Hello Everyone,

As you know, one of my goals at IncomeDiary.com is to ‘mix it up a bit’ — bring you some unexpected interviews / podcasts and introduce you to some amazing characters who are making huge incomes online.

Today I have one such individual – Chris McCombs of Orange County, CA. Chris runs the website: Outlaw Fitness Marketing

Chris describes himself as a Personal Trainer, Internet Marketer, Fitness Entrepreneur, Blogger, Free Time Junkie, Ex-Convict, Marketing Outlaw and Biker.

This is going to be a very interesting Podcast — and as usual there is also a transcript below.

I look forward to your comments

Interview Transcript:

Michael: Hi Chris. Great to have you here. I’ll jump straight in. You have a great story, and I want to quickly cover how you went from the lowest point where you can be in business and in life, and now doing some great stuff. So if you just want to jump in and tell us where a few years back.

Chris: Oh yeah. Well, I was one of those kids with really bad ADD in school, and didn’t do well at school at all. Couldn’t focus on what the teachers were talking about, and couldn’t stand any job I had when I tried to get jobs. As a teenager I just couldn’t stand it.

So I found actually selling pot was something that I actually really enjoyed doing. And the pot helped a lot with my ADD. And I had OCD too, so I got really into my business, and I blew it up to where we were moving large amounts of marijuana all over the country. And after doing that for quite a number of years, I got arrested and I served time for what I was doing.

When I got out, I actually ended up homeless. I lost everything from my marijuana trafficking days. Lost everything, ended up homeless, ended up hooked on painkillers. It was just a frikin mess. And at age 30, I just said, “You know what? I have to change this.”

I just started reading literally hundreds of books on spirituality, philosophy, psychology, self-help, all that stuff. I would just take bits and pieces that applied from different books and completely changed my life. And at 30, I ended up broke with a minimum wage job, but at least I was walking the straight path and quit all the stuff I was doing.

And didn’t like my job, so I got into personal training, and within a few years of personal training I discovered how to get a lot of people from the Internet to my local personal training business.

And basically getting people from Google, from the Google Organic and Google Pay Per Click and now Google Local and also from Craigslist and MySpace and a bunch of different sources I was able to get enough personal training clients to give them to 15 different personal trainers in my area, to where I actually didn’t have to work.

And I took the business, automated it, systemized the whole damn thing, and outsourced basically everything. Outsourced the training to the personal trainers, the customer service to my wife and my assistant, the billing and accounting to my wife. And the sales calls that come in from my website, I outsourced that to some appointment setters who make the appointments to the trainers.

My whole business takes me 30 minutes to an hour a month, and that 30 minutes to a hour a month is basically just looking at the numbers.

And from there, I really liked the Internet marketing stuff, just completely loved it. So I started a blog about how I did all that. The blog got pretty popular pretty fast, and I got a really good following on there.

And after having the blog for the better part of a year, I launched my first information product. And that product, we did over $50, 000 in sales the first week, and about $300, 000 in global payments over the full course of the year – it was a year long program.

And since then I’ve been releasing a new integral product every month or two and that’s built up to what’s closing in on a million dollar a year business in the near future here. About three-quarters of a million dollars a year now for a business that really probably takes 10 to 15 hours a week.

Some weeks 20 hours a week, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of time, and it allows me to work where I want, when I want, and on my own terms.

I’m able to take off weeks or months at a time sometimes, and it’s a great deal. It all started from a blog. Basically I just built a following of loyal readers on my blog and turned that into an info-marketing business.

Since then, now I’m out making a documentary about the whole subculture of Internet marketing. We’ve got probably 80% of the big top Internet marketers that most people would know. We’ve got them in the movie. We’ve gone and interviewed them, flown all around the country.

And that’s the two minute version of my story right there.

Michael: That’s incredible. It’s amazing how you could go from one end to the other end doing so much great stuff. So I just want to go back to when you did start, and you just got out of prison. You had pretty much nothing. What gave you that kick, and what would you suggest others to get off your butt and actually do something, and achieve something in life.

Chris: You know what? There was just no place for me to go. There was just no friends left. I was totally miserable, totally strung out on these painkillers. And I just couldn’t imagine continuing living the way I was. Not to get too woo-woo or spiritual on you here, but I basically just said a prayer. I had no idea what I was praying to or whatever. I just prayed, “Help.” Whatever was out there, just help?

The next day I was at the library picking up books on spirituality, philosophy, self-help and all that. That became my new obsession for the next couple of years – just becoming a better person. Completely changing the way that I looked at the world, completely changing the man that I had become. And I did that diligently for a few years.

And I still do it today, but it’s not like I did back then. Back then it was like a crash course on being a good human being. And I can’t tell you how much all the different books helped. I literally picked up hundreds of them.

And a lot of times I didn’t agree with everything that was in the book, but I would just get one nugget. I would get one nugget from this guy, one nugget from that guy, and I would apply the stuff to my life on a constant basis.

That was huge. Just the willingness to learn and change everything about what I thought was true, what I thought was real, and be willing to grow. When you smoke weed and do drugs for over 15 years, and you start when you’re 14 or 15 years old, you kind of wake up a 14 year old 30 year old, if that makes sense. You have the emotional capacity of like a 14 year old kid.

Michael: Yes.

Chris: So I had to wake up at age 30 and just really go through some growing pains there. But, you know what? Slowly poked the twin cake on it [?] and pretty soon things just got better and better and better.

Michael: That’s brilliant. Thanks for sharing that. You just mentioned you read literally hundreds of books. What book was the best book you read, and how did it impact your life and why should others read it?

Chris: You know what? I can’t come up with a single book, but I can fire off a handful of them actually.

Michael: Sure, do that.

Chris: OK, the “Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle completely changed my life. That was the big one. Byron Katie’s books, she wrote one called “Loving What Is”. That book changed the way I saw things. Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”, that was a giant one for me.

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, that completely changed the way I talked to people. I didn’t really have any social skills at all when I started all this. So that one helped me a lot.

All the Wayne Dyer stuff… Basically a lot of books and stuff like that.

Michael: Brilliant, brilliant. Cool. So after you got off your ass and you started doing some things and achieving things, you started your own fitness business and you brought in, I think you said 15 trainers.

Chris: Yes.

Michael: What did you learn from running your first proper legal business?

