Author: Tom Woods

I’ve got a guy who’s sold in the nine figures (that’s $100,000,000) in digital products whose whole life says yes.

Now while I’ve never jumped on the avoid-college-at-all-costs bandwagon, a lot of degrees are obviously an expensive waste of time.

I also think that just because someone didn’t go to college doesn’t mean he can’t have a lot to teach me. My father didn’t finish high school, and only got his GED in his mid-40s, and yet he was one of the most informed people I knew.

The guy I mentioned at the outset is the virtually undisputed master of the digital product world. I think he knows what he’s talking about.

(Ebooks, video courses, audio courses, webinars, membership sites — these are all digital products.)

He started with — of all things — an eBook on dating.

Sales trickled in here and there. But he kept at it, and the book began generating serious revenue — all of which he could keep for himself.

(His biggest revenue day came the day he increased his book’s price by 33%, by the way.)

He went on to create ten separate businesses around digital products, and he took each of those companies to at least seven figures.

So, yeah, this guy didn’t go to college — but so what? You should hear him out. Generating additional income streams via digital products sure beats crossing your fingers that you won’t get handed that pink slip.

He’s giving a presentation on how to go from no idea at all to a complete and successful digital product.

Watch the whole presentation and you’ll get two complimentary goodies: his eBook How to Create a Digital Product that Sells Itself, plus his one-page Digital Product Blueprint.

Reserve your spot, and then attend and take notes:

https://www.happyearner.com/digitalproduct

You may have heard of a book by Harry Browne called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.

Today we’re faced with a world that’s not just unfree. It’s downright insane.

The very people who warn about brownshirts in the streets and the incitement of violence are themselves beating people up and destroying property. Even Starbucks, which is run by a leftist — which goes to show there’s no appeasing these people.

Meanwhile, CNN with a straight face reported the incident as involving “extremist Milo Yiannopoulos” (no editorializing there!), and said he was rallying “white supremacists.”

We are living in an Orwell novel and a Kafka novel, combined together.

It’s demoralizing. Let’s be honest.

I’m already doing everything I can do, which isn’t much: I write about and publicize these incidents, and in my Liberty Classroom I’ve created a way people can learn non-p.c. history and economics without the arson and the beatings.

Having done what one person can do, I have to remove myself from the situation, mentally and spiritually.

Same with you.

The world may have gone insane, but you still have plenty of opportunities to create the life you want. That was Harry Browne’s message.

Part of that life you want involves doing something you love, adding to your financial security, and not having to do things you hate.

It involves not relying, precariously, on one income stream.

It’s something I’ve been telling you about this week.

Grab your insurance against the pink slip:

https://www.happyearner.com/freedom

“Hey, Tom,” said a marketing genius I know — we’ll call him Merlin — back in early 2011. “How are you monetizing your website?”

“You have a following,” Merlin said. “So what’s your monetization strategy?”

My reply? “Well, I, uh, belong to the Amazon affiliate program, so I earn $1.50 or so every time someone buys a book through my link….”

You should have seen his horrified face.

I kid you not: right there, on the spot, he flat-out TOLD me what I should be doing. I should create a digital product based on my strengths.

It was pretty obvious after he said it, but trust me, it wasn’t obvious before.

After I created that product my life was far less insane, financially precarious, and uncertain.

But Woods, you say, of course I’d like to do the same, but what would I do, and how would I do it?

Answer: brainstorm with your own Merlin.

I happen to have a link to him:

https://www.happyearner.com/digital

My kids and I recently watched the Back to the Future trilogy.

We thought the second one, where they travel to the future, was particularly interesting: how much did they get right about the future?

For the movie, the future seems to be all about hoverboards and flying cars, and people speaking on big screens.

Well, we got the big screens thing, but, um….

The Jetsons, for their part, imagined that people might be able to communicate with each other via a video screen, but you’d have to be sitting in a certain chair and the screen was nailed to the wall.

That was the future.

Nobody seems to have conceived of anything like the Internet.

It was all flying: flying cars, spaceships, whatever.

Much less did they imagine this truly bizarre thing: that someone could deliver intangible products while sleeping.

Ever stopped to think about what that means?

I wake up every day to discover how many people purchased my primary digital product (Liberty Classroom) during the night.

Once you create a digital product (a course, an ebook, a video series, whatever), it costs nothing to duplicate. It can be sold and delivered while you’re asleep.

Now THAT sounds like science fiction.

I personally think it’s where you should start.

Oh, but Woods, I don’t know what to create! And even if I did, creating things is something other people do!

Has that way of thinking gotten you where you want to be?

Then chuck it.

Buckle down, and learn how to do this:

https://www.happyearner.com/digital

I’ve been watching a video documentary series about Americans over 50 who are unemployed. It’s truly horrifying.

Each one struck me.

