Author: Tom Woods

This really happened.

And yes, I used this as the topic of “What I Did Over the Summer” in freshman English with Mr. Reynolds at North Andover High School in 1986.

Long story short:

I was a computer hacker (a pretty lame one) in my early teens.

I definitely did things I should not have done.

But the one time the Secret Service came to my house, I was actually innocent.

A deranged kid in high school had ordered something with a stolen credit card number and had it sent to my house. He was crazy — he’d shot his best friend with a BB gun — so I believed him when he said he’d do terrible things if I told anyone.

Later he told me the package wasn’t going to come, that he’d used a bad credit card number, and I shouldn’t worry.

So there I am, fast asleep one morning (it was summertime, after all), and my mother comes into my room.

“I think you’d better get up.”

I wasn’t in any hurry.

She added: “The Secret Service is here to see you.”

I bolted out of bed.

This isn’t good.

Which of the 100 things they could nab me on was this going to be?

None of them.

It was about the thing that kid had ordered.

All caution went out the window. I told them exactly who had done it, and I even told him how he’d gotten the number.

Back in those pre-Internet days we had BBSs, so I showed them my secret access, etc.

No way am I letting this degenerate ruin my life, I thought.

I told them I was afraid he would retaliate. They assured me they would pay him a visit.

They must have scared the life out of him, because he never came near me after that. But people would come up to me in school and say, “Hey, do you know Jeff M—–? He asked me to punch you.”

(No one actually did it.)

Moral of the story:

Crime doesn’t pay.

If you’re going to use the Internet, use it for something honorable that you can be proud of.

Oh, and don’t “make money online.”

Build a business.

Like this:

https://www.happyearner.com/woodswhiteboard

P.S. I’m pulling this short video down tomorrow night, to add to the urgency and excitement. So go watch: https://www.happyearner.com/woodswhiteboard

It’s getting nuttier by the minute.

Now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is telling us how privileged she is because she’s not transgender.

She and her friends want to get rid of fossil fuels, retrofit every single building for energy efficiency, and ban nuclear power — but they insist a huge emergency expenditure like this will actually make us rich.

(So if we didn’t have a planet-threatening emergency on our hands we’d be poorer? This makes no sense.)

The frenzied, hate-filled attack on “the rich” gets more low-IQ every day.

And people are banned and demonized for views that five years ago everyone on Earth took for granted.

At some level the crazies are just going to do their thing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You focus on you.

As Steve Clayton prepares to close the doors on his new training (and when he closes the doors, they stay closed), he’s coming back for another session with us.

If you’re looking to build that business, a better idea for one isn’t likely to come along — at least from me — in 2019.

And the beauty of this one is that:

— you’re providing important services for local businesses who desperately need them;

— you don’t need a zillion customers to be very profitable;

— Steve’s folks will actually fulfill the services for you, so you don’t need to be a techie yourself; and

— you can be really proud of it.

In this second and final presentation Steve will walk you through:

— case studies of people doing precisely this, with each step broken down for you;

— 6 sales funnel strategies for turning leads into sales, again and again;

— a deep dive into a recent $25,900 sale and what we can learn from it;

— a lot more Q&A from you.

Ignore the crazies. Create your own freedom in an unfree world. Sign up to join us:

https://www.happyearner.com/stevefinale

You may click the link below and say, “No way; this can’t be.”

But it sure can. Especially with Steve Clayton, who’s helped a boatload of my folks start from zero knowledge to running a business they love.

The key is this: if you’re unlikely ever to reach an audience of millions, sell goods or services that can make you a nice living even without a million sales. That’s what I do.

The kind of business Steve is describing has a huge number of further advantages — being newbie-friendly chief among them — as well as one unfair advantage: if you choose, you can partner with Steve and his company and his folks will perform the services for your customers. You don’t actually have to learn the skills. You just work on expanding the business, and the delivery of services is taken care of.

(It’s almost unfair that you know me, isn’t it?)

Check it out soon; it is being taken down at midnight tonight (Friday, February 1).

Click here: https://www.happyearner.com/stevereplay

I can reach a decent number of people, but I’m no Oprah.

Chances are, the same is true of you.

Now: what should we conclude from this?

