Smart Passive Income #168 to #174 - It's a Boy & Tips to Get More Time & Un-Goals & Newspaper & Make Over & Income Report & Questions

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... more personal information: K**** F****, born December 24th 2009 ... nevertheless congratulations ...

... and because we are not able to create more time, Pat has suggestions to use the time we have more efficient:

• Work when you are most efficient
• Use dead time (e.g. when driving, eating, running, ...)
• Skip time wasters (e.g. TV, video games, Facebook, Twitter ...)
• Organize yourself and find strategies which allow you to be more efficient ...
• Love what you are doing ...

... and suitable for New-Years resolutions, don't only think about what you want to do but also what you do NOT want to do ...

... some history delivered from newspapers ... (strange Pat did not mention newspapers to be time wasters) ...

... Pat's site gets a make over ...

... his income for December 2009 is up nearly 1.500 bucks to 10.000,- USD ...

... and a couple of questions to improve your blog:

• Is your content work sharing? no
• How are you encouraging comments? maybe
• Is it easy to share your posts on social bookmarking sites, Twitter, or Facebook? yes
• Is your content worth reading? hardly
• Did you ask your readers? yes, what do you think?

Smart Passive Income #167 - Marketing Forums & Advise

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Pat introduces five forums targeting online marketing. One of them is only available for a small subscription fee. Another one seems to have changed it's name in the last four years (at least the link forwards to another site) ...

Should you like to participate there, Pat has some advice on what to do and not to do:

• Don't just join to promote your own sites ... 
• Use your signature to promote your site (combining this with the advise above, it seems you should guerrilla marketing) ...
• Read the rules before posting (you will be the first one) ...
• Search before starting a new thread (you will be the first one, too) ...
• Help other people in need (you will be among a view) ...
• Don't loose yourself in the forums (you will not be the only one) ...

Smart Passive Income #166 - Tips, Tips and more Tips

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It's Christmas 2009 and Pat has a huge Christmas present for us in form of 51 tips for blogging and online marketing:

for your motivation

• Make sure to write down your goals and check them from time to time to see if you are on track.
• Compare your current state with the past, has it (not) improved? Why?
• There is always a way to improve things.
• Do something, it will hardly improve by itself.
• Use what makes you different to your advantage.
• Don't be frightened.
• Failing provides a way to learn from your mistakes.
• Don't overwork, work smarter.
• Be aware of your karma, give back.
• Enjoy what you are doing.

for your content

• Be consistent with what you are doing (don't change every day/week).
• Be different.
• Use keywords in blog titles.
• Use keywords in anchor texts and links.
• Use different text styles to make text more readable.
• Use different text styles to stress important parts.
• Use stories to involve your readers.
• Use data (Pat really, really likes this one).
• Write for your readers (know your readers).
• Enjoy what you are doing.

for your desgin

• Squint your eyes (or blur a screenshot of your page) to see what stands out of your design.
• Add an elevator pitch to let your visitors know in a couple of seconds what your site is about.
• Allow your visitors to subscribe easily.
• Avoid clutter.
• Be present with personal stories.

for getting noticed

• Comment on on blogs.
• Write guest posts.
• Participate in forums.
• Give interviews.
• Be controversial.

for networking

• Join a group of people with similar goals.
• Attend conventions.
• Join online groups.
• Use social networks.

for Twitter

• Get followers by following others.
• Use a personal photo in your profile.
• Use a custom background.
• Track your links.

for Facebook

• Setup a Facebook page.
• Setup a Facebook landing page.
• Interact with your visitors.
• Encourage comments and link posts.
• Don't get lost.

for growth

• Use different kinds of media.
• Create information products.
• Hire help.
• Work one hour a day for yourself.
• Be confident with your decisions.

Smart Passive Income #165 - Involvement by Asking & Give Avays

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Pat asks his readers to name his new eBook. To increase the involvement of his readers, he promises ten copies of The 4-Hour Workweek for people who subscribe to his blog. ... because we are about three years in the future, we know already the outcome. It's a combination of the responses from his readers ... Does that mean he does not really trust his readers?

Smart Passive Income #164 - How to Avoid Giving Up

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Pat compares being self employed with training for sports (He really loves comparisons) and gives five ways how to remind yourself not not quit either:

• Remember why you are doing it! ... you have a goal/reason, that should be motivating ...
• Don't allow back doors which allow quitting without loosing face ...
• Tell someone your plans so it would be embarrassing to quit ...
• Set a deadline, against which you can work and see if you reached your goals in time ...
• Find people with similar goals, which can support and motivate you ...

Smart Passive Income #161 to #163 - Income Report & Reading List & Affiliate Marketing

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Pat's income for November 2009 is down another 100 bucks, but still at 8.500,- USD.

... and suitable for the Christmas vacation he provides a list of reading/listening/using/doing suggestions.

 ... and he explains three types of affiliate marketing:

• unattached affiliate marketing - where you (or the affiliate provider system) just add randomly affiliate links to your page, hope that somebody clicks on the link, buys the product and makes you some money ...
• related affiliate marketing - where you choose the adds related to your site/topic/content, which is more targeted and suited to your visitors ...
• involved affiliate marketing - where you "truly" believe in the product you are "selling" and create a story around the affiliate link which "should" make clicking and finally buying unresistant ...

Smart Passive Income #160 - Pre Product Market Research

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Pat starts a new series:  How to test your online product before it exists?

First,  check if a market exists

• Enter possible keywords into Google. Do the results contain paid advertisements?
• Are there other web sites selling similar products?
• Check Amazon. Are there books or products related to your product idea?
• Add the keyword "forum:" to your Google search. Are there any forums? Is there a lot of conversation/posts/replies? When was the latest post?
• ...

Smart Passive Income #158 & #159 - Esoteric & What to Learn from Art

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It's Christmas (here in 2013) and Pat seems to know back in November 2009 ... he becomes quite esoteric ...

I Give You Permission to Succeed, By Pat Flynn

 ... which sounds like he just read a self-help book ...  sorry for the sarcasm, thanks Pat what would we do without you? ;)

... and we are back to analogies ... while studying architecture, Pat attended an introduction course to drawing. He learned that to get more realistic images, you should pay special attention to shadows.