Chris: What did I learn? That’s a great question. I learned, well, basically I learned a lot by reading “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber, and I learned that I did not want to be the technician of business nor the manager. I just wanted to be the entrepreneur.

And that unless I systemized my business and created step-by-step systems for every part of it, that I was going to be working my butt off. No matter how big my business go, I would be working 70, 80, 90 hours a week.

I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to own something that made me money and gave me a lot of freedom. And basically through reading Tim Ferriss’ “4-Hour Work Week,” and Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth,” I took that stuff and applied it to my business.

I think I quit training about a week after I read “The E-Myth.” I read “The E-Myth” and said, you know what, I’m just going to systemize my whole business. And I did it. I created systems for everything and outsourced it to other people. That’s basically what I did.

I created a business reliant on systems. And that was a huge turning point for me, to realize that, hey, why not have systems that do the work for me and get other people to do them, and just own the systems. Own the business instead of me having to go out and trade an hour to make a dollar. If that makes sense.

That was probably one of my biggest lessons in my life, and I basically learned it from Michael Gerber and learned more of it from Tim Ferriss.

Michael: That’s brilliant. You’ve just covered your business and what it’s like running your first business. But was the transaction going from illegal to legal? Would you like to weight it out for those people out there, some people could possibly be trading illegal, or could be even selling dope like you were.

Would you like to give us some comparisons on why it’s so much better to be in the place you are now?

Chris: Well, it’s funny, because I actually stopped – I pretty much stopped illegal activity when I was around 25. But I didn’t have financial success legally until I was about 33. So I was broke for the first five to eight years. The first five years I was jobless.

After I quite dealing, I was jobless. I would work as a bouncer here and there, throwing drunks out of bars. But I couldn’t hold down a regular job. So that sucked.

And then I would get minimum wage jobs, and that completely sucked too. I had to learn that. One of the reasons I think I did the illegal stuff was I never liked having a job and living by someone else’s values. I’m an entrepreneur by nature. I have to do something I’m passionate about, that gets me going, that I can be obsessively focused on. And it has to be something that’s in line with my values.

And if I’m doing that, then I’m a pretty happy guy. I’m willing to work hard. Sometimes before a launch, I’ll put in 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week. Usually we don’t, but before a big launch or something I will. And as long whatever that is, is in line with my passion and my purpose and my values, then I’m completely satisfied.

If I’m not, if I’m just out working a regular day job, I’m completely miserable. And to be perfectly honest, I had a lot more fun selling the pot that I did having a regular day job. A lot more fun.

However, it’s not in line with my values today, for one. Two, there’s this thing called Karma that can come back and kick you in the ass. Three, I used to have nightmares about getting busted. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and imagine they were breaking down my door. That sucked. I don’t have that today.

So there’s a lot bigger piece of mind that I have today. But I’ve just found that as long as whatever you’re doing is in line with your values, that’s the most important part. That it’s part of your purpose. And if it’s something that helps other people and can help you to be financially successful, then all the better. That’s the best place to be.

Michael: Brilliant. Great share. Thanks very much, Chris. OK, so you’ve gone and you’ve done all the offline stuff and now you’re coming online and you start a blog. Would you like to just cover with us quickly why you start blog and how it could impact your business?

Chris: I started a blog because I found out the thing I really loved to talk about was this Internet marketing stuff. I mean, I would be at a party and I just wouldn’t have anything to talk about with people, right?

I would feel a little socially awkward, unless there was one other guy in the room who was into marketing or Internet marketing, or business, and then I could really get into it.

So I go, hey, this is really stuff I love to talk about, why not do it in a blog? I could go do it my own way. I came out with a blog that was pretty controversial for my industry, it was pretty edgy. I made a blog that was a mix of good Internet marketing blog for the fitness industry mixed with “Maxim” madness.

It was a blog for guys from 20-40. 20-40 year old male fitness experts who typically might have a couple of tattoos and they either listen to some heavy metal music or hip hop. They like the movie “Goodfellas,” they like the movie “Pulp Fiction,” they like the movie “Heat.” They swear a little bit, but they’re generally good people. You know what I mean? That’s the guys I went after.

Those were the trainers I knew, so I went after them. I created a blog similar to them, and the industry had never seen anything like it. Most of what was out there, not everything, but most of what was out there was pretty bland.

So I came out with something edgy, exciting, controversial, fun. And I just poured my heart out in the blog, giving away basically my secrets.

Basically what I did in my business I was giving away on the blog, and that created quite a bit of buzz in the industry, because all of the sudden I’m on the top of the search engines for all these big terms that these other guys had been competing for these terms for years.

And all of the sudden I’m above them and I’m getting a lot more traffic than them. My Alexa rank is way better than them. I’m getting a lot more comments on my blog then them. And they’re like, “Who is this guy?”

I got in with all those guys, actually the big gurus in my market. I contacted them, I went out of my way to do some cool things for them. And then I said, “Hey, I’m actually coming out with an info product soon, I’d love you to promote it if you’re down.”

Now I didn’t go to these guys in the beginning and say, “Hey, would you guys promote a product I have coming out?” I made sure that three to six months in advance I went out of my way to help them and to be of use to them, and to create cool blog posts about them and send them some traffic, and to help them with their own websites and their own search engine optimizations and stuff like that.

And then I came to them and asked them to product my thing, and they pretty much all did across the board. However, if I didn’t have that blog, I wouldn’t have had the credibility that I did. I wouldn’t have had the traffic that I did to show these guys, hey, look, I’m creating quite an impact in the industry, and we should be on the same side.

So having that blog helped tremendously. It gave me a lot of authority in my market, it gave me great positioning in my market, it created a lot of buzz in market. It got me very well known in my market.

So it did a lot of things, and now it’s basically my funnel into my products. I don’t have an email newsletter, what I do is I have a blog. And I typically send out two to three days a week, I do blog posts, and I send people from my email list to my blog, and then my blog funnels to all my products.

The products are all in the navigation bar over on the right. They’re on my build your business page. And then usually in every blog post or two, I’ll mention a product or two in the blog post.

I’ll pitch it too hard. Sometimes I pitch it really hard, but other times it’s right in there in the content. And I’m giving, giving, giving people…

For one, that creates a law of reciprocity. I’m giving them all this great content, so when I come out with a product, they’re a lot more apt to buy it from me because they’re like,

“Damn. All this stuff he’s been giving us for free for this last year or two, that thing he’s selling must be really good.”