If, say, $20K per month in revenue is what you want, you could get that by selling a $10 product to 2000 people (not impossible, but hard work month in and month out), or a $2000 product to 10 people.

For instance:

I’m an author, and I sell a lot of books. But if you knew how little per copy an author earns, you’d almost feel sorry for me. If I want to earn a fortune through books, I need to sell an absolute boatload.

Now I’ve been lucky: on some occasions I have managed precisely this. But it’s really, really hard, and few authors ever accomplish it.

What actually helped make my family financially comfortable was my decision to sell (not exclusively, but primarily) higher-ticket products.

I don’t need to make 40,000 sales in order to make a living. And that’s a good thing: selling to 40,000 people is hard.

And this is the point our friend and three-time Tom Woods Show guest Steve Clayton is making: for people like us, who won’t ever have Oprah-sized audiences, the math behind higher-ticket sales just makes sense.

But Woods, you say, I have nothing to sell.

Oh, but you do.

Come on and join us for Steve’s live workshop with me online and we’ll walk through the whole model.

As you know from episode 1018 of the Tom Woods show, quite a few Tom Woods Show listeners have learned from Steve, worked with him, and had their lives completely transformed. These are real people — people you can even find in my private group.

Guess who else’s life will be improved: Scott Horton’s.

For everyone who attends our online session and stays through the end, we’ll be donating $10 to the Scott Horton Show. If I can get hundreds of you to join us — and you will consider it time very well spent, I assure you — that means thousands of smackers for the deserving Scott.

Click on the link and sign up. Do not click on the link and not sign up. Click on this link with determination. Sign up, and join me as Steve, who’s done so well by my folks, lays out the awesomeness for you:

http://www.tomwoods.com/steve

Best clueless line of all time:

“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

That was Paul Krugman in 1998.

Ouch.

Actually, the Internet has changed everything.

One of my favorite early Internet stories:

Steve Hogarth, of the band Marillion (which has sold in excess of 15 million albums), tried explaining to American audiences that they couldn’t afford to tour in the U.S. The books just didn’t balance. Their fan base was in Europe.

But on the fledgling Internet of the 1990s, Marillion fans banded together and raised $60,000 — and then pledged to buy tickets on top of that if Marillion came. Which they did.

Hogarth (whom I have interviewed on the Tom Woods Show) later noted that here he was the lead singer, and he had no idea this was even going on. Suddenly, they had this pile of money.

But he was a quick learner.

“Whatever this Internet thing is, we’d better get on it,” he said.

Other struggling bands, not wise to the benefits of the Internet, missed out on these advantages and opportunities.

The Internet has made things like this possible. It has also made possible the kind of lifestyle I myself enjoy: wherever there’s WiFi, I can work. No boss, no fixed schedule, no workplace politics, no physical inventory. Just doing what I love to do.

Even now, in 2019, most people are still missing out. They slave away at miserable jobs they hate, as if this were a fated existence and the Internet didn’t exist.

Therefore:

You have got to hear three-time Tom Woods Show guest Steve Clayton and his special presentation for us. You are going to thank me.

What should newbies looking for a soup-to-nuts side hustle — or full-time business — do? The precise thing Steve tells you.

And yes, Steve is for real: I devoted episode 1018 of my show to listeners who learned from him and had their lives changed. Bigly.

Plus: for everyone who shows up to this event (costs nothing, by the way) and stays through the end, I’m donating $10 to the Scott Horton Show. That should be thousands of dollars for the extremely deserving Scott.

Now you’re out of reasons not to be there with me.

They’re doing several sessions on Monday, but only the Tuesday one benefits Scott.

Register right now: https://www.happyearner.com/steve

———–

Here’s a secret I’m almost certain you didn’t know.

When a product creator releases something new, he makes “email swipes” available to his affiliates. So when those affiliates promote his product, they don’t even have to write their own emails. They can just copy and paste these “swipes” and send them to their subscribers.

I never use these. They are excruciating. They sap my will to live.

You’re welcome.

I try to make every single email worth your time to open.

Inside you’ll find an illustrative story, or a news item tie-in, or something just plain amusing, such that you’ll find opening my emails worthwhile. (Want to hop on my entrepreneurship email list? Click here.)

