The world of online. It is and isn't what you want it to be

I encountered a conversation today that I would like to revisit in the privacy of the interweb.

I got to talking to someone about my ebay store, which is inspired by a drop shipping business that will likely be named in this post.

I basically described what drop shipping is to a very close acquaintance, and how I was having a lot of fun doing this business and that it was actually making me money. Sometimes not a lot of money, but sometimes a little. 

The response came in several questions. I don't have all the questions written down, but I'd like to address a few of them.

1) Is there a learning curve? My response was: Yes. I lost money my first sale. I've actually lost money on a handful of sales. However, I've profited on more sales and am making a profit my very first month of business. It's not much, but I'm surprisingly in the black.

2) What is the pay for your time? My response: A business doesn't pay hourly. I am making an investment by putting my time toward a larger goal. I consider it building a net to go fishing. There is no hourly connection to building a net and catching fish. But there is a very STRONG correlation between the size of the net and the number of fish caught. I'll admit, it's a different concept than putting in six hours and getting paid directly for six hours.  What's also different is that an hourly wage doesn't change, regardless of if you made your company $100 or $10,000. I can't say whether my time spent will make me any money, or big money. It's all about which fish I catch.

3) Will you let me know when you start making a fortune? My response: I'm not planning on making a fortune. I'm telling you now that I'm into this business, and I'm excited about it. But I will definitely pitch in and buy you a nice dinner when I have proven to be successful. I see no reason why I would hide this from you, considering it is common knowledge and many people are doing well with it. Yet surprisingly, the more effort I put in, the better I do as well. 

It's not about market saturation. It's not about getting rich quick. 

What I am excited about with my online business is that it directly correlates to my personal efforts. It is an actual business making actual money. It's using real customers buying real products. 

Admittedly, I'm a middle man. But rest assured, I'm becoming a very good middle man, and learning that there is a large population who is more interested in working with the middle man than figuring out how to deal with the direct source. 

I'm not a wild success story yet, but I've had success. I'm not a wildly enthusiastic person about much of anything, but let me tell you I am thrilled to have come across this program. 

And best of all, you don't have to believe me, and can even tell me I'm a fool for signing up for this. The fact is, I have a growing following in another blog I do, a growing following in a youtube channel I have, and I've made approximately $2 in the last two years. I've made over $60 in my first month of this program. 

I'm not particularly excited about $60. But I'm excited about doubling that amount next week. I'm excited about making triple that the week after. You can't argue with money in your bank account that you didn't have before. It's real enough for me.

If anyone out there is interested, I signed up through here: http://www.dsdomination.com/sp/pro?aid=Turgerburger

There's a few things I want to point out about signing up for this program: 1) It is an affiliate program and that means there are people above you who really want you to succeed. Take that however you want, but I personally see it as a mentoring tool and have used it several times. In other words, they want you to succeed because when you start making money, it will eventually make them money. 2) You're paying for training to help you navigate the online world. Again, I tried the online world for two years and made close to nothing; and within the last month have a completely different view on how to make actual money working from home. It is an actual thing and can be done.

That's all.

Why? Goals! How?

I woke up about a month ago feeling low. Just low. Stuck in a place where I wasn't sure what I should do, which direction I should turn my life, how I could even begin to achieve anything.

I was feeling sorry for myself. It was pretty pathetic.

I had come up with this $100/day idea prior to that, which probably made me feel even more sorry for myself because I wasn't even coming close to achieving this goal, and no idea how to even begin approaching it. Very lost, very frustrated, and tired of not winning.

There are all sorts of motivational materials out there that deliver a single message with a lot of fluff around it: set goals. Goal setting is the message that everyone teaches, and I've spent plenty of my own time talking about goal setting and how it gives you a strange hope for the future, despite hurdles along the way.

The little seed behind goals though is not as often discussed, and that's "why". Why do you want to set goals? What is it, exactly, you want out of meeting your goals? I mean sure, meeting my earnings goal of $100/day is going to make me feel pretty good about myself and could very well change things in my life, but the "why" needs to be clearly defined before truly embarking on reaching your goals.

I'm going to take a side tangent for a moment: I have my professional training in accounting and auditing. I was taught and trained to be methodical, skeptical, and pay attention to details. I'm going to come out and say that all of that was a bad fit for me, and I decided to leave the profession to the people who it was a good fit for.