So it gets people buying my stuff because of the law of reciprocity, and they trust me and the position I have. And also it sucks in a lot of people from the search engines who are looking online for what I have to offer. So they’re searching. My stuff will come up to the top of the search engines, they’ll end up on my site, and then they’ll see all my products and services.

So it’s allowed me to sell everything from… I have low end products that are like $47 a month continuity products, up to $10, 000 coaching programs, and my blog is what helps me sell all of that.

Michael: Wow. That’s incredible. What a great share. I think everyone listening to this right now, hears instruction on great points on just personal branding for one, because your blog really brands not just your business but your name. And you can take your business so much further with just having a blog.

Tell me Chris, what your top advice would be for someone who is starting their blog and wants to do something like you have.

Chris: One is be different. Do something to separate yourself from everybody else out there. That’s really important.

Make your blog fun. I like to look at it as, make it a personal conversation between you and your reader as if they were your best friend sitting down with you at a pub or a bar. Or if you’re a female, maybe at a coffee shop having tea, right?

Michael: Yes.

Chris: They are your best friend, and you’re sitting down having a personal one on one conversation. You’re not talking down to them. You’re talking on an equal level. But once in a while, you’re cracking a joke. You’re telling a fun story. You’re doing some stuff like that. So make it fun and interesting on a personal level. That one is huge.

And the other one is, hey, be willing to do some work for the next six months or a year without getting paid for it. Don’t think you’re going to put up a blog post, and a week later the world’s going to come and go, “Oh my god, this guy’s got a blog. We all must come to see it.”

You know what I mean? Because, I don’t know what there are, but there’s probably millions of them out there now. You have to spend some time, find your voice, and start getting the traffic and building the relationships and stick to it.

I mean, for the first nine or twelve months I had my blog, I wasn’t making any money at all. But I was doing it because I knew the money would come, and you have to be willing to do that. Don’t think you’re going to put up a blog today and in two weeks you’re going to have a big paycheck.

Michael: I’ll tell you what, Chris. You’re giving it to them straight. I mean, I couldn’t agree more on your comments about having to be on their level, because I have to tell you what.

So many bloggers out there, and marketers – they’re up and they’re saying, “Hey, I am so much better than you.” But it’s almost like you have to be a bit humble and be their friend. I have to agree, you can get a lot further doing that.

OK, cool. So you start your blog, and then you launched your first information product, which I believe you made about $50, 000 in the first week. So would you like to just take us…? Because so many bloggers think about launching their own information product.

And I would like to cover just quickly how bloggers or entrepreneurs should launch their first information product.

Chris: Well, it worked really good for me. I saw what the big guys where doing, like Jeff Walker and Frank Kern. And I go, “Hey, that’s working for these dudes. It’s going to work for me too.” And it was basically a six week process.

Luckily, I had been building the relationships for the previous three to six months, right? One of the key things is getting the big people in your niche to mail for you. If you can get that, you can make 10 times as many sales, right out of the gate, if you can get the big guys in your niche to mail for you.

The problem is, most of them probably aren’t going to want to mail for you, especially is you just come to them and say, “Hey, I’m coming out with a cool product. Will you mail your list?” Actually, they’re probably going to be pretty offended by it, and not like you right out of the gate if you come to them like that.

Go become friends with them, no expectation of them doing anything in return. Go out of your way to help these guys. Whether you can help them with their marketing, you can do cold blog posts about them, you can send them some books or products that have helped you. Whatever it is, go out of your way to start the relationships with these guys.

That’s the first thing right there; because they can help you make ten times as many sales right out of the gate. One of my affiliates made, out of 152 sales that we did, he made I think it was 71 sales in that week. So that showed me the strength of having some big affiliates. I have actually four really power affiliates, and that helps tremendously. So get the affiliates lined up.

And then I basically did the thing where I put out two weeks worth of really good free content on squeeze pages. I mean, here’s a video. If you want to see more videos, give your name and email over here. And I would have these guys send traffic to it, and it would just basically it would hit their affiliate cookie.

Whenever they would send someone over, that person’s computer would get cookied with their affiliate tracking. So let’s say one of my affiliates sends someone over, but the person didn’t buy anything for a week and half. If they bought, that person who originally sent it would get the commission.

So I did the basic… What you see Frank Kern do with Mass Control and Jeff Walker do with Product Launch, and you see all the big item guys do. And I’ll probably do five or six pieces of free blind content giving away really good tips in the videos, and making the videos fun and stuff like that.

And then the last few videos where, “Hey, here’s what – my program is coming up. This day is coming up, this time. Here’s my guarantee. Here’s how much it costs,” and all that.

Then I launched it at a certain time. I launched it at 9:00 AM on a Tuesday morning. Immediately we did like $30, 000 of sales in just the first few hours. And I had a hard deadline, that at 150 people we’re closing the doors. That created a lot of scarcity which got me a lot of sales.

But I think the big thing was having everyone in the market all talking about me at the same time. When there’s five big viewers in your market, and four of them are all talking about you for two weeks, each of them are sending six or seven emails to these videos you are creating, it really creates a buzz, and you become the talk of the whole industry.

So that was huge. And that also helped me build my list really fast. It helped me build my list with a lot of buyers, for one, because the people who were coming over and opting in were the cream of the crop on these guys’ lists. Right? So it helped me get some of the best people on their lists. And now I reciprocate, and I go back and promote stuff in reciprocal promotions.

But it’s really important to be willing to promote these relationships by starting them off with a giving hand. Don’t just come to people and say, “Hey, will you promote my thing?” I get those emails all the time. We don’t even acknowledge them, because it’s a backwards way of doing it.

Go out. Help these guys who have the big lists in your niche, and don’t expect them all to promote it. If you can get 20%, 30%, 40% or more, you’re doing pretty good.

But don’t expect them to. Don’t do something with the expectation of something in return. Just do it and trust when time comes, when help from them will promote your stuff, that you’ll do pretty good. That one is huge, right there.

It’s just basically following that classic launch formula, that these guys, especially Jeff Walker and Frank Kern, especially, are the two big ones who really got it popular. It’s following that proven formula, because it works.