And of course, I promote products that will make your life easier and more profitable, and I do my best to load them up with bonuses so you get the most bang for your buck.

Now….

Want a sample of what they want me to send you? Here you go.

Wow…I am BLOWN away!

What you about to get access to today is by far the BEST software bundle deal I have ever seen online…

You can finally STOP buying expensive software tools and paying hefty monthly fees for business automation tools!

The “biggest software bundle deal of the year” is HERE – it’s called AUTOMATION BUNDLE…

Here’s another snippet:

Customers and marketers from all around the world are RAVING about this brand new “All-inclusive” software bundle called AutomationBundle!

Within hours of release, AutomationBundle has become a BEST SELLER worldwide (there is good reason for that).

People who saw this technology in action are calling it…
‘Incredible Value Packed Offer’
‘Mind Blowing Deal’
‘Game Changing Software Bundle’
“Deal Of The Year”

Grab The 12-in-1 Software Deal at 95% OFF…

And so on.

I’m on lists where all they send are this kind of email every single day.

I stay on these lists not for the quality of the emails, but because they sometimes send me good offers that can make my business more effective, and I’m willing to endure the emails in order not to miss out on those things.

But yikes.

I do not subject you good folks to this.

Yet Automation Bundle is so good that even with emails like that, it sold 5000 copies on the first day.

If you want to build something online that generates revenue, you’d better (1) stand out; and (2) not try to do everything by hand.

Automation Bundle automates:

– Video Production (feel like doing that one yourself?)
– Webinar Marketing
– Email Marketing
– Graphics
– Traffic Generation
– Local Marketing
– Social Media
and more.

So let me wrap up by predicting your future(s).

(1) On January 1, you will resolve to start that online hustle.

(2) Automation Bundle closes six days from now, permanently, so unless you grabbed it by then, you won’t be able to get it.

So….

Future #1:

You let Automation Bundle pass you by.

On January 1 you’re super excited to get started.

On January 2 you realize how much is involved, and you sure wish you’d gotten that software suite that automates it for you.

On January 3 your hopes and dreams become so much roadkill along the information superhighway.

Future #2:

On January 1 you’re super excited to get started.

You picked up Automation Bundle as soon as you saw this email (the price increases several times during the day, so now’s the time).

On January 2 you are well on your way to being a wizard who absolutely %&!$@ dominates.

You know which future you want.

Plus, for not subjecting you to excruciating emails, reward me with this one click:

https://www.happyearner.com/automate

In my days as a professor, I had some plagiarists.

I have zero sympathy for such people.

It was easy to spot a plagiarist. I would look at the person’s paper and know: college freshmen don’t write like this. The student has no idea what any of this means.

Then I’d find the source they copied from. It was easy: it was always on the first page of Google. You’d think they’d cover themselves a bit by checking out page 37, but they never did.

I’d then call the student into my office.

I would ask the squirming student what particular sentences meant.

One after the other.

They soon figured out that I knew.

And of course, they had no idea what those sentences meant.

One time a student actually swiped a passage from libertarian writer Wendy McElroy, whom I actually know.

On another occasion a student’s paper on Thomas Sowell’s book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? consisted of some Amazon reviews of the book strung together.

The one original sentence of the entire paper said something about racism being the cause of income disparities between blacks and whites, which is something like the opposite of the thesis of Sowell’s book.

Yesterday a friend of mine in the marketing world discovered that a reasonably well known young marketer had, for a second time [!], used huge passages of this guy’s advertising copy in his own offer.

My friend put up a side-by-side screenshot of his writing next to this other fellow’s. Absolutely identical.

It was devastating.

In the comments, people really piled on.

Eventually the perp himself showed up and came clean. He made no excuses. He apologized.

Some people said: what a guy! He didn’t make excuses! He apologized!

My response: what else could he do? He had no choice. An apology alone doesn’t make him a decent fellow. Nobody in his right mind in that thread will ever do business with him again.

And what a shame: that guy just blew one of the best gigs in the world. He sells mainly information products, which are infinitely reproducible, require no inventory, and have practically no overhead. People who work in this field can do so from anywhere and at any time.

