The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (2 page)

decent one for about $50 or even less. I’l explain exactly how in this book.

Oh, and if you think you need a bunch of money to design and manufacture a product,

it just isn’t so. I’l show you how to create a product for next to no money and for just a

little bit of your time, believe it or not.

“I Don’t Have Enough Time”

You don’t need big blocks of time to get a six-figure second income. Al you need is

scraps of time here and there.

It used to be that if you wanted a second income, you needed to go out and get a

second job. That meant coming home from your first job dead tired, then wolfing down

your dinner and going back out to work some more hours. Hey, you can stil do that today

if you want to—but it’s just not necessary.

Imagine back to when the telephone was a revolutionary new device and how a

conversation might have gone between someone who knew about the new technology

and someone who had no clue:

“Son, ain’t no way I can leave the farm and go visit Uncle Milton in the city.

This is harvest time and I have crops to get in.”

“But, Dad, you can go next door to the Smith’s and use their new

telephone.”

“Their what?”

“Their telephone. You can call Uncle Milton and he’ll hear your voice, plus

you can hear his voice too.”

“But how can that be? Is it the work of the devil?”

“No, Dad, it’s not magic or witchcraft. It just has to do with that electricity

stuff and some scientists who figured out a new way to send sounds back

and forth.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’ve gotten this far without it. I see no reason to change

now. . . . ”

Just as it must have been hard for people to accept a revolutionary change in

communication with the telephone, we’re in the midst of another revolution: No longer

must you spend hours each day at a second job to make the income of a second job.

This is good news and bad news, depending on the person. Some people need the

structure of a job where they show up and do what they’re told for several hours each

day. They’re okay with trading their hours for dol ars.

Other people can get things done on their own without being told what to do and when

to do it. Are you one of these people? I hope so, because that’s the kind of person who

does wel with turning scraps of time into piles of money. The real trick is to know your

very next step to take and to take smal actions regularly. In this book, I’l supply the what

actions to take part. You’l need to be the one to take those regular steps.

“It’s a Bad Economy”

Let’s examine that statement a little more closely. It’s true that newspapers, television,

and the Internet are ful of bad-news stories every day. That doesn’t make it a uniformly

bad economy.

General Motors lays off workers in Michigan while a wind-energy company adds jobs

in Texas, but let’s say there is an overal 10 percent unemployment rate and another 10

percent who’ve given up looking. That stil leaves 80 percent employment and those

people are stil buyers.

I’m not trying to put a pretty face on a difficult economy, but instead to make the point

that there are countless microeconomies. If you sel custom motorcycle jackets, custom

quilt designs, or a report on bass-fishing secrets, some people out there are ready-and-

wil ing buyers right now. It’s a matter of finding them, and I’l explain exactly how to do

that.

“All the Really Good Ideas Are Taken”

That’s just crazy. Anyone who says that is starting to sound like the Roman Governor

Julius Sextus Frontinus in around AD 60, who said: “Inventions have long since reached

their limit, and I see no hope for further developments.”

If anything, we’re living in a society where the pace of new good ideas is getting

quicker, not slower.

But just for argument’s sake let’s say that someone waved a wand and there were no

additional significant inventions. Look around you—most people are col ectors of things.

They don’t buy just one book but lots of them. They don’t have one cat but several. They

don’t stop with one screwdriver, casserole recipe, or dog leash, but they own many.

It gets even better: As you know, people can be very passionate about hobbies. If

you’re a major fan of orchids, fly fishing, Jack Russel Terriers, or whatever, then you’re

not only a wil ing buyer of the next item, but you actively search for it. You want to be the

first in your group to have it to show off. We’l explore this type of product in much more

detail later.

“I’m Too Small to Compete Against the Big Guys”

That’s early 1900s thinking, but we’re in the twenty-first century now. It’s true that if you

wanted to compete effectively against Henry Ford back in the day, you had to be another

giant like General Motors or Chrysler.

That was because you had to spend major money to set up factories, hire thousands

of workers, and create dealerships around the country. It was the same for many

decades in other industries: We made do with three television channels, a couple of

newspapers in any given market, and the only decaffeinated coffee was Sanka.

These days smal is the new big. I’ve lost count of how many hundreds of television

channels are out there, not to mention al the shows on YouTube, Hulu, and so on.

Newspapers are either drying up altogether or moving to 24/7 Internet access.

Everywhere you look, the old model of big, slow, and one-size-fits-al , is giving way to

fast, agile, and just-the-way-you-want-it. This is wonderful news for the

micromanufacturer and micromarketer you’l become after reading this book.

“I’m No Good with Computers”

Can you turn on your computer and use a mouse? Can you read plain text on the

screen? Okay then, you’re good to go.

Back in the day when Bil Gates was a student fiddling with software, you needed to

learn programming to make computers do anything useful. Today you no longer need to

know any programming to get a perfectly fine web site up and running. You do need to

be clear and direct in what you offer people, and that’s easy to accomplish, as you’l

soon discover.

“There’s Too Much Competition”

Do you want to start a business so somebody wil erect a statue to you or so you can

have a fat bank account? If you want the statue then by al means become a pioneer. You

can tel the pioneers because they’re the ones lying face-down in the mud with al the

arrows in their backs. Forget that. It’s much less painful and much more profitable to

have your business in an area that’s already somewhat established.

Consider what it’s like to enter a completely new market—no visible demand exists for

that product. When the first person invented crossword puzzles, computer games, and,

for that matter, even the computers themselves, no immediate demand existed for them.

Ken Olsen, who founded Digital Equipment Corp, said, “There is no reason for any

individual to have a computer in his home.”1

Demand had to be built for al these inventions. On the other hand, when you offer a

new-and-improved dog col ar to the market today, you have mil ions of potential y

immediate users, depending on how good your doggie col ar is.

Here’s the real y excel ent news: Most of your competition is not very good at sel ing

dog col ars. Just think back to your own experiences in stores and through mail order.

Are you consistently blown away by the excel ent service you receive? At least not on