Michael: All right. Brilliant. Thanks very much, Chris. I want to quickly talk to you now about your documentary that’s about instant marketing. This is going to be something I’m really looking forward to, and I want you to tell everyone about it so they can look out for it in the coming months.

Chris: Well, Bedros Keuilian was my affiliate that I started a relationship off with a year and a half ago. He was the one who made 71 of my sales out of the 152 sales. We’ve become good friends ever since, and we decided that we both love Internet marketing, let’s make a documentary about the subculture about Internet marketing.

We have most of the big guys in the industry of the Internet. Ryan Deiss, Perry Belcher, Brad Fallon, Andy Jenkins, Yanik Silver, Jeff Johnson, Tucker Max, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jason Moffatt, Matt Trainer, I could go on and on. John Carlton, John Assaraf, Mike Koenigs, Vince DelMonte, Craig Valentine.

The list is huge. I’ve probably interviewed 30 or 35 of these guys, and like I’ve said, we probably have about 80 percent of the well-known Internet marketers in the world who are in the documentary. It’s basically showing these guys. A lot of them got kicked out of high school or didn’t graduate high school.

A lot of them have attention deficit disorder. A lot of them can never hold down a regular day show. They have complete ADD and are completely unemployable.

Yet here they are making seven- and eight-figure incomes working in their flip-flops, most of them from a home office, with just a few employees or subcontractors working for them, a lot of times virtually. And they’re helping a lot of people and making a lot of money. A lot of times, they take months off at a time.

Typically they’ll work really hard for a few weeks, like when it comes time to launch something, and then they’re taking a few months off again. They’re just working a few hours a day for a few months.

And we wanted to show this, because in this economy, when everyone else in the States is worried about the economy and are losing their jobs and are going broke, here are these guys who, by all means, should be broke as well. Like I said, they’re pretty damn unemployable.

Michael: [laughs]

Chris: But here these guys are frickin’ killing it, mostly with their information products, but some of it is because of their blog or whatever.

And some of these personalities are just incredible. When we interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, that guy’s something else. How do you define Gary Vaynerchuk? Andy Jenkins. We’re interviewing Andy Jenkins today. That guy’s nuts, man! But he’s awesome personality.

And to showcase this, we’re just showing this whole subculture of these frickin’ renegades and outlaws who are making all this money online while the majority of society, at least here in the West, is bitching and moaning about the economy.

Here are these guys who have a positive attitude and are kicking ass and they’re doing it their own way.

We think that’s a story that needs to be told. So that’s the story we’re telling. It’s called “Add to Cart.” We’re looking to get it out in early 210.

Michael: Super. All right, everyone. I hope you all look out to that, because it’s going to be something else. It’s going to be something you haven’t seen before, so that’ll be great.

OK. Chris, you’ve mentioned your Internet lifestyle. Do you want to tell us what the best thing about being an Internet entrepreneur and living the Internet lifestyle is?

Chris: The best thing is the freedom. Right now, I’m not making the multi-multi-millions of dollars. That’s not super-important for me. What I do have is the freedom of being able to wake up, and if I don’t want to work today, I don’t have to work today. Let’s say I have an interview with a guy like you.

Typically, once or twice a week, I have some coaching clients, an interview, some kind of appointment I have to stick to. But typically, on most days, if I want to take the day off, I can. I usually don’t, but I can.

I’m at home, at my home office. My assistant is out there in the other room doing work for me. My wife’s out there – she does a lot of work for me. My two little daughters are out there.

So I get to see my wife and my daughters all day, which is incredible. Any time I want, I can jump on my Harley and go for a ride. Any time we want, we can say “Hey, screw it. Let’s go to Vegas in the next week,” or “Let’s go on a little vacation.”

Michael: [laughs]

Chris: So basically, it’s having that freedom to do what I want when I want. I’m not into the bling. I’m not into the mansions. I don’t have to have a $300, 000 car, as long as I’m not stuck to a day job and don’t have to show up to the construction site or the cubicle.

And I can work where and when I want, doing what I want, helping a lot of people, having a lot of fun, and networking with people like you, Internet marketers, who are the coolest guys in the world.

It’s all about that for me. It’s about the freedom and the fun and the passion of helping other people and doing something where you’re done. If you have a blog or an info product, you’re selling you. You’re selling your brand.

To me, that is so exciting, because you can create and mold your brand and become a rock-star version of yourself while still being authentic to who you are. You know what I mean? You create this person you put out there, and you become more and more of that person you put out there. It’s incredible. If I had to break it down, I’d break it down to the word freedom.

Michael: Brilliant. I couldn’t agree more. I always describe it as the word “freedom.” If you could jump in a time machine and go back to when you first started, what would you do differently?

Chris: If I could jump in a time machine?

Michael: [laughs] I know it’s not very realistic.

Chris: You know what? I don’t know what, because I think every mistake I made along the way is a mistake that had to be made, and it’s a mistake that made me who I am today. I don’t think I would change a thing.

I’m not trying to sound like I’ve made all good choices, because four out of five things I’ve done are probably done wrong. But I learn from those, or I massage those into better choices. And the 20% that I’m doing right has been enough to create one hell of a business.

I guess one thing is that I would have stayed in shape. I let myself get out of shape when I stopped personal training and started working home and sitting around. When I got married, I packed on about 70 pounds. I used to be ripped! I was shredded.

So now, in the last three months, because I’ve been out of shape for three years, I’m eating well again, working out hard again, doing the cardio, lifting the weights. I have a trainer, actually. Even though I own a training business, I went and hired a trainer.

So I guess it would have been not letting myself get out of shape. But I don’t regret the fact that I did it. That’ll never get you anywhere. That’s living in the past, and I think that every single mistake I’ve made, I’ve had to make and there’s a reason for it. I think somehow, some way, everything is exactly perfect the way it is.

Michael: All right, brilliant. What a great way to end this interview, Chris! Thanks very much. Are there any last words of advice or anything you want to tell my readers?

Chris: You know what, Michael? I want to thank you for interviewing me today. You’re living proof of this lifestyle. Here you are. You’re a young guy and you have an extremely popular Web site. You have a huge following of people. You’re tapped into some of the coolest and best entrepreneurs on the planet.

So I want to tip my hat to you, man and say that I commend you for what you’re doing. You’re a great example, and I want to thank you for being who you are and I want to thank you for having me on this call today!

Michael: All right. Thanks very much, Chris. You’re a great guy. Cheers!