“I’m now too old to do what I’ve done my whole life.” –Mary Sironen

“Many times, even if you are fortunate enough to get an interview, you just do not get any follow-up.” –Marie Spalding

“You try to live on the least amount you possibly can.” –Mark Chase

“I’ve had literally maybe 10 interviews in two years. I’ve been runner up, or they’ve taken the jobs off the market, or I’m still waiting.” –Gary Sirianni

“It’s not easy, I’ll be honest. My wife is the one that keeps me going. I don’t feel like I’m contributing.” –Mike Boyd

“When I lost my job, it became very difficult to keep my house, and I eventually lost it.” –Anthony Lalos

“I have family, my children. They would take me in temporarily … if I should lose my home.” –Deborah Salim

And it goes on and on.

That experience must be terrifying.

The worst part: it’s completely avoidable.

Of course, no government school prepared these people for this situation.

If anything, the schools do an even worse job today: the kids know all about what words they can say and what words they’d better not say, but do they have any idea how in a pinch they could start a small online business, or earn a side income as an affiliate, or in general use the unprecedented resources we now have available to us all?

At the very time that most people are feeling vulnerable, frightened, and insecure, we have the most extraordinary opportunities in the history of the world.

As Ben Settle said in his interview with me, it’s almost ridiculous what the Internet has made possible: lifestyles even our parents couldn’t have dreamed of.

At the very least, it’s a place where you can earn a side income, or even multiple income streams, as insurance against disaster.

It’s not brain surgery. You just need to know where to look.

Like here:

https://www.happyearner.com/knowledge

If you listened to my interview with Ben Settle I sent you over the weekend, you may have noted the colorful language I used to describe some Internet marketers.

“Knuckle-draggers” and “swamp dwellers,” I think I said.

I was in the car with Regina, my 13-year-old, the other day, and at a red light I showed her the sales page for a “make money online” product. I asked if she noticed anything strange about it.

Now obviously there are plenty of ways to earn dough online, and there are many perfectly reputable training programs showing you how to do it.

But what was different about this one?

Regina figured it out.

“I have no idea what it is.”

Exactly.

It was some new “secret method.”

The entire sales page was devoted to telling us about the great results of this method, the ease with which it can be done, and so on.

My favorite part was the Frequently Asked Questions. How I wish I had saved the link so I could quote it word for word. One of the questions, naturally enough, was “What is this all about?”

At last, I thought, we’re finally going to find out.

Nope.

“This is a secret method that anyone can do….”

Last year when I interviewed veteran marketer Sara Young on my show, I asked how to distinguish the scams from the genuine article. She replied: if you have no idea what exactly it is you’ll be doing, the program is probably a scam.

So Regina already has excellent instincts, at age 13.

Meanwhile, for those of you who are confident that there is indeed gold in them thar hills but just need a map to get there — without any “secret methods” — here are my non-secret methods:

https://www.happyearner.com/knowledge

You’ve probably never heard of these three people.

Each one makes — shall we say — a very comfortable online living. And each one left a more traditional job to do it.

John Thornhill, one of the top Internet marketers today, worked on the production line of an automobile plant for ten years. He started fiddling around online on the side. And one day he marched in and quit that production line.

He now works from home, and has zero financial worries whatever.

Omar Martin was a New York City fire department paramedic.

Doberman Dan, world-class copywriter, marketer, and entrepreneur, was a New York City policeman.

Did they know something you don’t know when they got started?

No.

Have they learned something you don’t know between then and now?

Yes.

This:

https://www.happyearner.com/knowledge

Here’s your weekend assignment:

Listen to my interview (at the bottom of this post) with Ben Settle, master of email marketing.

Email marketing? Woods, you say, that sounds too technical, and not relevant to me.

My answers:

(1) After you listen, you’ll say: Woods, you were right.

(2) You only think it isn’t relevant to you. If you’re looking to build an income stream online, learning this stuff isn’t optional.

(3) Have I led you astray before?

Here’s a promise:

Listen to this interview, and you’ll learn something about marketing and earning income online.

And you’ll be entertained.

Ben shares how and why he defies the conventional wisdom when it comes to email marketing and selling his product (or affiliate products). I myself do what Ben teaches, and I’ll tell you: it works.

I lay out the three things someone needs to do to start generating income online.

We discuss several don’ts, and a couple key do’s.

Listen below:

A woman in Gainesville, Florida, was arrested this week for passing counterfeit bills.

She had simply photocopied twenty-dollar bills in a photocopy machine.

My advice: don’t do that.

You will not be surprised to learn: they were quickly spotted.

She first used them at an Applebee’s to pay her bill. When she tried using them at Walmart and the cashier questioned her, she fled.

She was later taken into custody thanks to a cell phone she had left behind.

Using a photocopier to counterfeit money sounds about as clunky as my own sad efforts to create graphics.

They look ridiculous, and everyone knows I made them myself.

Yet as someone who makes a living online, I need to make them. And I need to not spend $300 every time.

You, too, don’t want to look like someone who photocopies $20 bills. And you also don’t want to spend so much on graphics that you’re tempted to start photocopying $20 bills.

Solution:

https://www.happyearner.com/graphics

The doors close on this tonight, so this is your last chance. You’ll need this someday. Take a look.