Author: Tom Woods

When I was a young man, I was totally undisciplined.

I was a nerd, yes, but you knew that part.

I would go to the bookstore, see a book on teaching myself Italian, and get all excited at the prospect. I’d buy it and take it home, all set to get started.

By the time I’d reached page nine, I would have found something else that sounded exciting, and my ambitions to learn Italian would have dissipated as quickly as they had begun.

I see the same phenomenon among good people who want that online income stream.

They buy something, get 10% through it, and then buy the next thing.

They never focus on that one thing.

(This is almost as bad as the folks who want that income stream but never actually do anything at all, have no plan for reaching their goal, and then sip tea wondering about what might have been.)

So here’s what you should do.

Focus on this one thing.

Join me this Thursday night for a presentation with Rachel Rofe, who will take you through all kinds of free resources you can use to create things people love.

Woods, I can’t create anything!

Yes, you can. Do I really have more confidence in you than you do?

These are print-on-demand products — with particular emphasis on coffee mugs — so they don’t even get created until someone orders them. That means you don’t have to spend anything on (or even hold any) inventory.

See why it’s so much easier to be alive in 2017 than 1957?

One little witty line, often with people passionate about a certain niche in mind, and you have a product people really do buy. I promise.

Learn how to do this (it’s idiot-proof), how to get started, and where Rachel gets her ideas (the source is right in front of you, but if you’re like me, you won’t see it until she shows it to you).

Yes, it works, and no, doing it doesn’t cost you anything.

See you Thursday:

https://www.happyearner.com/mugs

Technology makes what used to require all kinds of specialized knowledge easy to do.

It’s now possible even for a technical dolt like me to do audio and video editing, and manage an email newsletter. No one stops to realize how amazing that is.

The technology has also made it possible for a dolt like me to run a little online store, and use basic software to do the heavy lifting every step of the way.

This is how plenty of knuckleheads are cleaning up online every single day.

Instead of really, really hard, technology has made it bonehead-proof.

This is a newbie-friendly way in to the miracle of the Internet, and building up insurance against the pink slip.

I’ll be doing it right alongside you.

But the deadline is Midnight Pacific Time — tonight!

Steve and Aidan will start training their new crop of students tomorrow, so tonight at midnight is a hard deadline. No one will be allowed in after that point.

I strongly recommend joining one of Steve and Aidan’s final four training and Q&A sessions today, which will run you through the whole system LIVE. And you’ll learn a ton about how eCommerce works.

Reserve your seat:
https://www.happyearner.com/livetraining

Think it over, and I hope to be hanging out with you in their Facebook group swapping stories.

Today I have no cutesy story for you.

I have only something that will help you — a lot.

This site is all about monetizing your online activity, and developing additional income streams.

In 20 years, a lot of people will have figured out that the Internet is more than just cat videos.

For now, only especially ambitious people have figured this out.

Tonight we’ll be diving deep into the incredible world of online eCommerce. This is among the most newbie-friendly ways to get started online: starting simple stores and targeting them to the right audiences.

While your friends are watching cat videos, you’ll be doing this. As will I, by the way, since I’ll be starting one of these stores right along with you.

Tonight’s training is different from what we covered in last week’s presentation. And it’s the last time we’ll be hearing from eCommerce masters Steve Clayton and Aidan Booth live. I’m not kidding when I say almost no one is able to get these guys to do free workshops even once, and here we are doing it twice.

Trust me, plenty of complete knuckleheads are already prospering with eCommerce.

You’re smarter than a knucklehead.

If you don’t find this completely absorbing, I owe you a Coke.

“Someday I’d like to figure out how to create a side hustle online.”

Great idea. But it’ll happen only if you attend something like this.

We’re going to be packed to the gills tonight, so reserve your seat:

https://www.happyearner.com/lastchance

It’s hard to pin down the single worst entrepreneurial mistake.

But here’s one I’d put in the top ten: rather than learning your audience cold and finding out what they want, you instead insist on what they should want, or figure you already know what they want.

So remember: it’s not about you. It’s about them.

It takes time and effort to learn your audience: what they read, what websites they visit, what products they buy, what their demographic breakdown is — all that stuff.

Once you know all that, you can target them precisely with Facebook, and you can offer them things they’ll gladly pay for.

That’s how you earn dough.

But to target them properly, you need to know all these things about them.

Here’s why I’m telling you this (apart from the fact that lots and lots of entrepreneurs overlook this fundamental point):

Last night I was playing around inside the members area of 100K Factory, the eCommerce training program created by our new heroes, Steve Clayton and Aidan Booth.

I opened up a sample “niche pack,” one of the new features of this year’s program. The niche: 3D printing.