More about Chris:
Outlaw Fitness Marketing

Note: This site is raw, controversial and NOT for everyone… ENJOY

Blogging has been great platform for so many people to become a huge success. Take me for example, because of my Retireat21 blog I was offered to host a hit new MTV show in LA just because they liked how I came across on my blog. Blogging isn’t just about making money online, for some people it could be because they want to be a best selling author but can’t get a foot in the door right now and for others it started just so they could pay there grocery bills. Today I have created a really cool list of 20 people who started blogging and now are so much more then just bloggers. Looking down at the list I have created today, I should really rename it the 20 best bloggers ever as these guys have set such high standards for all of us. Please note that the list isn’t really in any particular order, just the 20 best although I have to say Tucker Max’s story was one of the most entertaining.

If you would like to take the first steps to follow these bloggers and make it big then check out my FREE eCourse teaching you exactly how to build your first blog, drive traffic and make money!

20 Entrepreneurs Who Started With Blogging

#1 Tucker Max
		Tucker’s Blog Tuckermax Why He Started Blogging: Tucker Max was blogging about his drunken, womanizing exploits before the phrase “blogging” even existed. Tuckers blog attracts 100,000s of visitors weekly who like to read about his ‘interesting’ exploits and enjoy his amazing writing style. Where He Is Now: Because of Tuckers blog, he was able to get a book published which The New York Times called “…highly entertaining and thoroughly reprehensible…” no wonder it was in The New York Times best sellers list for 100 weeks. He is filming a movie based on his book/stories/life by the title “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” coming soon!
#2 Gary Vaynerchuk
		Garys’s Blog Garyvaynerchuk Why He Started Blogging: Gary Vaynerchuk’s story started as the co-owner of a wine store in New Jersey. He gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV, a video blog on the subject of wine, built his wine store into a multi-million dollar business and established his personal brand with TV appearances and speaking engagements around the world. Where He Is Now: He has now signed a seven-figure book deal about the things that made him as successful as he is in creating opportunities for himself via his video blog. He also is among one of the most sort after speakers for any marketing events.
#3 Collis Ta’eed
		Collis’s Blog Tutsplus.com Why He Started Blogging: Began his first blog, FreelanceSwitch, in 2006 with his wife Cyan in her parents garage when their first site wasn’t earning as fast as they expected. Where He Is Now: Collis is now one of the top earning bloggers in the world with over a dozen high traffic blogs, collis has been able to quickly launch new blogs because of such a rapid and loyal readership. Collis is able to work from anywhere in the world while he travels with his wife on new and exciting web projects because of the success of his blogging career.
#4 Mario Lavandeira
		Mario’s Blog Perez Hilton Why He Started Blogging: Mario has always loved intrigue and who better to showcase this than celebrities so his blogs started all about celebrity gossip. After graduation from New York University in 2000, Mario attempted to be an actor, but he end up working as a very well earned blogger because he thinks setting up a website like this “seems easy” unlike being an actor. He found his talent in riling up gossip and controversies about Hollywood figures and is one of the most infamous bloggers in the United States. There are actually two sides to it since he is hated by many Hollywood stars but is loved by millions of web patrons. Where He Is Now: Mario rides on both fame and infamy. In 2007, Mario announced that he would be starring in his own reality television show on VH1, titled “What Perez Sez”. He is also a regular on TRL, Much Music and Extra where he reports about Hollywood gossip from his own closet studio. In May 2008, he also launched his own radio show called “Radio Perez”.
#5 Michael Arrington
		Michael’s Blog Techcrunch Why He Started Blogging: He is a corporate attorney who left law to become a Web entrepreneur. When he took a year off, and returned to the work world, he started blogging as a way to understand the new Web start-ups that had arisen in his absence. TechCrunch took off, and he soon found himself an accidental power broker. Where He Is Now: Michael now spends his time scouting the internet and investing in some promising internet start-ups.
#6 Pete Cashmore
		Peter’s Blog Mashable Why He Started Blogging: Due to his inquisitive mind and great interest with web-related matters, Pete Cashmore focused solely on writing about MySpace and other social networks. One of Cashmore’s first articles that became instantly popular was, “If You Don’t Have A MySpace, You’re a Lametard.“ It was a unique approach to blogging, but it worked. Where He Is Now: Peter still does writes about everything happening on the Internet although he has slightly deviated from his focus on just social network news. Given the fame of Mashable, Peter has weaned himself from writing and has begun to concentrate on the entrepreneurial side of his web-business. To further strengthen his enterprise, Peter moved to California and focuses on West Coast operations. His success has brought him to celebrity status and he has been featured on many shows in the US and the UK. Peter also travels between the two countries as a consultant and speaker.
#7 Josh Marshall
		Josh’s Blog TPM Why He Started Blogging: Marshall started a blog called “Talking Points Memo” during the 2000 Florida election recount. He was inspired by political bloggers such as Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan. Where He Is Now: Josh Marshall played an important part in exposing a scandal which involved the politically motivated dismissal of US Attorneys by the administration of George W. Bush. For that he was nominated by Arianna Huffington to the Time 100. After declining numerous offers to buy his company, Josh still operates it in Manhattan with a staff of seven reporters. Aside from managing, Josh also has established himself as a columnist for Washington DC newspaper, The Hill.
#8 Alborz Fallah
		Alborz’s Blog Car Advice Why He Started Blogging: Alborz has always had a great passion for cars. Curiously, he started out just like a few bloggers who wasn’t sure what topic to write about, so he created three blogs at once to see which one would stick. Sticking to his passion, he noticed that the car blog got the traffic so he dropped the other two and slowly built up his site off the back of his own content. Where He Is Now: Alborz sold some of his blog to investors and his blog became a real serious business that he finally left his job to focus 100% on his project. Capitalizing on his success, Alborz has shifted his focus from the web to other forms of media. He has now moved into DVD sales of his videos and doing podcasts. Of course, nothing will ever pull him away from his life’s greatest passion; cars!
#9 Robert Scoble
		Robert’s Blog Scobelizer Why He Started Blogging: Robert Scoble started blogging four years ago, when he worked for NEC, a Japanese technology company. His blog is all about a place where he could converse with NEC’s customers, give tech support and listen to feedback. He was always honest about the products, and his readership grew. Where He Is Now: Scoble and Shel Israel are currently writing a business bloggers book, called The Red Couch.