What works for art, works for marketing ... meaning when running your marketing campaign, don't focus on the product, but take care of the "shadows of marketing":

• the problem
• the solution, it's benefits and features
• the testimonials
• the original price compared to the reduced one
• the bonuses or free gifts
• the scarcity factor ("buy know, or worry for ever")
• and (because we are using an art analogy) the whole picture

Smart Passive Income #157 - Bad Response

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What to do when somebody speaks bad about you?

... use it to your advantage ... if there is a little bit of truth in it, you can use it to change (your product) ... if not, respond and ask what you should change ...

Smart Passive Income #156 - Why Personal Information?

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Why is Pat sharing so much personal information? He wants to connect with his traffic. Ok, sounds reasonable, and is most likely more effective than cold selling ... but, no fear of identity theft?

... in addition he recommends to encourage comments ... so, please, please, please, leave a commen ...

... I will respond (not only because Pat says so) ...

... and you should hook up further, using Facebook and Twitter ...

... and last (but not least) provide mini-transactions by

• entering a name and email into an opt-in form for a newsletter or a free gift
• using polls, surveys and contests

Smart Passive Income #154 & # 155 - Baby Shower & Wordpress Themes

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More personal information ... Pat is having (had) a baby shower ...

... and he discusses wordpress themes:

There are tons of free ones, however they might be limited - not having features you might need/want, and are not that unique - in a sense that lots of other blogs might look like yours ...

Then there are premium ones, starting at a couple of bugs with the sky as limit ... again, however ... they might have more features, hopefully those you need/want, but are still not that unique ... others might still have bought the same theme ...

... or you might want to go for a custom theme from a designer of your choice ... if you do, let them know as detailed as possible what you really want (including sketches, examples of other sites). The better you specify what you want, the more you will like the result ;)

Smart Passive Income #153 - Fear

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Pat discusses which of two book titles would sell better ... and goes for the one addressing fear.

His conclusion for advertising:

• be as specific as possible defining your product ...
• address fear and show how your product solves that very problem ...

Smart Passive Income #152 - Numbers or Beeing Quniqe

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Pat really likes numbers, and to mix them in ways any mathematician would be jealous. (Multiply pi by two and again with the radius of a circle, ... voila, that's the way you become rich ... sorry, kidding ...)

Three tidbits of "today's" post:

• People buying from you once will likely buy from you again (... in other words, it's easier to satisfy an existing customer, than to get a new one)
• Optimize the "dollars earned per customer" buy finding the optimum price for your product (not too cheap, not too expensive, ... which is actually quite difficult ...)
• You don't need a lot of customers to become successful (if you product sells for the "right" price)

... and two approaches to achieve what's said above:

• enter a popular market, and gain a market share using an unique angle
• specialize in niches (where you might not have to fight with that many competitors, but still need an unique angle)

... or to summarize: BE UNIQUE

Smart Passive Income #150 & #151 - Income Report & Facebook

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Pat's income for October 2009 was back "down" to 8.500,- USD ... which makes a total yearly income for 2008/2009 of 200.000,- USD ...

... and a really, really, really long explanation why and how Facebook can boost a blog ... however Facebook changes quite frequently, so his detailed explanations are a bit outdated...

Smart Passive Income #149 - Result of the Google Page Rank Experiment

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Remember Pat started an experiment trying to rank on top places for a specific google search.
He succeeded within one week making place #1.

He started with a blog post where he put the key phrase, in the title, the URL, the meta description and the first sentence of the post. He made the keywords bold everywhere in the content of the post. He embedded a YouTube video with the same title, using the same key phrase as anchor text and an image with the same title.

The tweeted and linked the post on Facebook (using the same key phrase).

He added bookmarks on Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious (again using the same key phrase in title and description) and used a browser plugin (SocialMarker) for a number of other bookmarking sites. (He also used those bookmarks for the YouTube video).

He submitted the video to five other video websites (again including back links and keywords).

He added additional articles (with new content) on eHow, eZineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleAlley, Squidoo and Hubpages linking back to the original article in multiple ways.

... and became #1 ...

Smart Passive Income #148 - Stop Procrastinating

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Glen Allsopp posted a guest post on Pat's blog, defining the turning point of his online career, when he realized that it is more important to actually do something than reading about it, or investigating on how to to it in the most optimized way ... He advises to note down everything you to and then check what was useful and what wasn't ...

Smart Passive Income #147 - Tips for better Writing

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Pat's tip to write better articles:

Do not write for yourself, but for a specific "imaginative" audience.

 Imagine your reader and be as specific as possible:

• What are their names?
• How old are they?
• What do they for a living?
• Where do they live?
• Where do they come from?
• What are their problems?
• Why should they read your article?

 Write to help them, to solve their problems!

Smart Passive Income #146 - Reasons to use Passive Income

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But recaps how passive income works in a video presentation (Remember: Setup a product once using an automated process to sell it ...) and he stresses why it's the proper business model for him:

• It's cheap and easy to setup
• It's low risk
• You do not have to add additional work once the process is setup
• It works parallel to a nine-to-five job
• It works 24/7
• It's easy to test new strategies
• You can use multiple passive income streams
• You get more time and freedom 

... and he provides his #1 Adsense tip: Not to use Adsense, but search for people willing to advertise on your site for yourself ...

Smart Passive Income #145 - Further SEO Optimization & The Experiment Begins

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Pat names three ways (he thinks) search engines use to rank web sites:

• The number of links to the page: More is better, Links from higher ranked pages are even better ...
• The activity of the page: Is it still alive or did the content change recently?
• The relevancy of the page: Does the page match the search query?

Concerning the relevancy he provides more detail:

• The relevancy of the domain and URL themselves
• The title and headlines of the page (especially ones wrapped by header tags)
• The consistency of the content (does the content contain only keywords without "real" text)
• The relevancy of the back links (if their content matches the query)
• The relevancy of the text of the back links (does the text of the actually link text match the query?)
• The relevancy of the used media

For his SEO experiment addressing the items above he decides to:

• Create a new post containing his keywords in the title.
• Create a YouTube video containing his keywords in title, description and tags.
• In the video ask a question to be answered via comments.
• Bookmark blog and video on various bookmarking websites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious et al.
• Post links to the blog and video on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter ...
• Later on write additional articles following the steps above and in addition link to the previous articles and videos.

... let's see what happens ...

Smart Passive Income #144 - SEO by Keywords

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Pat starts a new experiment: Pushing the search ranking of his site using keyword positioning.