What I found funny about the people I worked with in this setting was that they seemed immune to motivational speakers. We had plenty of people come to our office to provide enthusiastic trainings, funny stories, and overall tried to provide a message of improving and goal setting and blah blah blah. I remember after almost every training I went to, there was always the group of people who grumbled "That was a complete waste of time. That's not relevant to us."

For some reason, I liked the motivational speakers. Maybe it goes beyond your day to day lives, and is meant to inspire you to be the best you can be.

I don't know why I added that side tangent, but I think it was to say that after leaving the audit community, it opened me up to freely listening to more motivational speakers, stories and messages about achieving what you were meant to achieve.

Also, the more messages I listen to, and the more books I read on success, the more I don't want a job. I don't mind having a part-time job to get me out of the house, but I also have found more and more reason to be my own boss, work my own hours, own my own job. I want to be my own story and be successful on my own terms.

Now for the plug, and this is absolutely true for me. When I woke up that morning a month ago, sleep still in my eyes, I crawled out of bed and went to go make some coffee. I decided to check craigslist for work and I came across DS Domination. It immediately made sense to me, but as a trained skeptic, I decided to do some research on it. Ebay is free. Amazon is free. The only cost is learning how to piece them together to make your own store. Your own store you can run from wherever your computer sits.

I decided to try it and before I did anything else, I made a list of "Why? Why? Why?" What do I want to achieve? What will I do if this actually makes money, etc. I then made a list of "Goals! Goals! Goals!" Starting small: 1) Make $1 online. 2) Make $100 online. 3) Make as much as I make at my part-time job. 4) Make twice as much as my part-time job. 5) Make as much as my wife's part-time job. Etc.

I looked at these lists and decided I needed on more list: "How? How? How?" 1) Complete all provided training. 2) Commit to putting time in daily (with minimum set goals and weekly big goals for myself) 3) Learn how to talk about this with other people.

What I find the most interesting about all of this goal setting, why's and how's is that ever since I found a vehicle to exert my worries and efforts, I haven't felt down. On the contrary, I've only made about $70 so far with this program, but I'm excited about it. I'm confident that I'll reach goal #2 in the next couple of days, and that next month will see a surge of growth and the month after will be even more.

I have a vehicle to accomplish the things I want, and it's on my own terms. I can't begin to tell you how excited that makes me about our future.
 

My first $100 day!

This will be a short post.

To break it down, I worked 6 hours today at $10/hour: $60.

I signed up a club member which gives me a $15 bonus.

I sold two items on ebay for a $19 and $6 profit: $25

$65 + $15 + $25 = $100.

That's how you do it my friends. It's almost too easy...

Sowing and Reaping

I listened to a Jim Rohn speech recently, and the story of "Sowing and Reaping" came up. If you've never heard this, it is a great message. If you are a farmer, and you have good seed, you need to sow your seed. Keep on sowing, and eventually your seed will find good ground to produce on.

BUT, there are many obstacles you will encounter before you're going to get your seeds to produce. You'll lose seeds to birds, some plants will choke and die in the thorns, some will fall on shallow rocky ground and die on the first hot day, but eventually if you keep sowing, some seeds will make it to good ground. You just have to keep on sowing.

Mr. Rohn clearly presents this better than I do, but the first time I heard this story, I recognized myself as one of the seeds that will fall to the wayside, or get eaten by birds or won't produce to my full potential.

But sometimes we need to recognize where we fall short or are lacking so that we know where we can improve.

This goal I've set recently to make $100/day is not an easy goal, and without clear avenues on how to get there, I've been a little stuck. I found DS Domination and it clicked with me right away. I wanted to make sure it worked for me, and then I'd start spreading the word. Yesterday was my first day of telling other people about it (I posted on Facebook, which is something I don't do much of anyway), and I was immediately reminded of this sowing and reaping story.

Many, many doubters presented themselves. Some people acknowledged that it was an okay thing, but weren't interested. I've yet to find anyone who has expressed a positive position, nor any interest in joining the program.

So here we go, do I quit, or do I keep sowing? Do I keep spreading the seed in the hope that someone will want to join in this adventure?