#10 Darren Rowse
		Darren’s Blog Problogger Why He Started Blogging: He started blogging just about 5 years ago, and it was just a hobby. After a year he began to experiment a little with advertising and affiliate programs on my blogs and discovered that they could actually make money! He began to record the things he was learning on the topic of making money from blogging on his personal blog. Where He Is Now: Darren’s success has earned him great fame and he was awarded the Best Web Development Weblog blog award in 2006 for ProBlogger. In 2007, he was also named in the Forbes Celebrity List. In the following year, Darren co-authored the book ‘ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income (Wiley) and founded TwiTip – a blog dedicated to Twitter Tips. Preferring to live a simple life, Darren lives in Melbourne, Australia but does frequent traveling for numerous speaking engagements.
#11 Jeremy Schoemaker
		Jeremy’s Blog Shoemoney Why He Started Blogging: Starting with absolutely no capital, he educated himself and began building ecommerce sites to earn revenue. During this time, he started blogging his experiences at Shoemoney.com and then used the blog to springboard new companies like AuctionAds, which had one of the most impressive launches of any online advertising company ever. Through his blog, Jeremy provides advice on all areas of Internet Marketing, including SEO, affiliate management, blogging, and revenue strategies. Where He Is Now: Jeremy continues to launch new start-ups and also chronicles his adventures on his own blog site. Given his fame and expertise, Jeremy is a frequent speaker at search engine marketing and affiliate conferences, and co-founded the Elite Retreat conference.
#12 Tim Ferriss
		Tim’s Blog 4 Hour Work Week Why He Started Blogging: Tim being a productive guru had a message to convey and blogging was the means he deemed fit for his purposes. Being a neuroscience graduate, Tim has many innovative ways of looking at life and gives valuable advice on how to approach situations differently. His blogs are well-written and very thought provoking. It is a favorite among CEOs around the world. Where He Is Now: In 2007, Tim launched his book, The 4-Hour Workweek under Random House and marketed the book mostly among bloggers. The book launched him to stardom and he is now a guest lecturer at Princeton University and has spoken in hundreds of seminars and conventions.
#14 Timothy Sykes
		Timothy’s Blog Timothy Sykes Why He Started Blogging: After incurring great losses in his previous businesses, Timothy Sykes decided to write a book detailing his journey into managing the hedge fund and the lessons he learned from losing so much money. Capitalizing on the potential of the web, he then started a blog, with the goal of documenting the step by step process of turning another $12,000 into millions. Where He Is Now: Tim is now a writer for AOL Finance and has been featured on ABC, CNN, CBS, CNBC, FOX News, FOX Business Network, Reuters, Business Week to name a few. He also starred in the TV show, “Wall Street Warriors” on MOJO. His monthly blog income is in the 6 figures and this is definitely one young man who should be checked out!
#15 Steve Pavlina
		Steve’s Blog Steve Pavlina Why He Started Blogging: Steve is someone who started blogging about his take on LIFE and other personal development stuff, and now has one of the leading sites in that niche. Where He Is Now: On twitter, he says he is a human alarm clock. He awakens people who are sleeping through life. Steve Pavlina has been doing some research into the art of video, and playing around with making and editing sample videos. Eventually there will be videos on the Steve Pavlina site, and we would love to see a Steve Pavlina personal growth DVD product in the future as well.
#16 Lisa Stone
		Lisa’s Blog BlogHer Why she Started Blogging: Founded in February 2005 as a labor of love by three bloggers, BlogHer’s mission was to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. Where she Is Now: BlogHer reaches more than 14 million women monthly through its conferences, Internet site and publishing networks.
#17 Heather B. Armstrong
		Heather’s Blog Dooce Why She Started Blogging: She started her website in February 2001. A year later she was fired from her job for her website because she had written stories that included people in my workplace. When most people would fear the worse when hearing “your fired”, Heather just saw it as a challenge and took on blogging as a carerr. Where She Is Now: In October 2005 she began running enough ads on her website that her husband was able to quit his job and become a Stay at Home Father. Since running her blog she has found that she has a loyal readership and was able to publish two books so far.
#18 Jake and Amir
		Jake and Amir’s Blog CollegeHumor Why They Started Blogging: CollegeHumor started to posts blogs and articles through ideas form its staff and users, including humorous essays, comics, interviews and weekly columns on sports, video games, college life, and dating. Where They Are Now: Jake and Amir are now both making a lot of money from advertising on their site. In December 2008, College Humor.com proudly announced the premiere of the MTV Show “The College Humor Show”. Jake and Amir along with everyone else in their team wrote on the show and play fictionalized versions of themselves.
#19 Michelle Malkin
		Michelle’s Blog Michelle Malkin Why She Started Blogging: She started and still is focusing on creating blogs which are always form a conservative viewpoint. Where She Is Now: Malkin was a frequent commentator for FOX News Channel and a regular guest host of The O’Reilly Factor. She then quit, and concentrated on her writing, blogging and public speaking, although she still appears on television on occasion.
#20 Harvey Levin
		Harvey’s Blog TMZ Why He Started Blogging: He is an American television producer, lawyer, legal analyst and a celebrity reporter. His blogs started all about celebrity gossip since this is one of his passions. Where He Is Now: He still produces and hosts TMZ on TV. He is also a frequent guest of The Kevin and Bean Morning show, in addition to CNN’s Larry King Live, and recently the Fox News Channel and Local FOX Affiliates regarding Michael Jackson’s death.
#20 Yaro Starak
		Yaro’s Blog Entrepreneurs-Journey Why He Started Blogging: Started his first blog because he thought it would be good for SEO and a chance to talk about his business journey. Where He Is Now: Yaro found himself being one of the most respected bloggers and launched two blogging membership websites teaching people exactly how he has done it. Earlier in 2009 he launched a new membership site teaching how he makes money from membership websites. This guy is one entrepreneurial blogger you should all be following!

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Who’s background in blogging appeals most to you?

Hello, everyone. Today I am with Alex Jeffreys , who I met back at Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar in Washington back in February.

Alex along with with James Schramko sat down in Starbucks on the last day I was there and did this amazing “Brain Dump” that really has turned my online business around.

So today it is indeed a great pleasure to do this Interview with Alex – this guy is 100% genuine and one of the nicest people you can ever meet in the world of Internet Marketing – Thank you Alex for your help and Inspiration.