He starts by determining which keywords are looked for most - using the tools provided by Goolge Adwords (and another one which does not seem working any more).

Smart Passive Income #142 & #143 - YouTube & Facebook to Conquer the World

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Pat posted his first YouTube video explaining how to create screen casts for (guess) YouTube videos ...

... and he explains how to increase your web traffic using Facebook ...

Smart Passive Income #141 - "Stupid" eMails

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Pat explains, why emails from non-customers - asking questions - are good, even if they do not make you any money for now ... because the writers took time to contact you explaining their problems in need for a solution ... which you could provide ...

Smart Passive Income #138 to #140 - Reading & Wordpress & 5 Tings NOT to DO

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Pat posts a number of reading recommendations - not all of them do exist anymore ...

... and a wordpress plugin to add "social" buttons to your blog ...

... and five things not to do:

• not starting earlier
• under pricing your products
• take the lowest bid when outsourcing
• not testing your products
• not adding more products

Smart Passive Income #137 - "Ten" "Secret" Techniques ...

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Ten (secret) techniques to get more subscribers:

• Add a subscribe button at the top of your page.
• Use squeeze pages.
• Add additional subscribe buttons so that one is visible even when your page is scrolled down.
• Make your subscribe buttons stick out from your page.
• Use pop ups.
• Ask your visitors to subscribe.
• Offer an incentive.
• Less is more.
• Test the above.
• Test again.

... well, there are ten items, two are clearly outdated ... and rewording does not really count, does it? 

Smart Passive Income #135 & #136 - Future Plans & Blog = Bar

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Pat shares plans for his future ...

... and he compares a blog to a bar ... not people rushing through (on the lookout for a public toilet) are good customers, but people who stay and have a drink or two ... and he summarizes:

• First impression is key, huge traffic does not count if everybody hits the back button immediately.
• You need to give your customers something, that they will want to stay and visit again.

Smart Passive Income #134 - What to do when you are afraid to do something

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Pat provides advice on what to do when you are afraid to do something:

• Ask yourself what's the worst that could happen
• Find out what to expect
• Just do it!

Smart Passive Income #133 - Third Law of Business (borrowed from Mr. Newton)

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Sorry Pat, but Newtons third Law is not really translatable to business:

For Every Action There is an Equal and Opposite Reaction

After postulating his third law of business, Pat limits it everything not money related, and gives lots of reasons why it does not work for money, but no reasons why it should work for every thing else ...

Smart Passive Income #132 - Second Law of Business (again borrowed from Mr. Newton)

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As predicted - ok, I could have just read ahead - here comes the next of physics law raped in the name of business:

The acceleration of your success is directly proportional to the amount of force you apply, but inversely proportional to the number of markets you try to reach.

Pat summarizes this trip into the world of physics better by just saying:

Just focus on one market and you’ll do better.

Smart Passive Income #131 - First Law of Business (stolen from Mr. Newton)

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Pat postulates the first law of business which is actually Newtons first law of motion - he just interchanged the word object with business:

"Every business in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it."

Meaning if you have no business, and are dreaming about one, but actually not doing any thing, you will have none.

If you have a business, but is does not so good, and you are not changing anything, it will not get - most likely - get better by itself.

If you have a business, and it does fantastic, and you are not changing anything - according to the law above - it will stay fantastic ... but most likely there will be another law derived from the second law of thermodynamics that will show that it will get worse ...

Did you notice that business people - especially management consultants - always borrow from physics or even better from quantum physics?

Smart Passive Income #128 to #130 - Affiliate Links & Income Report & Five Reasons not to become Self Employed

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Pat is not sure if he should hide his affiliate links ... well he does now (end of 2013) ... seems he made up his mind ...

... and we have reached September 2009 ... his income report for August 2019 is up a couple of hundred bugs, has not reached its former height, but more than 9.000,- is not bad at all ...

After one year of self employment, Pat gives five reasons why you shouldn't:

• You are responsible for everything, you make your own decision, nobody tells you what to do ... of course that's one of the reasons to become self employed ... but sometimes you would like to hand over that responsibility and just do tasks somebody tells you to do ...
• You are master over your time, you can schedule on your whimsy ... which again is nice, but sometimes, you actually will do nothing, and other times you do too much ...
• Procrastination ... it's really much easier to achieve a mind of procrastination than at a work place where your boss looks over your shoulder all of the time ...
• You are sooo alone, no coworkers, ... well that depends on the size of your company ;)
• No benefits, ... true, you get no retirement plan (actually not true, set up one yourself!) ... no medical, or dental plan (again, setup one yourself!) ... no paid vacations (wasn't the idea of passive income, to get paid even when you are not working?) ... no free lunches (... which you actually can pay for yourself when you earn more ...)

Smart Passive Income #125 - to #127 - App Promotion & Informational Content & It's a Boy

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Pat tried to contact reviewer sites for his new App iCaption. But got virtually no feedback. Now he tries a different approach: a contest ...

... and he reveals three ways to sell your informational content:

• a book
• an audio book
• a video

... and his boy is born, congratulations ... (now you know his name, his birthday ... another open door for identity theft :( )

Smart Passive Income #122 to #124 - Income Report & eHow & Marketing

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Pat's income for July 2009 is "down" to 9.000,- USD. While it is still an impressive number, compared with his income for June 2009 its a only one third ...

... and he wrote another post on eHow ...

... and finally the big secret on success: MARKETING (... its important, and there are lots of different methods, ... and we do not want to do it ...)

Smart Passive Income #120 & #121 - Release & Blogging

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Pat released his app iCaption, as well as an audio guide for his web site ...

... and he posts three questions you have to ask yourself to become a successful blogger:

• Can you commit? 
• Why will people come to you?
• Is you blog worthwhile?

Smart Passive Income #119 - Financial Success

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Pat asks how to know when you have reached financial success?

The answers he came up with:

• When you are able to spend lots of money on charity.
• When you don't have to worry about your bills.
• When you don't have to live from pay check to pay check.
• When you are dept free.
• When you have enough money to retire.
• When you have payed off your house.
• When you have payed off your children's education.
• ...

Smart Passive Income #118 - New iPhone App

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Pat shows screenshots of his - soon to be posted / remember we are in July 2009 - new iPhone app called iCaption. I don't really understand its concept. Everyday they app shows a new picture which the user is allowed to comment, or can vote on existing comments ... What's the incentive to buy that app? If that app was a success, Pat is really a marketing genius!