I do a lot of this myself, and I’ve got a pretty darn nice life as a result.

How to do it?

Well, I got a free membership for you at something called Product Profits Club, which contains some helpful training videos and some recommended resources for people just starting out.

But don’t blow it like that jerk.

Just go claim that free membership:

https://www.happyearner.com/freemembership

Those of you who opened last night’s email [to my online business list; join it here] about becoming a New Yorker either laughed out loud or were horrified.

But those of you who did: I appreciate you. You looked at that subject line, simply had to know how I was going to deliver on it, and opened up and read.

I just looked over all the subject lines for this list in 2018. I’ve had some doozies.

Here’s the thing, though: they’re not clickbait. I deliver on these headlines, and I draw a business lesson out of the subjects discussed.

Here are my favorites from 2018. Note one thing they all have in common: they arouse curiosity.

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you can appeal to when it comes to email and marketing.

Here we go:

(1) I see dead people (handing me products to sell)
(2) Watch me punish a belligerent customer
(3) Stereotyping helped me not get swindled on Airbnb last night
(4) Now that my clothes are back on, I can give you the good news
(5) this guy was homeless. now I’m speaking at his conference
(6) So I brought a cup of my own urine to the savings bank
(7) I’m getting sick of Bruce Willis following me around
(8) Your military coup in the Land of the Knuckleheads
(9) Extreme couponers are chumps
(10) I watched a millionaire leave a one-dollar tip, and then reacted
(11) Report: Woods is “the most divisive figure alive” in the libertarian movement
(12) The only thing I ever promoted that *nobody* bought. And I mean nobody
(13) With Justice Kennedy retiring, the Nazi takeover is nearly complete
(14) That cat video got 100,000,000 views, and your blog has 12 visitors
(15) Real-life Nigerian demands I pay him $60,000 (I’m not joking)
(16) It’s LGBTQ Pride month. And that means…
(17) Nobody knew who I was, and I beat everyone. Then they knew.
(18) Hey Woods, how do you get so much done? The horrifying secret
(19) How I defended Ron Paul against the scum of the earth
(20) The cats keep pooping in my bathroom
(21) The tooth fairy, a.k.a. pathetic loser
(22) I just kicked my Uber driver in the rear end

A good subject line matters: it gets your reader’s attention. Eventually you hope to become good enough at this email game that it’s not the subject line but the “from” line that gets their attention. They see, say, Tom Woods, and they wouldn’t even consider not opening it.

I need especially good ones these days because if you miss my live Q&A session with Paul Counts, I will be genuinely unhappy. Rarely do we get the opportunity to pick the brain of someone as knowledgeable and successful as Paul.

He’ll get you over whatever that hurdle is.

Plus, you’ll be speaking to Patrick Henry’s seventh great-grandson, which is a novelty in itself.

Reserve your seat right away, and I’ll see you there:

http://www.tomwoods.com/counts

When I told my college roommate, who was from Brooklyn, that I would be attending Columbia University for graduate school, he told me how I’d know I had truly become a New Yorker: I would reach stage four.

The four stages involved the subway.

Stage 1. You walk down the subway platform, and you wonder what that liquid on the ground might be.
Stage 2. You say to yourself, “Wait a minute. Could that be…?”
Stage 3. You walk right through it, paying no attention.
Stage 4. You’re on the subway platform late at night, there are no facilities, and you really have to go….

I never got to Stage 4, thank goodness.

You’ll note that the progression from stage one to stage four involves becoming desensitized. What once got your undivided attention no longer even registers.

Is that happening with that online income stream you promised yourself you’d build, as insurance against the pink slip?

You were all excited, and as the crush of daily life has taken over again, it’s back to meh.

I’m going to jolt you back into excitement and determination.

I managed to get Paul Counts, Patrick Henry’s seventh great grandson — no joke — to join us for a live Q&A. Ask whatever you want, and Paul, who’s a master of online business, will give you a good, meaty answer.

Paul, who’s been working for himself online for 19 years, knows everything there is to know about this stuff.

Bring your questions, or just listen and learn.

But for the sake of all that is sensible, reserve your spot and be there:

http://www.tomwoods.com/counts