Yes! I will. I decided the day I came across this program that it was going to be a great vehicle to take us places we've never been, and I'm not going to be easily swayed otherwise.

Of course, I don't know who would actually read this, but if you know me at all, I'm a very "swayable" person who gets discouraged easily. That is why I'm shocked that I'm still excited about this program. Despite the negative response, I'm going to keep on sowing the seed. It's a very strange thing.

The other really cool thing about this program is that it provides value without me signing anyone up. So regardless of how many people say "that is a silly program and you're never going to amount to anything," I can turn around and keep selling things. I don't need their support to succeed. I'll keep sharing my results because a doubter can change his mind quickly if he sees someone succeed.

I've got my goals written down for today and for the week, so I've got to work towards them. That's me signing out.

By the way, if anyone out there wants to see how this actually works, there are weekly webinars provided. Here is a great one to watch:

http://www.dsdomination.com/webinars/1/index.php/?s1=Turgerburger

Network Marketing: Is it all a big scam?

Is network marketing a big scam? With companies like Avon and Amway and many, many others, I think it's clear that they are real companies that run a perfectly legal operation. The trick is, it's hardly ever about the product. The way to succeed in network marketing generally is by recruiting people. I learned this from Dave Ramsay, actually. Not personally, but from one of his callers. In order to succeed, you need to be excited about what the company does, you need to share the word with many, many people, and of course you cannot give up. You have to treat it like a job, even though it's NOT A JOB. It's actually a small business; your own small business.

I am an introvert; not the best candidate for a network marketing business. Also, I, like so many people out there, was not sitting at home one day wishing that someone would call me up to see if I wanted to sell benefits packages, make-up, or anything of the sort. It's true.

It gets tricky though because I crossed paths with someone who is a very good salesman, who happens to be a member of Team National, a network marketing company that sells a benefits package. He quickly cleared up the fact that if I was willing to put in the work, phone calls, and follow-up, this particular company was real, paid what they said they would, and could help me make a pretty substantial income. The big hang-up with this though was that I didn't see myself succeeding in convincing my family, friends, neighbors and strangers walking by that this was right for them. It's quite possible that in five years, I'd be making serious money from this company, but I just couldn't envision it actually working for me.

It's not that I walked away from Team National, it's just that I'm holding off to join the party. I honestly believe that signing up would open the door to amazing learning opportunities, and I'd eventually become moderately successful. Not wildly, but moderately. I'm realistic.

Taking a step back though, I walked away from this experience with the idea in my head that if I found the RIGHT network marketing company for me, I'd be happy to go down that road. It took a while, but one presented itself. I've mentioned it before; DS Domination.

This company is brilliant because it provides value for people who don't want to be an affiliate marketer, and by "value" I mean actual money. You can use the tools provided, learn how to start your own business and walk away. But, if you use the tools and see how they help make you money and how EASY it is, you will then want to tell your friends, family, neighbors and strangers walking by. It's actually kind of brilliant. This video is the one that convinced me to sign up immediately (click here to watch said video).

I've been in this company for two weeks, and have made $40 profit. That may not sound like much, especially when I'm trying to earn $100/day, but hey, $40 is better than $0. I anticipate making exponentially more next week and the week after that. I also have confidence in my future which you can't put a price on. I'm not kidding, this company is legitimate, has an outstanding business model, and retains a significant number of people who sign up because these new people keep finding more and more value in what it provides.

Watch the video, sign up, and let's go!

Side note, we are having an awesome snow day today. It's not relevant to this post, but it's quite pretty outside.

On a relevant note, I am an affiliate of this company and links from this site may take you away from blogspot. I think there is legal jargon outlining my having to say that, or something like it. hmm, I should learn more about this.

Three ingredients to success

Since I've started my goal of making $100 a day, there is one particularly defeating task to overcome: actually making money.

I have come to realize that it is in my best interest to not get discouraged, but rather stay focused on on three key ingredients that will inevitably lead to my success: Staying active, staying connected and produce something. Let's be honest, sometimes it is not possible to make money through your efforts, especially at home, but what is more important is to take on the day with the mindset that you are able to provide services that have value to someone out there in the real world.

For example, since I've started this goal, I've made a point to reach out to family and friends, asking them if we can have play-dates/work-dates. The kids can play and the adults can work. I don't expect to get paid through these efforts, but these efforts are keeping me connected, keeping my network strong, and keeping me active. It's funny how staying active is addicting, and leads to keeping active.