Smart Passive Income #117 - Online Classes

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Pat plans to open another stream of passive income - an online class. Paying customers get access to special class material & videos on (he actually did not say) ... everything is in preparation, he even hired two designers (Pat seems it necessary to emphasize that this time they are from the US ?!?) ...

... comments indicated that even he has called that post "part 1" there was no other part ... could it be he stopped his idea? We will see, more than four years of blog posts to go ...

Smart Passive Income #115 & #116 - Going Paper - Testimonials

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Pat wants to go paper - he tries to find a publisher for his new book idea. ... which is quite the opposite of what he prayed so far about passive income ... well lets see what happens ...

I don't like testimonials 

First of all, have you ever seen negative ones? They are always positive and tell how life changing the product was ... How do you even know the are for real or just fake ... Only because they come with a name and sometimes place (e.g. Bart Simpson, Springfield), does them make trustworthy? Even a photo could be from anyone ...

Pat likes them and it seems a valid marketing tools ... otherwise people would not use them, would they?

There are written testimonials, video testimonials, or blog testimonials ... when you use them, add a name & place, and let them say how your product changed their life ... and let them look "real" e.g. using hand-written notes, poorer quality video or audio ...

... interesting note, Pat refers to a page generating such small notes/testimonials ... the domain is for sale ...

Smart Passive Income #114 - Outsourcing

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Pat is confronted with the question if outsourcing is irresponsible. The question should better be:

Is outsourcing irresponsible for rates you would not even lift a finger?

Pat finds the question interesting ... but sadly comes to no conclusion ... no comment ...

Smart Passive Income #109 to #113 - Buying a House & Loans & iPhone & Fishing & Income Report

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Pat wants to buy a house but has problems getting a loan - even when earning more then 20.000 USD a month - strange ...

... but his second iPhone app is doing fine ;) ...

... even so fine, that he finds time to go fishing ...

... and did even catch one ...

... and his income for June 2009 reached 26.500 USD.

Smart Passive Income #107 & #108 - iPhone App Nr. 2 & eHow Experiment Summary

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Pat released his (their) second app on the AppStore. Baby Maker! morphs two photos into a new one "showing what a baby would look like" ...

... and he summarizes his success with eHow. Remember his eHow experiment. He decided to write five articles per day for a month ... stopped during his experiment and decided to spend time better writing for his own blog ... Nevertheless, from his first articles he made more than 100 USD per month totaling to 880 USD after six month ... not bad for "doing nothing" (quote Pat).

Smart Passive Income #106 - New iPhone

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Pat has an iPhone 3G ... the new iPhone 3G S (remember we are still in June 2009) has just arrived ... he wonders if he should by a new one?

... that's an actual question for every arrival of new hardware or software version:

• if your old one is broken, buy the new one ...
• if your old one is missing features you need, buy the new one ...
• if you really would like the new one and can effort id, buy the new one ...
• if you do not need the new one, stay with your old one ...

... and then there is the other question arising with each apple product: "Should I buy now or wait till the next release???"

Smart Passive Income #105 - Blog Recommendation

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Pat links to another blog ProBlogger (which is still alive four years later with many more entries ...) and suggest reading especially the following five posts:

• 13 Tips for Marketing Your Business With Your Blog
• 5 Ways to ‘Systemize’ your Blogging
• One Blog or Many?
• How to Write Great Blog Content
• How to Write Your “About Me” Page

... and they are really good articles!

Smart Passive Income #104 - How to be a successful Blogger

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A reader complains that he does not make any money from his blog (could be me), Pat offers help!

• First realize that there is a problem.
• Don't write about different topics, narrow your focus.
• Write for followers, not occasional readers.
• Don't be anonymous ...

Smart Passive Income #102 & #103 - More Personal Information & Idea?

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More personal information - Pat announced that he soon would be a father.

Back to business, he discusses his poll about "What is holding you back?" Because most answered that an idea would be missing, he address this problem asking three quesitons:

• What do you do?
• What would help make what you do easier?
• Has it be done?

Don't look far, or into topics you do not know anything about. Stick with what you know, try to improve where you see problems. If it has been done already, good, that means there is a market (we had that already before). If not, there is potential ... but you might ask why it has not be done before ...

Smart Passive Income #101 - Criticism as Free Advice

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Pat sees criticism as free advice. Even if it is negative, its a chance to improve. However you can't please everybody and you shouldn't.

Smart Passive Income #97 to #100 - Privat Information & Philosophy & Income Report

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More private information ... Pat will/did attend a wedding ...

I cannot really decide if that provides more contact surface for identity theft of for SEO optimization?!?

... Pat philosophizes about what would happen if google shut down. ... it actually happened recently ... seems there was much less traffic till google was reachable again, but we are still alive ...

... and Pats income for May 2009 is more than 21.000 USD ... congratulations once again ...

... and he redesigned his homepage ...

That was his 100th entry, as far as I counted. But today I stumbled over a couple of entries I missed ... argh ...

Smart Passive Income #95 & #96 - No Time & Mastermind Meeting

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Pat is working on new material and has no time for blogging ...

... but he found time to attend his mastermind meeting - a fancy lunch where a couple of entrepreneurs meet talk about their latest business and learn from each other ...

Smart Passive Income #94 - Dog Sitting - Private Information - Marketing

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... another post (Pat calls them random fun posts) about details of his private life ... on how to find a dog sitter ...

Not only is this a good way to keep your readers interested, it should also help to attract new readers who stumble upon your blog by chance when they were looking for dog sitters (or the any other private-life topic). If your blog is only about business, it will only show up in search results concerning that specific business. If you blog about unrelated things from time to time, this could broaden your audience ...

Smart Passive Income #93 - Celebration - 5 Free Tips for Bloggers

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Pat celebrates his 100th post (I counted only 93, I could be wrong or some posts got deleted since ...). Nevertheless congratulations!!!

On this occasion Pat shares 5 tips for bloggers:

• shorten your affiliate links (lots of free tools out there)
• check who is linking to your page (lots of free tools out there)
• create an avatar picture/icon for your comments
• use a favicon for your website
• use free pictures for your posts

Smart Passive Income #92 - Virtual Assistant

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What's a Virtual Assistant?