Inside were two sample products to market to these folks. Nice.

But also included were:

— celebrities these people follow

— product brands they buy

— shows and magazines they’re interested in

— websites they read

— where they buy things

— the demographic breakdown of buyers in this group

— related Facebook pages and YouTube channels

In other words: the grunt work of researching this niche is done for you already.

How many niches have they prepared these niche packs for?

Oh, just 500.

Steve and Aidan poured $75,000 into researching them all.

If you ask me, they are way, way underselling this feature of their program. This research is pure gold, and they’ve done it for 500 niches.

They’re closing the doors on their program literally forever in 72 hours. I got them for one last private training and Q&A session for you folks. Please set aside the time for this.

Hundreds of us are already on board and excited to get started in newbie-friendly eCommerce.

Is this your time to jump off the fence and start a new chapter in your life? If so, I’ll be learning and doing it right along with you.

Step one is to join us live tomorrow (Tuesday) night:

https://www.happyearner.com/lastchance

I like when machines do my work for me.

Machines can even find people who would like what I have to offer.

It’s called Facebook Lookalike Audiences.

Facebook looks at people who buy what you have to sell, finds demographic patterns and interest commonalities between them, and then generates additional traffic that looks like these people.

Or how about this:

Someone puts a product in the shopping cart, but for whatever reason never finishes the checkout process. (This happens a lot, by the way — maybe they get distracted, or they don’t like the shipping cost, or whatever.)

You can have Facebook present a special ad that says to these people: hey, we saw you put that backpack in your cart but didn’t buy it. How’s an extra 25% off?

This is called “retargeting,” and it can be used in lots of different ways. By some estimates, eCommerce profits increase by 20% when retargeting is used.

Steve Clayton and Aidan Booth — both eCommerce millionaires with excellent reputations — recently met with 20 of their most successful eCommerce students, and every single one said retargeting had been a huge win for them.

As you can see, there’s a lot of amazing stuff out there. You should learn about this stuff. People who know about it are absolutely cleaning up online. These are people who are much less intelligent than you.

I’ve recruited Steve and Aidan for one more workshop for my people. This isn’t the kind of thing you should want to miss.

Everybody wants an additional income stream, but almost nobody ever does anything.

These guys run little online stores from the comfort of their homes. Knuckleheads with half your IQ are also doing this.

Check it out, and take notes:

https://www.happyearner.com/lastchance

Number of people who’d like an extra income stream: 8,000,000,000

Number of people who ever actually do anything: 218

OK, those numbers are approximate.

But sheesh.

I’ve heard it all, too.

“Everything’s a scam.”

“I don’t have the time.”

“I don’t have the money.”

“I don’t have the knowledge.”

And on and on.

Meanwhile, knuckle-draggers and swamp-dwellers — who have in ambition what they lack in IQ — are absolutely cleaning up online. Trust me, I know some of them.

Now it’s true: you have to work with reputable people. Duh. Like eCommerce masters Steve Clayton (guest on Tom Woods Show episode #852) and Aidan Booth, who have excellent reputations as both practitioners and teachers.

Last time they gave my readers a special presentation, they showed us the bird’s-eye overview of how their eCommerce model works:

(1) Identify a few products that are selling well (Steve and Aidan explain how).
(2) Run a few simple tests with Facebook ads, showing those products to people most likely to buy them.
(3) Find out which products sell best to which groups, and then ramp those up.
(4) Rinse and repeat.
(5) Wonder why you weren’t doing this before.

Now these guys are both eCommerce millionaires with limited time. But I’ve persuaded them to join us again, this time with more detail: exact products that have been winners, ads that have worked (and why), ideas that failed — stuff like that. Gold, in other words.

They’ve convinced me to open my own eCommerce store, by the way. So if you decide to do this, we’ll learn together.

(I’m mainly doing it so I’ll have something to teach my girls before they leave the nest, so they’ll always have at least a side income stream online.)

Join me Tuesday night at 9pm ET. Bring your questions! Everything will be answered.

This is the last live presentation they’ll be giving us (I wouldn’t have the gumption to ask for a third one).

The old you would have said: I don’t have time to attend this.

The new, 2017 you says: I’d better make the time.

Secure your spot here:

https://www.happyearner.com/lastchance

The great libertarian Walter Block wrote a book called Defending the Undefendable in defense of a rogues’ gallery of people we’re all taught to despise.

One of those people is the middleman.

Everyone hates the middleman. They think: the middleman takes a product created by someone else, adds nothing to it, and sells it for a higher price.

Even a handful of libertarians, evaluating the eCommerce presentation by Steve Clayton, feel uncomfortable at the prospect of being middlemen. I want to add value, they protest.

