March 4th, 2017 | By Tom Woods
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
March 3rd, 2017 | By Tom Woods
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
March 1st, 2017 | By Tom Woods
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
February 27th, 2017 | By Tom Woods
I’ll bet a lot of less wealthy people think: man, that guy works for a Fortune 500 company. He’s living the dream!
Well, not always.
“I was so, so miserable,” Steve Clayton recalls. “After five years of being vice president of a Fortune 500 company, I just said, ‘I need to be happy. It’s not enough just to make money. I’ve got to find a way to have some happiness and some freedom, and to be able to travel, and all that good stuff.'”
Leaving the security of that job was scary, he said. “I was supporting two kids, and my wife hadn’t worked since the kids arrived.”
But his father asked him: is that security real? Which is really more risky? Working for a faceless corporation, where your fate is decided in some boardroom somewhere, or working for yourself?
So Steve made the decision to go out on his own.
He says, “I didn’t realize how incredibly miserable I was until I quit, and didn’t have to do it anymore.”
He went on to be even more successful in eCommerce, to the point that he’s now laid out arguably the most newbie-friendly online business model out there.
Steve has an excellent reputation as an eCommerce specialist and a teacher.
If you’re looking to make a change, or at least build in some insurance against the unforeseen, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you sign up for Wednesday’s presentation. Steve and his business partner will run you through how people are running their own stores from their laptops, with great success.
Sure beats digging ditches.
I’ll be there, too, because if you decide to do this, I’m going to do it along with you.
Plus, for every person who shows up live, I’m donating $5 to Antiwar.com. Let’s raise thousands of dollars for them.
Reserve your seat:
https://www.happyearner.com/factory
February 27th, 2017 | By Tom Woods
Politically, Mark Zuckerberg is a train wreck.
But he’s built something you’d be out of your mind not to use.
His advertising platform allows you to target your posts to, say, single women, age 35-55, who live in Florida, earn between $75,000 and $150,000, and enjoy gardening.
That particular combination may not be so helpful, but imagine the possibilities.
If you already know who’s likely to want your stuff, you can pitch it to them immediately.
If you’re not yet sure, you can run little tests to all different groups and compare the results.
Compare this to a car company advertising on CBS. Almost no one watching will be in the market for a car at any one time. So the ad is wasted on them (although, to be sure, they may remember it when they do go looking for a car someday).
Your ads aren’t wasted. Instead of targeting 1,000,000 people almost at random, you can find 1,000,000 who fit the exact requirements, in terms of demographics and personal interests, that make them most likely to want what you’re selling.
So whether or not you decide to join me in opening an online store, learning this stuff is going to be very, very valuable somewhere down the road no matter what you end up doing online. So it’s a good idea to learn it now, while you can.
And if you’re pumped to open an online store, as I am, then you’re definitely going to want to know it.
Steve Clayton, the eCommerce master, is teaching the basics in the special presentation he’s giving to my readers and listeners. I would not miss this if I were you.
And no, you don’t have to invent anything, create your own products, or hold inventory. This isn’t 1957.
Plus, I’m donating $5 to Antiwar.com for every person who attends the event live.
Reserve your spot, because they will fill up:
https://www.happyearner.com/factory
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