An artificial intelligence following your bidding ... unfortunately we are not really there yet ... in the meantime we have to redefine the term to "somebody doing your bidding" ... and because we should incorporate the "virtual" ... that somebody is located somewhere else and you communicated with him/her using any means of telecommunications ... nowadays the internet ...

What tasks would/could you delegate to an assistant?

Anything you do not want to do yourself? Small things, you have not time to do? Tedious tasks which take much time and which you could spend better? Tasks you are not qualified for and your assistant can fulfill better?

What tasks would/could you delegate to a virtual assistant?

Basically the same but limited to tasks which do not need to physically at your place. Your virtual assistant situated at the other end of the world will not be able get your laundry, etc ...

Why you should use a virtual assistant?

Typically your "normal" assistant will be a "normal" employee which you have to pay for a 9-to-5 job. A virtual assistant is available on a per task or hourly basis ... and you are not limited to a local pool of possible assistants, but can pick assistants from all of the world.

Why you should not use a virtual assistant?

If you have a problem delegating (nearly everybody has) and do not trust that somebody else will do a task at least as well as you could, this will multiply when delegating that task to somebody you have never met, and is thousands of miles away ...

Your local assistant is bound by the same laws you are, your virtual assistant might not ... which could end up that confidentially issues and intellectually property rights might be handled differently in other countries. Even if they laws are similar, would you want to travel to a far away country for a law suit?

Pat uses virtual assistants for multiple purposes and is happy ...

Tim Ferrris does, too ...

Will you? You will not know till you try ... but please, be careful ...

Smart Passive Income #91 - Personal Information vs Identity Theft

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People are natural born peeping toms - at least they/we like reading about other the lives of others. So Pat posts about his first dance with his newly wed wife.

Seems to be a nice marketing strategy but is it safe nowadays? Could identity theft be an issue?

Smart Passive Income #90 - Analytics

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Pat's conclusion from studying the analytics of his website:

It takes time!

Smart Passive Income #89 - Polls

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Seems back in 2009 Pat hat regularly polls on his homepage, which he summarized in his "6-month-passive-income" entry:

Would you like to work 40 hours for 50.000 USD per year, or 60 for double, or 80 for ten times that money?

Seems people do not care ;) ... all three choices got nearly the same amount of votes (ok the second one got less, the third one most) ...

What's most important? Family, Money, Health?

Family one with three quaters, money and health share the rest equally ...

Do you work 9 to 5 and love it, want to quit, are unemployed, work for yourself and love it, or hate it?

... due to the poor choice of colors (I am color blind and can't see the difference for the colors chosen for work 9 to 5 and want to quit and work for yourself and hate it), I have to guess:

Half of the people work 9 to 5 and want to quit, 30 % work for themselves and love it, the rest is equally shared between unemployed and working 9 to 5 and love it ...

What's holding you back form making money online?

For nearly 40 % it's the missing idea, 25 % do not have enough knowledge, 20 % do not have enough time, followed by scared people and missing money ...

What would you do with an extra four hours a day?

Nearly equal shares (in order from most votes to less votes): sleep, organize, watch TV, other ...

Actually the two answers are with the most votes are "being scared and lack of knowledge" ... seems there was a slight problem with copy and paste?

What would you do with extra 1.000 USD per month?

The winner with nearly half of the votes is paying pills, followed by about an a quarter each saving and investing, a minor vote for vacation and none for a new car ...

What do learn from this polls? ... time for another poll!!!

Smart Passive Income #88 - List of Projects

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... actually I did not really get the meaning of that post.

That it is important to have a list of current projects?
That it is important to categorize them?
That it is important to have projects?

Hah! So if there is any reader of my blog out there ... though I suppose the clicks on my blog are only search engine ... Please let me know how you would interpret that post from Pat!

Smart Passive Income #86 & #87 - Unique Selling Point

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Pat explains the importance of a unique selling point (or proposition). In his words "find out what makes you stand out from the crouwd and milk it" ... which is actually a marketing strategy populare since the early 1940s.

• make a concrete offer to the customers: "buy this for that benefit"
• it needs to be unique in a sense that no competitor can or does offer it
• it needs to be strong enough to attract new customers

Pat invited his readers to post their unique selling points, which he categorized into

• stories as a USP
• direct comparisions
• the truth as USP
• numbers as USP

Smart Passive Income #85 - How to motivate Yourself - Ask the Reader - Get them Involved

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Another idea Pat has is to involve his readers, by asking questions. He asked how to motivate yourself... hoped for 50 responses and got 31. So I will head over and add a comment ;)

... well I am back ... seems he closed the comments section for that blog entry. I actually wanted to say that his blog really motivates me! True, I do not agree with everything he says, but even so it makes me think, and provides real inspiration!

Smart Passive Income #84 - Is your Idea good for Passive Income

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How to know your ideas are good for passive income?

First remember the definition of passive income: Create a product once, setup an automated process to make money without further intervention ...

• Do people need your product?
• Does your idea scale? Does it matter if you sell it once or a million times?
• Do you handle every order yourself (e.g. shipping, payment)?

Smart Passive Income #83 - Find new Ideas

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After iPhone apps, Pat addressed how to find ideas:

• record your ideas
• record ALL of your ideas
• if you google your ideas and get hits, don't worry, that means there is market out there!

Smart Passive Income #81 & #82 - iPhone Apps

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Pat stated a new company creating iPhone apps. He sees iPhone apps as perfect passive income products. You create them, ... and Apple does everything else, sending you monthly checks ...

He even goes a step further, he does not create the apps himself, but hires somebody to do so ...

Late 2013 he has about 22 apps in the Appstore ... after the initial release they rarely get updated ... so they are really passive products ... the homepage for his new company has not seen an update since April 2010 ...