So even among libertarians, the myth of the middleman as an exploitative and unproductive parasite is alive and kicking.

I want to beat it down with a baseball bat.

Think of how many products are for sale around the world. Who can know what the number is? But it must be astronomical.

Nobody can know them all, and nobody can fish through them all to find the ones that would benefit him.

The middleman takes this task upon himself. He sorts through the virtually infinite supply of different goods to find ones he thinks will please a particular audience, and he then promotes them and makes them available to that audience.

This is a specialized service. The manufacturers of these products are not experts in this. Knowing how to produce something, and knowing how to find people who will want it and then persuade them to buy are two very different things. The middleman specializes in the latter. It’s all part of the division of labor.

Without the middleman, manufacturers would have to take upon themselves a task for which they are unsuited — and we can know they are unsuited for it in that they prefer to deal with middlemen over the general public.

So don’t let the anti-capitalist propaganda get you down.

Instead, learn how to open your own online store, even as a stone-cold newbie. Think of it as your insurance against the pink slip. That is, until the day you march in and tell The Man to take this job and shove it.

(I’ve already done that, but I’m going to open one of these stores anyway, so I can show my kids another way they can support themselves someday.)

But how would I do this? Where do I get the stuff? What do I choose?

That is so covered.

This webinar replay comes down for good at midnight:

https://www.happyearner.com/factoryreplay

This is just my opinion, of course.

It’s ingratitude.

People who don’t appreciate their benefactors, or what’s been given to them, or who take modern miracles for granted, are ingrates.

Louis CK has a great routine about ingratitude. He talks about people who complain about how long it takes for their cell phones to start up, or who gripe about the speed of airplane WiFi.

Stop for a minute, he says, and realize the miracle going on: you’re sitting in a chair, IN THE SKY. This is amazing! What could you possibly be complaining about?

The same goes for how people can make a living these days. We’re surrounded by miraculous possibilities, and people either turn up their noses at them, or go about their lives as if these amazing things don’t exist.

There are people who make their entire livings via their laptops, whether as affiliate marketers, or by selling infinitely reproducible digital products, or by running a simple eCommerce store. They have tools available to them that the most high-powered marketers a generation ago couldn’t have dreamed of. They can start businesses with almost no overhead and essentially no risk, especially when compared with traditional businesses and brick-and-mortar stores.

Almost no one stops to say: this is truly amazing.

It’s an incredible time to be alive, in other words. But almost no one realizes it, or appreciates it.

You do, which is why you’re reading this post.

And rather than observe this incredible phenomenon from the sidelines, eCommerce expert Steve Clayton urges you to join in.

Until tomorrow at midnight you can watch the replay of the info-packed presentation Steve and his business partner Aidan Booth made for my readers this week.

If you decide this is your time to jump off the sidelines, let me add: I’ll be doing this along with you. We’ll learn together.

Check out what Steve and Aidan have to say:

https://www.happyearner.com/factoryreplay

Here’s another reason I’m not nostalgic for yesteryear, and I’m happy to be alive in 2017.

Suppose you learned eCommerce from Steve Clayton and you’ve hit on a great demographic that responds well to a particular product. Maybe it’s women in their 30s who like Oprah. (Yes, you can target that kind of audience!)

You can then turn around and say to Facebook, in effect: “OK, I’ve come up with a good group that likes this product. But can you try to find other people you believe to be similar to these, who would therefore also like the product?”

And Facebook does it.

They’re called Lookalike Audiences.

No guy running a corner store has access to a tool like that. It’s truly amazing.

Facebook does the work for you.

I’d wager 99% of the public has never heard of this tool. Can you see how, if you knew how to use this, you’d be at a massive advantage over people who don’t?

Welcome to 2017.

This is why I don’t accept the griping and complaining about the modern economy. The average Joe has at his fingertips the kind of tools that would have seemed to marketers past like something out of science fiction.

Today is the day of the presentation I’ve been telling you about by Steve Clayton, master of eCommerce. I cannot urge you strongly enough to make the time to attend this presentation.

Steve has had amazing success in eCommerce, and he’s shown thousands of people how to open their own stores from their laptops.

Believe me, plenty of knuckleheads are cleaning up online this way. You are smarter than a knucklehead.

Make the time to join us at 5:00pm Eastern Time (or even a little earlier to make sure it hasn’t filled up) today. You will not be sorry you did.

And if you decide to try your hand at an online store, well, I’m going to do it along with you. We’ll learn together.

Plus, I’m donating $5 to Antiwar.com for every person who shows up for this live presentation. Let’s raise thousands of dollars for them.

Reserve your spot, and I’ll see you at 5:

https://www.happyearner.com/factory