So, to reiterate my three ingredients to success:

1) Staying Active: When I sit around and do nothing, I seem to find myself repeating said inactivity again and again. My daughter gets super bored and acts up because she isn't being stimulated and on it goes. However, if we are active, going around and participating in the world, getting stimulated, etc., we see how great it is and keep staying active. It's funny how that works.

2) Staying connected, while simultaneously strengthening and building a network: It is one thing to be productive in your house, keeping the dishes clean and the floor swept (which I'm not always 100% good at), but it's another thing to stay connected to people around you. Do you know your neighbors? Who was the last person you called on the phone? There are a lot of people around us, and it is important that we stay connected with our people. I have been making an effort to stay connected with friends, family, people I used to work with, and people I have met recently. You never know what doors will open when you're connected with people.

I heard the other day that rich people build networks. It doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it. What matters is having a strong network of people. I have personally never been a "networking" kind of person. In a crowded room, I tend to either shut down, or find one person I know and stick to them. I recognize that networking is important, and that I should improve, and so I'm trying to reacquaint with old acquaintances. The more networking I do with my existing network, the more I open myself up to more people.

 3) Produce: I often confuse "staying active" and "producing" as the same thing. They are not. Active, to me, means keeping busy. But keeping busy can mean many things: taking out the garbage, reading a book, watching a movie, playing dolls with my daughter. "Producing" is where we create, or provide a service that has value or meaning. It is debatable that this blog is me producing something. I'm reaching out into the world. It may not be of any particular value to anyone, but it's something I'm providing. Going to my mother-in-law's house to weed her garden is producing because I'm providing a service of value that may not generate money, but feeds my other two ingredients of success. Selling things on ebay is a form of producing because I'm generating money for my family.

There you have it. A little insight into my thoughts. I sure do like to ramble. Stay active, stay connected and produce something of value. It will lead you to greatness, or at least that is my plan.

"Make fun of me until I make a profit"

I woke up on Monday morning to help make breakfast and get my wife to work on time. In my grogginess, I got the coffee going then sat on the couch. After having a very low day, low week, low feeling for a while, I was quite honestly just feeling sorry for myself. That's a different story for a different day. So I pulled out craigslist to look for a part-time gig of some kind, and came across someone saying I could work from home using ebay and Amazon.

Oh brother, I said, but decided to look anyway. The coffee was still brewing, after all.

Click here to watch the video, by the way.

It started out really dorky, so I just kind of rolled my eyes and stopped paying attention. I can't remember when I started paying attention again, but it made so much sense to me. It was like setting up a convenience store online. How crazy is that? So I decided to learn a little more about the company, which is called DS Domination. I couldn't find any bad reviews because 1) it's a fairly new company, and 2) there aren't negative reviews out there. The fact is, it works and makes people money.

I then learned it has a network marketing side to the company. Oh brother, I said again. But THEN, I found THIS video (click here to watch the affiliate video). I highly recommend watching this video if you have ever considered network marketing, or are in network marketing.

So now I have a quandary. My wife is 10,000% against network marketing programs. As in, she carries the weight of 100 people's complete hatred of network marking companies. I had to convince her to let me spend $20 so that I could get access to the tools this company offered. "ugh," she said.

I made a deal with her. I told her I was confident I would make the money back quickly, and I believe my exact words were:

"You can make fun of me until I make a profit."

I then signed up and began devouring the material. Truth be told, it is super interesting to me. But as the days went by, I wasn't making any sales. I began feeling like a fool for signing up for this still program.

Until the day I made my first sale. After fees and everything else, I had LOST $10! I was never going to get out of this hole I dug myself. I was sure I would make my money back in one day. Not so.

A few more days went by without anything and then it finally happened. I made a sale, and then another and just like that, I was in the black! Not by much, but at least I'd made my money back.

I'm still in the very early stages here, but have made a potential believer in my wife, and am building an ebay business. Two very big things in moving towards achieving my goal of making $100 per day part time in 2014.

So there you go. I kid you not, DS Domination is real. Ebay and Amazon are free to join, and DS Domination provides great instruction on how to get them making you money quickly.