Pat's app in alphabetical order:

• Amazing Human Calculator FREE ... calculate fun facts about the human body
• Amazing Human Calculator PRO ... calculate fun facts about the human body
• Ask Santa! ... app to contact Santa Claus
• Baby Maker! ... morph photos to know what a baby would look like
• Balance Test - How Balanced Are You? ... check your balance skills
• iCaption (Funny Pics - FAIL, Signs, plus more!) ... share photos and get them rated
• Idiot Finder Trick ... simulate an "idiot" finder
• Loser Scan - Trick Your Friends and Family! ... simulate a "looser" detector
• Male or Female Detector - Gender Finder! ... simulate a gender detector
• Shake Nation 100 ... shake your iPhone, to see how fast you can shake ...
• Shake Nation 1000 ... shake your iPhone, to see how fast you can shake ...
• Shake Shake Pop Lite ... shake your iPhone simulating a popping a bottle
• Shake Shake Pop ...  shake your iPhone simulating a popping a bottle
• Smell Finder - Detect Bad Smells (Trick App!) ... simulate a smell detector
• Sonic Pet Trainer - Dual Dog Whistle ... simulate a whistle
• Talent Finder Trick App ... simulate a "talent" finder
• Tap Nation 100 FREE - FASTEST TAPPER IN THE WORLD! ... check how fast you can tap
• Tap Nation 500 - FASTEST TAPPER IN THE WORLD! ... check how fast you can tap
• Ugly Finder - Trick Your Ugly Friends! ... simulate a "beauty" finder
• 100+ Robot Sound Effects (High-Quality FX) ... robot sounds ...
• 500+ Pro Sound Effects (Professional Sound FX) ... more sound effects ...
• 9 in 1 : Detector Trick Deluxe! ... simulate "various" detectors

Smart Passive Income #78 to #80 - eBook Marketing Techniques

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Pat continuous his "how to publish an ebook" series with marketing tips.

• Start marketing your ebook as soon as possible, even if it is not finished yet. ... let your fans know about your progress ...
• Use promotional pricing & discounts
• Spam (Pam calls it front-line marketing and he advises to be very careful) ... if you look in your letter box and find it 99 % filled with "marketing material" you could think that marketing actually equals spam ... and because it is so much easier to create and distribute virtual "marketing material" ... there is a reason why most legal systems have laws to prevent them ... please be even more than very careful with this kind of marketing and when in doubt please contact your local legal counsel!

Pat considers further markeing thechniques like Google adwords, Facebook or private advertising on other blogs. The first and the last are not for free, might generate traffic to your site but actually create no sales ... On Facebook you can buy advertisement space or go for "front-line" marketing ...

Pat's third post about ebook marketing addresses the use of affiliate programs for your own products ...

Smart Passive Income #76 & #77 - Monly Income - Pricing eBoooks

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Pat's income for March 2009 is still growing, and has reached more than 25.000 USD.

Back to ebooks, Pat discusses pricing. Check out the prices of books with content similar to your own. If you are going for higher prices than your competitors have, you need to communicate the reasons to your customers. Same for going cheaper, you do not want to loose credibility (Why is the book so cheap? Because it is not worth more?) ... and like before Pat calls selling to cheap "loosing money" ...

Depending on your distribution scheme you might have the possibility and want to "play" with the price and see which price is best ... Nevertheless, to get reliable data from that, you need an high enough number customers, otherwise the changes you see might be pure statistic fluctuations ... 

Smart Passive Income #75 - eBook Landing Page

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Pat's secret of selling ebooks?

The Landing Page

For Pat the landing page is like an infomercial, and should be treated as such:

1. Define the problem your product solves.
2. Show how it solves that problem.
3. Show your product.
4. Provide (real) testimonials.
5. Provide details of your product.
6. Show how ridiculously cheap your product is.
7. Provide a bonus gift.
8. Provide a guaranty.
9. Limit your product (only 3 pieces left ...)
10. Do split tests

Smart Passive Income #74 - eBook Selling

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The fifth part of Pat's "how to publish and ebook" series address the most important part of the passive-income process - the automation. Again the article is a little bit outdated but gives an idea on how and what to do.

Smart Passive Income #71 to #73 - Creating eBooks

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Pat's articles on how to publish eBooks is quite a bit outdated (early 2009), there are numerous tools out there (even for free) which makes creating eBooks even much easier. But there are a couple of tidbits you do not want to miss, e.g. the sections you might (should) want to include in your book:

• book cover
• disclaimer & copyright
• preface about the reasons you created the book
• notes about you (the author)
• links to your sites
• helpful tools
• contact information

Smart Passive Income #70 - eBooks vs Hard Copy

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One way of creating passive income (remember: creating a product once, setting up an automated process to sell, and earn money "without further" work) is selling ebooks.

Nowadays it's also not that difficult to publish "real" hard-copy books using various print-on-demand service. While paper is the traditional way to read more and more people read digital books. One major drawback is the production and delivery cost, which Pat calls even "loose money" ... Which of course would imply that people are willing the same prices for digital ...

Smart Passive Income #66 to #69 - Income Report - Marriage - Numbers - Recap

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Pat's income for February 2009 increased another 20 % to more than 24.000 USD (IRS will love to see that). Congratulations! Pat married. Congratulations again! ... and more number games about his income ... and a recap about the blog which by then is six months old ...

Smart Passive Income #56 to #65 - Guest Posts - Honeymoon, Growing Lawn, Geek & Passion, Passive Income from Passive Income, Dreams, eHow & Referral Links, Master Strategy, more eHow, Real Estate, Content Sites

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It's February 2009 on Smart Passive Income, Pat is on his Honeymoon and wrote a guest post on another blog (which seems quite dead in 2013). Nevertheless writing guest posts on other blogs is a nice way to increase your own web traffic ...

In return a guest post appears on Pat's blog ... which is about "growing a new lawn" and does not really have to do anything with passive income ... I might be wrong ;)

Another guest post could be about passive income - again I might have interpreted that post the wrong way. It address being a geek and passion, and how talking about that can end up in passive income ... 

Yet another guest post explains on how you get even more passive income from your passive income ... namely decreasing your tax on your income and how increasing interest (which is again passive income) ...

... how to turn dreams into passive income ... actually more dreams than howto ...

... another article explains how you can earn money from an eHow article even if that very same article on eHow only makes a couple of cents. The idea here is that you put referral links to products into your article ...

... the strategy of another poster combining blogs, ebooks and informational products on personal finances seems not to have paid off ... the site is down ...

... same with the get organized with with eHow articles ...

... another idea is about passive income in the real-estate business by generating income through relationships. The site is up and running, last blog entry about a year ago ...

... and finally an entry about writing articles for content sites (like eHow) ...


In summery nine guest posts, four of the referred sites are still active!