Note: This interview is quite long and you can listen to it completely in the Podcast – the version below is abbreviated – you see when Alex starts talking and I start talking we both get excited and we end up discussing every more stuff than we originally planed

Warning: Some references to Alcohol and the effect of drinking alcohol in the company of Internet Marketing Gurus

I look forward to your comments

Enjoy

Hi Alex — You started online the very first time, like most people, with eBay back in about 2004. You started importing from China and then finally you got into information marketing in 2006 when you went to a seminar. Do you want to explain to us how you got into this whole thing? And what you’re doing right now?

Yeah. I’ll just very quickly tell you what happened in the beginning. A friend of mine came to me and said to me, “You’ve got your head switched on. I’ve found this little idea on the Internet and I think you should have a go at it.” That was in February, 2004. Since that day I didn’t know how to turn on a computer then. Since that day I’ve been on the computer almost daily, working at this million dollar plan.

Now back then I was a newbie, I didn’t know what the heck was going on. But quickly I started to grasp eBay, and then from marketing on eBay I actually found a little niche in the motorbike industry. I started to import motorbikes from China, and actually sell them on eBay before they actually arrived in country.

So I’d have containers on the sea coming across, and I’d sell them on eBay to preorder. As soon as the container would land I’d give all the motorbikes away and make a nice chunk of change.

So that turned into a six figure business very quickly, actually. The one problem was, I could not keep up with the demand. It was literally I had two cups of coffee at all times, my head was about to explode. Me and my girlfriend at the time, fiancee now, wife to be in a couple of week’s time all’s we did was speak about business, and it was not healthy at all.

So I said, “We need to get out of this.” I loved the marketing side of doing everything. I loved marketing the motorbikes, I loved marketing with eBay. One of the only people I trusted on the Internet at the time, his name was Tim Knox, he actually had this marketing seminar coming up. It was in Alabama in the USA.

I’m from Wales in the UK. So when I tell people, “Hey, I’m going to be flying to Alabama” people would laugh at me, thinking, “What the hell’s he need to go over there for? What an idiot.” And so forth.

But I went to this marketing seminar and really the one thing that I took away from it that was really important, was that if you can make money, then you can make money, but if you can teach people how to make money, then you can make 10 times the money.

That was the turning point for me. I know how to make money with eBay, if I can now start to teach people to do that, I can make 10 times the money. So that took me onto the new level of actually working on the Internet and trying to market on the Internet to teach eBay tactics.

So that’s kind of how I made the transition. That really started in 2006.

Great Stuff Alex — You were telling me earlier that you did half a million from the Internet last year, and you’re going to do well over a million this year. So hopefully you’re going to share with us and explain a bit how you’re going to do that. The first thing I wanted to touch on, you’ve recently launched a coaching program, which you did a third of a million dollars from?

Alex: Yeah. Previous to this, Michael, like I was saying to you back in February even, I’ve got no experience of being a business coach. I didn’t go to school. I went to school, but I wasn’t the brightest cookie. I was always the one having the report sent home saying his academic skills are very poor, you need to help him. And I was kept back at school. People never really believed in me, but I always knew that I could do it. What I’m saying is that I took action. It’s such a cliché these days: take action, take action. But I built my business and my brand and my business is Marketing With You. That’s what my business is called. So the slogan to my business is:
Marketingwithyou.com, we’re marketing with you, not to you

Alex Jeffreys and Barry Dunlop at Frank Kerns MassControl in San Diego

So very early on what I learnt was that a lot of the gurus market to people. They’re marketing to people. And because we’re making a transition into Web 2.0, very slowly moving into like this Web 3.0 kind of thing, I learnt that people it’s like social. People don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be marketed with, on that kind of level.

So that’s what I built my business on, marketing with people. And because I was in good communications with people, the people said to me, “How can you help us further?” And slowly I’ve become in demand of becoming a business coach on a very small scale.

But what I did was I leveraged this, and I got these people to actually say on a public blog which was my own blog ”Hey, Alex, I want you to be my personal coach because….” And that then set the shift to, I could say to the rest of the market, “Look, I’m in demand of being a business coach. Look at these people begging me to be their business coach.”

And then when I actually opened up the coaching program, it just went haywire. We had like 650 people sign up in a matter of six days.

That generated like a third of million dollars. Which was a very low entry cost for the coaching, but what actually happened then was I actually have become a bloody good business coach. Because I just literally got off my ass and said, I’ve got to do this. I give extreme value. I want to do as much as possible to these people. I’ve opened up you can go to mycoachingstudents.com and you can actually see the level of success that my students are getting. So now that I actually did something, I actually took action. And again, it’s such a clich, but now I’m in high demand for a coaching program, which we could sell a million dollar coaching program in four weeks.

But let me just say something here, Michael, that I’ve got notes I’m actually writing my next report. The reason most people fail and we all say, “Take action. Take action.” But the reason most people fail is because they over educate and there’s information overload. They’ve got to know the different between education and implementation.

It’s the implementation part this is the real underlying problem of the market. They’re educated so much, they’re information overload, and they don’t know how to implement things. And also, they don’t know where to start the implementation.

So when I actually picked up on that in the coaching program, that’s why it becomes so successful, because I actually pinpointed on that area and actually focused and actually implemented things for my students. Educating them as they were implementing. So they’re implementing things as they are being educated.

It was a pretty cool way that we took them.

Excellent Alex — What did you do before you got on eBay? What was your career?

Alex: I was doing a lot of stuff in construction, like plastering, damp proofing. Like building work with houses. Just everyday mucky stuff, bogging, dirty. Making a wage that was average at the time. To know it’s like you make that in a day and not even flinch. It’s like, “Oh, I just made that.” Your dinner somewhere, you just make that kind of money. Again, it’s just that mind shift, isn’t it? You change that mind shift, you believe you can do it, and all of the sudden it just starts to come true. As long as you have a proven plan and you’re following proven people.

So you’ve been mentioning comfort zones and procrastination. I was once actually told that procrastination is the biggest killer of success. What would you suggest that people should do to get over procrastination?

It’s funny what you say there, it’s the same thing as there’s a saying, “Most people are so scared of dying that they don’t live.” They don’t get to live because they’re so scared of dying.