Who knows where my $100 will come from tomorrow. I have yet to make $100 in a day since I've started this goal. Granted, that was two weeks ago. Anyone out there have any ideas?

Until tomorrow.

Multiple sources of Income

I've set a goal for 2014: to make $100 per day, every day. This means that every day, I will do my best to actively pursue earning $100.

This is a part-time effort because I am also a stay-at-home dad. 

So, that leaves the next very big question: how are you going to do that? The answer is, I don't know yet. But what I do know is that I have several ideas of how I can possibly generate a little money. And I know that if I actually actively apply these ideas into the real world, they could actually generate money. AND I know that if I do multiple things that generate a little money, it can begin to add up to more than a little money. 

What are you talking about? That is the question you just asked me.

Multiple sources of income, silly. Four words, plus an unnecessary one. There is nothing I have access to at the moment, that I am aware of, that will make me $100 per day by itself. I even have a part-time job on the weekends that pays $10/hour. I only put in six to seven hours a day, so that won't even cut it.

But, I can use that job as an example of multiple sources of income. If I put in a seven hour day ($70), and earned a bonus ($15) and got $5 in tips, that brings me up to $90. Who knows, maybe I made a sale on ebay that day to bring me up to $100. 

Or maybe I can find someone who randomly wants to pay for ukulele lessons. Who would do that? Believe me, I've wondered that many times, but I've also considered offering that service to my community. I could provide those any given day.

All I'm trying to say is that every day should be a fresh day to approach generating a few dollars, with $100 being the goal. How you get there can be a jigsaw puzzle, but how good does it feel to fit that last piece into the puzzle? Exactly. 

Of course, I'm always looking for new ideas on ways to earn money part-time from home. If anyone out there has a remarkable idea, I'm all ears. 

Until next time.

Day 1, well, actually about day 20, but who is counting

On January 15, 2014, I sat down and wrote out a plan of how I could make $100 per day for the year. A little background first, I am a stay at home dad, and have been for the past two years. My wife is a pretty remarkable woman who is 1) a professional, and 2) supportive of my staying at home. She does urge me toward things that I am interested in, but does not apply pressure by saying "Get a job." That is a rare and amazing thing, and I recognize that.

But it's not like we can truly afford me staying at home. Or at least, me stay at home and not generate any income. We can make ends meet, but with student loans, and various other living expenses, there is little left for fun, for pizza, for pretty much anything at all.

Long story short, I have decided to try and make a little money on the side. But how? And truly how much would be necessary to begin a significant change in our lives?

I settled on $100 dollars per day. I will work toward earning $100 per day, while remaining a stay-at-home dad. Who knows how, really. But it's my goal. Here are a few ideas to get me started:

1) This blog. Who knows, maybe someone out there will be interested in something like this. Welcome! I originally intended on writing every day about my efforts, but that clearly did not happen since I started this blog 20 days ago. Oh well.

2) Active gigs. I will make an effort to muster up enough courage to post services on craigslist, from manual labor, to ukulele tutorials. Who knows. All I know is that busy people don't have time to chop wood, and I happen to have a chainsaw. Seems a match made on craigslist.

3) Direct Sales and MLMs. You might say ugh, but I am confident that the right multi-level marketing company is out there for me. I have a friend who introduced me to Team National, which I think is a great one but am currently not an affiliate of. I also am a huge believer in DS Domination. I am an affiliate of this though (I've been in it a week and have turned a profit so far).

4) Part-time job. I currently work for a tasting room where we pour wine and make merriment. I make more than minimum wage, but not really. So this is one of those jobs I don't truly rely on to build a fortune, but it is an outlet to interact with adults on the weekend. I can also count on a little extra spending money on the side.

5) The magic of ebay. I do love a good garage sale. Or MOVING sale. Moving sales are where it's at. But I find it absolutely magical the way you can invent money on ebay, but I am bound and determined to learn, and to eventually succeed! (Here's another chance to mention DS Domination, which teaches you how to use ebay effectively).

These are my initial ideas for how to begin generating a little extra money on the side. One of these days I will create a graphic like a "Fund Drive" or thermometer thing that has a total of $36,500 ($100/day), and I'll slowly climb my way up throughout the year.

Wish me luck! And if anyone out there has ideas for how to generate money as a side job, I'm always interested. Cheers!