Smart Passive Income #55 - Guaranties

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Pat's 55th blog post addresses guaranties. Guaranties like "if you are not satisfied, you get your money back" seem to give your customers a sense of security ... and it seems they do not use that offer all to much ...


An even more extreme kind of guaranty is the loose-win guaranty introduced by Tim Ferris, where you not only return the money paid but in addition pay an extra fee. That way the customer gets something an incentive from your product even if he returns it ...

e.g.:

• You sell a product for 25 USD. If the customer returns it, you pay 50 USD instead of the original 25 USD.
• You sell a product and provide an additional gift for free. If the customer returns the product he can keep the gift.
• You sell a weekly newsletter. Should you fail to deliver one week your subscribers get paid 25 USD.

Does this pay off? Are there more nice customers than "bad" one ...

Smart Passive Income #54 - Failure necessary for Success?

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Have you noticed that every good success story starts with failure?

It could be that's just what happens. And of course failure is chance for improvement, bla bla bla ... Or could it be that we do not like people who succeed all the time. That in order to give somebody our full attention, that somebody needs to have an imperfect life?

There is even a wikipedia entry "from rags to riches". It seems we like a person better if they rose from poverty to wealth.

Imagine two books, one about a person who overcome all sorts of obstacles, made his/her way and became rich, the other one of a child of a millionaire who founded another successful company?

Lets have a look:

• Steve Jobs, who started broke in his parents garage ...
• Bill Gates, sun of rich lawyers ...
• Michael Jackson, the eighth of ten children from an African-American working-class family living in a 3-room hut ...
• Willow and Jaden Smith, whose parents are worth about 200.000.000 USD

... surprisingly you can find in nearly every VIPs life some tragic story they overcome to be successful ... like a disease which is "not dangerous but bothersome" (please not that's a real quote!!!), ... of course than you can over come your drinking and drug problems, ... and it seems necessary to marry and get divorced quite a lot to find your true soul mate, ... and nearly everybody worked at some point at McDonalds (... I do not really see the misery there ...)

... and of course Pat has his failures he had to overcome ... does this make him more likable or just a marketing genius?

Smart Passive Income #53 - More on Advertising

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Pat revisits advertising. He starts by describing different formats like horizontal, vertical, square banners or text ads ... when an how to use ... put them where the fit into your web page without distracting from your main content ...

Concerning selling your advertisement space Pat explains that you should provide click reports with click-through rates. Provide discounts for long-time customers, don't forget to make contracts - like before Pat suggests to browse the internet for suitable contracts ... but please prefer your local legal counsel instead! ... and you might want to checkout your customers before accepting any advertisement blindly.

Back to pricing, go get an idea on how much you might be able to charge, browse around in Google Adwords (Pat suggests to use a not-anymore-available tool ... but Google has now different ones ...) and multiply the numbers there by your click-through rates ... finally you will not get more than your customers are willing to pay, but you might get an idea of what is possible ...

Smart Passive Income #52 - Private Advertising

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Pat introduces another way of passive income: Private Advertising

In a previous blog post we learned about advertising from sources like Google Adsense. There you provide a space on your web page to Google which it fills with advertisements from various sources. When visitor clicks on these special links you get paid a certain amount ... which is called pay-per-click.

Private advertising means that somebody pays for putting an advertisement on your homepage. Typically this is limited to a special product or a certain company and you are paid a certain amount per month which does not depend on the number of clicks of your visitors.

The size of the sum depends on your negotiation skills and of the number of monthly visitors.

If you are really lucky that special somebody - willing to pay real money for virtual space - contacts you asking for your rates ...

Most likely you will have to look for those somebodies yourself. You could do that by putting up blank advertisement spaces saying something like "Want to advertise?" ... or you could contact certain companies and ask them if they want to advertise ...

Is Private Advertising really Passive Income?

If you are lucky as mentioned above certainly ... You upload the advertisement to your server and get paid without further intervention from your end ... that's passive income ...

If you are using the Billboard Method from above ... You upload your offer to advertise, somebody finds you, contacts you, you upload the advertisement to your server and get paid without further intervention from your end ... a little bit more work but still passive income ...

If you are using the Headhunter Method from above ... You look for suitable companies, contact them, upload the advertisement to your server and get paid without further intervention from your end ... now it really depends on the contacting steps ... if you spend more time contacting then you get out of it ... you might still call that passive income ... but you might want to rethink your strategy ...

Smart Passive Income #51 - Car Accident, Personal Tidbits, Peeping Tom

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Another strategy that Pat uses is sharing from his personal life. Today (actually nearly five years ago) he had a car accident which of course was life changing. It brought him to rethink his priorities, etc ...

Why do we like to read about the life of other people? Because deep in us there is a little peeping tom ... Reading about others, is much easier then living on our own, and it feels we are connected with the story teller ...

Smart Passive Income #48 to #50 - Income Report - eHow - more Legal Advise

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Pat's income for January 2009 passes 19.000 USD ...

... his eHow experiment continues (Remember he wanted to write five articles a day for a year and stopped within the first month. He made about 20 USD in his first month, and nearly 100 USD in his second month. From this he calculated that his third month will reach nearly 500 USD ... well it did not, it increased slightly but is still around 100 USD).

... in 50th blog post Pat explains why it is essential to separate business from your private life/accounts ... while is explanation is very detailed and interesting to read please ask your local legal counsel ... don't take the information you find on the internet for full ...

Smart Passive Income #48 - Professional Advise vs Internet

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Today - actually nearly five years ago - Pat learned that it's not a bad idea search for professional help.

Yes, there is lots of information out there on the Internet. How to earn money, how to create a company, how to fix your marriage ... Nevertheless, when it comes to topics where the formal education takes a couple of years, and you are required to additional training and lots of experience to be able to do your job, you might want to wonder why? Maybe, the topic is too complicated or to too extensive to be learned on a weekend training or by reading a couple of blog entries ...

When a topic touches in any way a legal or a medical topic, look for professionals!

Smart Passive Income #47 - Bachelor Party - Passive not that Passive - Questions & FAQs

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For his bachelor party Pat was away from his computer for more than a day at admits passive income is not all that passive and that it might not be the perfect business model ...

Again, passive income means you create a product once, setup an automated process to sell that product to your customers and get money without investing further time.

It turns out, it does not really work that way. Pat receives tons of emails with all sorts of questions - not even all about his products. Of course you could ignore them ... but then you might your customers to recommend your product to others, or keep them as customers for future products.

