Sometimes people think it’s weird that my wife and I travel full-time, living out of AirBNBs, and they don’t understand how we get to live anywhere and make money online. I love talking about software, funnels, sales psychology, optin forms, landing pages and autoresponder sequences, and though I’m not the best in the world, I’m also no longer a complete beginner. We’ve been “digital nomads” for almost 4 years, and are at the point where we can take a month off and watch Netflix (like I did in February) without needing to stress about managing our business (like my book sales, they mostly run on autopilot because I’ve built evergreen content to support them).
When I get a little better at this stuff and pass 10K/month in passive income, I’ll make a little ebook and maybe a free video course on different ways you can make money online. I WAS going to call it, “Start a profitable online business in 24 hours or less & make money from anywhere… even if you have zero skills!” as a tongue-in-cheek affront to the most searched for keywords (everyone wants to learn easy things that earn money without any time or effort). The truth is, you need to do the work and build something, before it has any real value. The good news, most people are lazy. The bad news, is that artists and creatives often focus on the wrong projects, and aren’t sure which of their Big Ideas could actually earn a living.
Luckily, there’s a solution: launch and validate your idea quickly. Then do the work after people have started to pay for it.
Directed Creativity leads to Freedom & Adventure
Creativindie is half about finding a thing you love to do that provides value (making things); and half about connecting with your audience and allowing them to support you (selling things). For the past decade I’ve talked mostly about writing and publishing specifically, though most of the platform-building guerrilla marketing hacks I use could be equally applied to art or business in general.
For those of you interested in starting a freelance side-business that can generate a full-time income (so you can spend more time being creative, inspired, liberated and exuberant), make sure you check back in later or sign up to my list. In the meantime, you’ll get the basics of my philosophy by signing up to my free email series or downloading the Creativindie Manifesto.
Some of you will scoff at the idea that it’s possible to start a business quickly. That’s usually because, most full-time entrepreneurs get stuck in the dreaming phases – that’s the fun part.
Full of vision and creativity and opportunity. But it’s also totally worthless. Ideas aren’t worth anything. You need to finish your offer, put it online and see if people will buy it. Most people spend a year or two and thousands of dollars starting a business – and the majority of small businesses fail.
Often, these failures are easy to predict. When I talk to people, they sometimes get upset because I’m not interested in all their big ideas and plans. I ask simple, direct questions that make them uncomfortable.
Like,
“Who are your ideal customers, how will you find them, and why would they buy your thing/service/product?”
People sometimes spend hundreds of hours avoiding those questions, instead fretting over their logo or business cards or website.
The majority of business ideas fail because the founders never have a very clear plan for how to turn their idea into profit. They think it could happen somehow, or the idea will catch on, or they’ll make money after its really successful or popular, or that they’ll get sponsorship or support later.
That means they’re really just building themselves their dream hobby and hoping somebody else will foot the bill. 24 hours is plenty of time to flesh out your business idea, test the market, and launch something.
Sure it may take longer to grow – although there are ways to have massive growth in 24 hours. And it may take time to turn it into a full-time living. But there isn’t much you can do in a week that you can’t do in 24 hours (except build trust, but you can set up a whole autoresponder sequence in an hour to build a relationship with clients on autopilot).
3 Signs your business will fail
I made this video to help identify red flags; if it’s useful make sure you sign up to my list to get my email series on producing work that matters (so you can live your creative vision without worrying about your next paycheck).
How to earn $500 a day in passive income
Would this be useful to you?
If I make a free video series, do you think I should call it “Start a Profitable Online Business” or “How I afford to travel the world for free.”
Which is more attractive? If you have any other suggestions, please comment – if I use your idea I’ll give you $100.
(I made another video, on YouTube somewhere I think, about attracting your ideal audience with the perfect offer… when I find it again I’ll add it here)
PS – it took me a year to overcome my fear of camera; it’s definitely not my most comfortable medium – but you can tell I’m excited this stuff and know what I’m talking about, even if I do take awhile to get to the point…(my videos tend to run LONG, but that’s because my brain is full of great ideas to share with you).
