, but as I don’t like giving out my personal details to people on the phone who refuse to say what they want until I do, I wouldn’t speak with them. I told them that if it was important, they should write to me.
They did.
This is what the letter says:
“We have been trying to contact you recently regarding the position of your account, as detailed above. Unfortunately we do not appear to have a record of your phone number.”
Odd, since they rang it twice!
“We felt it necessary to bring this matter to your attention as soon as possible as an arrears or overlimit situation can result in transactions being declined. You will also incur charges until the situation is resolved.”
Worrying - until you look at the position of my account ‘as detailed above’:
Arrears: £0.00
Balance: £0.00
Overlimit: £0.00
Are they going crazy, or am I?
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The subject line of today’s Kickstart is ‘The best thing I ever learned’. And from a business point of view it really is. Certainly it was the thing that changed me from being an Internet marketing dabbler to being someone who can earn a healthy full time income online.
The Internet has been good to me. As you may (or may not) be aware, most of my income comes from the Internet. That’s why I’m such an evangelist and love to hear about people grabbing the online opportunity.
But … it wasn’t always that way for me.
I’ve been active online for five or six years now and for the first two or three could never have lived on my online income. In fact, it was barely more than a modestly paying hobby. I made money, but it certainly wasn’t as easy as the ‘gurus’ lead us all to believe.
Then something changed. One small change in the way that I thought made a massive difference.
That change happened when it finally dawned on me that recurring income (sometimes known as passive income) is a wonderful thing.
Passive, or recurring income is money that you work once for, but then keeps flowing towards you week after week, month after month without any further effort on your part.
How amazing is that? Yes, I thought so too.
For most of us, our working expectations have created a work=reward mindset that is very hard to break out of. It goes like this: you go to work, you put in the hours and at the end of the month you are given a fixed sum of money as your reward. Hours in equals money out.
Because of that way of thinking, most people who try to make money online think in terms of getting paid for each individual action. So, if I sell a book, I get paid. Once. If I want to be paid again, I have to go through the effort of selling another book (or service, or other product.)
It works, and the rewards can be quite spectacular, but essentially, if you want to keep making money you have to keep putting in the effort to earn it.
Passive, or residual income turns all that on its head. You put in the effort to make the sale and then you keep on being paid for that single effort forever (or as long as the person who bought remains a customer). And if you want to put in more effort to make more sales, your residual income will simply go up. And up.
Learning about that changed everything for me.
There are lots of ways you can make a passive income online (passive, in this case, means you don’t have to expend any ongoing effort) and frankly, I only operate a small handful of them.
Over the last few days I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to review a new set of videos from a British Internet marketer called Neil Shearing. Neil is a family man and a bit of a recluse. He doesn’t do the seminar circuit, rarely pokes his nose into the forums and is unknown to the vast majority of newbies. But ask any Internet marketer with a bit of experience under their belts and they will instantly recognize Neil as being totally straightforward and very, very successful.
Most of Neil’s very substantial online income comes from passive income streams. He really is a guy who doesn’t like to work too hard!
What Neil has just done is create a series of fourteen videos called Passive Cashflow Secrets that explain the concepts behind passive income, why it is so important, and the leading ways that you can build a passive income of your own online.
In the videos Neil covers all the major ways to build a great passive income for yourself. There is no fluff and nothing complicated. He has a very calm and clear way of explaining things that makes lightbulbs blaze in your mind.
Passive Cashflow Secrets is officially launching in a few day’s time, but you can pre-order a copy (and get a discount) right away.
These videos will for certain increase my passive income. How can I be so sure? Because I’ve already followed the advice in one of the videos and am working on putting another one into action very soon.
Passive Income can change your life, and Neil Shearing’s Passive Income Secrets will set you on the right track instantly.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention … there is a chance to win a copy of Passive Income Secrets too!
Just pop over to http://www.urlnex.us/passiveincome and find out more.
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I’ve read that humans (and other animals) can only survive thanks to the legions of microbes that inhabit our bodies.
I imagine that a supply of the most necessary bacteria is transferred to a fetus in the womb, from its mother.
If this is so, how then do clones, created in vitro in sterile laboratories, acquire their required symbiants?
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An Inspirational Thought
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Thoughts on luck.
* The more ability and knowledge you develop in any field, the more likely it is that ‘lucky’ breaks will come your way.
* The more energy and enthusiasm you have, the ‘luckier’ you become. It isn’t that any more luck comes your way, just that your heightened attitude helps you to recognize it for what it is.
* The more people you know and who know you as a positive and likeable person, the ‘luckier’ you will be in life. When people like you, they are more likely to open doors for you.
See how simple it is? And it is all down to you.
Your attitude, your positivity, your enthusiasm and energy are the difference between a life of good fortune and a life of missed opportunities.
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http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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Anita Roddick said,
“Three components make an entrepreneur: the person, the idea and the resources to make it happen.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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In the beginning there was a website. The creator labored for days to build the best website he could. He decided how it would look, chose the number of columns and the web-safe colors. He lovingly made graphical images to make it pretty. He wrote content, then more content, then even more content. And when he was finished he looked upon his website and saw that it was good.
In time, people visited his website. Some stayed long enough to to read the content and a few clicked on banners and buttons and other advertisements. Dollars and cents appeared in the creator’s bank account. And it was good.
“How can I make more money?” the creator said.
A voice in his ear replied, “Make your website sticky. Make people want to stay on your website for longer and lo and behold more of them will click on your banners and buttons and advertisements.”
And so he did. And they did. And even more Dollars and cents appeared in his bank account.
And it was very good.
“My bank account is healthy,” said the creator, “but my cup runneth not over. In fact, my cup is very much of the half empty variety. My six days of labor are done and now I want to rest. How can I rest and make more money at the same time?”
The voice in his ear chuckled disconcertingly. “You need to invent Web 2.0,” it said.
“Web 2.0?”
“Oh yes. Your website is Web 1.0. You built it and put content on it for others to see. You make good money, but you are limited to making money in proportion to your own efforts, as you’ve seen. And if you take a day of rest, your efforts come to a stop. When you invent Web 2.0 other people will create your content for you while you rest.”
“I see,” said the creator, “and I can put my banners and buttons and advertisements around the content that other people will create for me!”
“Neat, huh?” said the voice.
“Neat? It’s bloody brilliant! What can we call this amazing plan that let’s me sit on my backside and let other people make money for me?”
“That’s the trick,” said the voice. “You need to find a name for it so that people will think it is important, but just meaningless enough so that they won’t think to look behind the curtain.”
“How about I call it ‘Social Networking’? Then the people will think it is all about them.” said the creator.
“Perfect.” said the voice.
And so he did. And they did.
And it was extremely good.
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Fascinating Facts
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A survey conducted in 2004 by the British Council asked more than 40,000 people around the world to rank the most beautiful words.
The top five were voted as MOTHER first, followed by PASSION, SMILE, LOVE, and ETERNITY.
What are your most beautiful words?