You need to answer your customers, be polite and most of all quick. Customers hate to wait for a response!

If you find that you are asked the same questions again and again, create a FAQ page to limit such questions ... unfortunately lots of people will keep asking, even if their questions are answered perfectly in your FAQ.

Smart Passive Income #45 & #46 - Health - #1 Secret to Web Traffic - Be Nice!

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Pat is still training his body and getting healthier and he shares his number-one secret to increasing traffic to your web side:

Beeing nice to your visitors!

Agreed! 100% ... however (there is always an however) if there are no visitors, it's hard to be nice to them ;)

There is actually a Czech proverb (at least so I was told):

 It's nice to be wise, it's wiser to be nice!

Smart Passive Income #44 - iPhone Apps

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In his next blog entry Pat defines the business of iPhone Apps as passive income.

Let's see. Passive income means you create a product once setup a process to sell it automatically, and do not need to add further work to make money.

Once you have submitted an iPhone app to the app store, people find your app in the app store, buy it and download without further work on your end ... which basically means passive income.

As example Pat provides iFart - development costs minimal, revenue incredible! I agree the potential is enormous, which might be the reason the app store is full of sub-standard apps ... and this is the point where the passive is not so passive any more. How to you tell your potential customers that your app is available - the times where a iPhone user browsed through all new apps on a daily basis is long gone. A one-time marketing campaign for your app might boost your sales, but you will rapidly dwindle from the top-100 list ... which makes your app nearly invisible ...

If you have a unique idea for an app, go for it. As Pat points out, you do not need to be a developer yourself, you do not need to do everything yourself. If you need help, let me know ;)

Smart Passive Income #43 - PPC Affiliate Marketing

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With blog entry #43 Pat returns to smart passive income. He actually did not stop but now he returns to writing about that topic.

Remember, passive income means you create a product once, setup an automatic process to monetize your product ... and earn money without further work.

In this blog entry Pat introduces PPC affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you need to find somebody who has a product and pays you a fee when you allure somebody else to buy that specific product. E.g. if you have blog, you could write an article about a product and link to it (using a special affiliate code). If somebody uses that link and then buys the product, you get a fee ...

The PPC stands for "pay per click". In the example above you might have the problem, that people need to know and visit your blog to be able to actually use your affiliate link. To increase the visitors to your blog you can e.g. use Google Adwords and pay (per click) to be on top of a search result to increase your visitor stream. Depending on the keywords you use and the click-through rate (meaning that not everybody visiting your article will actually also buy the product), PPC affiliate marketing might be the solution for you. If you spend more money on adwords than you get as affiliate fee, you might want to reconsider this strategy.

Smart Passive Income #42 - Time Wasters - TV & News

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Pat went to a couple retreat for soon to be married couples and learn two things you should stop/limit to strengthen your relationship. 

• watching TV
• consuming news

... both seem to be time wasting for couples. Pat extended this insights to business. True, instead of starring into your television set or reading a newspaper you could work. You could also limit your sleeping hours and your spare time. Leisure is overrated anyway. ... sorry, but if your relationship is trouble because of TV and news your problem lies much deeper ...

Pats retreat happened in a secluded monastery. They had no TV or internet. Some participants asked the group leader for news from the outside world. ... if you feel cut off from the world within a single weekend, there is definitely something wrong ... I doubt stopping watching TV or the news will help ... come one, it was a "couple retreat for soon to be married couples" not a "retreat for soon to be divorced ones" ...

... back to the story. Their group leader went home and printed some news sites from the internet ... that Hugh Heffner was cheated on ... sorry again, that's not news, that's gossip ...

And now the conclusion: If watch TV to avoid your work ... limit your TV time. If you equal news and gossip and can't be without ... limit that, too ... otherwise, you are fine ...  

Smart Passive Income #40 & #41 - Company, Legal Form, Counsel

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Pat started his own company - or better said he changed the legal form of his business from sole proprietor to an LLC (Limited Liability Company). For more information and/or advice on legal forms please go to your Local Legal Counsel (bun intended).

Please do not take anything for granted you read about legal matters in personal blogs or wikipedia!

Smart Passive Income #39 - Reading & Matrix - lots of Books - [non]fiction

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It's January 2009 in Pat's "Smart Passive Income" blog - the 39th blog entry compares reading with learning - more specific - Pat claims that when he reads, it is like downloading all that information into his brain - like we have seen in the film Matrix ...

... sorry here comes the skeptic ... When Pat downloads all the information into his brain by just reading, why does he need to keep his favorite books on his desk? Either the download does not work that flawless, or is there limited storage capacity.

Being not Neo, having no interface available which could just plug-in information directly into a brain, reading is only the first step of the learning procedure. Especially for new information you need to extract the essentials, turn them around, play with them, and when possible implement them. You cannot learn a new language by reading a dictionary and a grammar book. You will not master cooking or - to refer to Pat's last blog - a sport by reading about it ...

... actually, the books Pat mentions are really interesting:

• The 4-Hour Work-week by Timothy Ferriss is THE classic of passive-income literature and a must read. ... and actually the only one from this list I have read :(
• Moonlighting on the Internet by Yanik Silver ... about Internet marketing
• The One Minute Millionaire by Mark Victor Hansen & Robert G. Allen ... the description on Amazon sounds ... well ... can't say ;)
• The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley ... same as above? ... is it enough to think like a millionaire to become one?
• The Exceptional Presenter by Timothy Koegel ... about public presentations
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki ... on money-making philosophy?

As mentioned above, I read only the first one. Note - I only read it, I did not implement it, that's the only reason I am not a millionaire ... and now comes the "fun fact": Pat says in his blog he only reads non-fictional books - Tim Ferriss says in his book he only reads fiction ...

Smart Passive Income #38 - Scoring and Achieving ... Comparisons?

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Pat compares life to sport:

• Both have written and unwritten rules.
• Both need hard work, will power, and some times just luck.
• In both - if you have success, you like it - if you don't, you don't ...
• In both support from others is essential.
• In both you need to score and achieve goals.

... let's compare life to an apple tree:

• Both start out small and vulnerable.
• While there might be a straight line to success, you will take detours to see the sun.
• Eventually you will see the fruits of your life.
• Parasites will try to spoil your fruits.
• It sucks if you get struck by lightening.

 ... well ...