And it’s exactly the same thing. Let’s just go back to the coaching program. Do you know how scared I was to open a coaching program? Literally, I expected to open up a very small coaching program and sell about $20, 000 worth of seats, just to get my toes into the coaching realm, just to do it. But it exploded. And of course when those sales are flying through the door, there’s not way you’re going to close it. All these people are throwing money at me, are you going to stop it? We hit like $100, 000 in a day. It was unreal.

Of course I put myself under a lot of pressure to take these coaching students to the next level, but again, the proof is in the pudding. We’ve got all the success stories now. But that’s just lined me up now for the next coaching program.

So, yeah. And I hate just saying the words, “Take action.” But what I did was I got a coach with a proven record, and that coach told me who his coach was. I moved to his coach. My first coach is Michael Filsaime, and then my second coach was Rich Schefren. And of course Rich’s coach is Jay Abraham, so very soon hopefully I’ll be meeting Jay and studying from his as well.

OK Alex, You’ve learned all this stuff, you’ve taken action, and you’re now having a great time. You told me that recently you were away for three weeks and you only logged in for about an hour to do some work. How did that come about, you’re being able to your thing like that?

First of all, I was actually away at conference. And I met your dad, Michael. I first of all met Michael and his father back in February in Washington. And I went to another conference a few weeks back, which was in San Diego, and Michael’s dad was there. And we had a chat and everything, going to it as well, which was phenomenal, the things you do in your own business. Congratulations.

But what I did, I was going to San Diego and Michael Filsaime told me a couple of years ago when we were in London, I asked him, “Where is the most beautiful place you would want to live?” Because Michael Filsaime travels the world consistently. And he told me San Diego. Well, I had this conference there and I thought I’d take my family and we’ll spend a few weeks out there. Of course, live the California lifestyle. So we did the conference and then got a nice place by the beach. And literally, I just took the four hour work week principles….

Alex Jeffreys Chillaxing by the pool reading “The 4 Hour Work Week”

I go on vacation last year I think like eight times. This year has just been nonstop, actually. We have a home. But normally I travel with my laptop, and I’m on my laptop going through emails, my support staff, blah, blah, blah.

This time, I just did not turn on my laptop. When I did turn it on, I’d have emails from my support staff five days old, screaming to me, like, “Please get back to us. We need to get information back to these people, and we feel bad because we’re not supporting them.”

And I was looking at them, thinking to myself, “OK. There’s a problem here.” But it’s very small problem. The question wasn’t a major question or anything. It was just a simple question. But I was like, “Bugger it. Let’s not even turn the laptop on and let’s just see if we can live that lifestyle.”

And then when get back to the office, work out what really went wrong that’s major and try to fix that so next time I go away I can just turn the laptop off. I came back and there was nothing major, a couple of questions.

So what I’ve done is now I put a project manager in place. So I’ve actually taken me out of the business, I put a project manager in place in the business. Now he’s running everything and he comes back to me.

I just think that reading “The FourHour Workweek,” changed my life. I think I read it in 2006 or 2007. I was away in Thailand when I read it. I think if I didn’t read that, my life would be totally different. Because I was working so hard towards something….

Michael, we all want millions in the bank. But do we need millions in the bank? No.

I’ve traveled all over the world this year, and I’ve spent less than $100, 000. Can I make that $100, 000 again? Of course. I can open a coaching program in a couple of weeks and we’ll make multiple hundreds of thousands. So I’m going to have a lot of money in the bank, plus I’m never going to be able to spend that much money. So it’s being able to realize that and just a lot of time off. You can do that, again, on a smaller level. Read “The Four Hour Workweek,” understand the philosophy of it, and just try and live by it in your own way, how you feel comfortable.

So you’ve mentioning you’ve been going to all these seminars. And you shared with me earlier your top tip for when you go to seminars, where all the networking is done, where all the business happens. Do you want to share that with us?

Yeah, of course. It’s a funny thing, we laugh about it every time we’re sipping a Corona or whatever we’re drinking at the bar. But the most important part of my business is actually networking with people. That’s how me and Michael met each other. We met at a seminar, and I actually went over to him and introduced myself to him, and tried to build that relationship. That’s what I like to do, go out there and meet people and see how I can help people. And I want to definitely come back on the point of positioning and stuff, Michael. If you can remember, just helping people and how to get started. Because maybe a lot of people on this call are trying to get started.

I’m going to write it down. Let me just write this down.

So what I did is go to the seminars, and we mingle and everyone goes in a seminar room. Normally, let me be honest with you, I never go in the seminar rooms to listen to the speakers talking. What I like to do is network in the corridors and stuff and just see who’s hanging around. They’re normally the cool cats. They’re normally the people that don’t need to be in the room.

That’s the truth. But what I like to do is to get the gurus drunk, kind of thing. Get them drunk. I spoke about that in “Guru’s Dream,” that’s like the biggest secret, I think, of mine. But that’s where the business happens, at the networking. The biggest business is actually drinking alcohol and hanging out at the bar.

It’s kind of funny, the most important part of my business is actually drinking alcohol and hanging out at a bar. That’s pretty cool. That’s a pretty cool business to be in. But that’s where business happens.

Michael: Brilliant. So that’s actually brilliant. And I completely agree. Because although I can’t go to a bar myself, I always feel a bit left out when we’re in America. But just for example last week when I was at Continuity Summit and Ryan went up on the stage right at the beginning and it’s like I’m sure we’ll see you at the bar and everyone’s going to be networking there. And it’s for everyone, everyone’s at the bar doing all the business.

Alex: Yeah, well, when I was in San Diego it was a Frank Kern’s event. So you’ve got Frank Kern, his cousin Trey, you got John Reese, Ed Dale, Jeff Walker, Ryan Deiss. You’ve got a number of successful people and somebody come up and said how do you actually network with these people? What’s the best way to do a joint venture? And then John Reese was talking up all these things, well you should promote their products and you should really try and help these gurus before you ask for something from them. I was at the back of the room. I just shouted out, “Get them drunk!” I screamed it out. All those guys looked at me, kind of thing.

But the fact of it is, that night I went out clubbing with John Reese, Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime. There was a ton, Yanik Silver was there. We were all in this like the bar it was, basically. I think we had the Black Eyed Peas DJ playing there that night. And we were all just drinking. We drunk until like four or five o’clock in the morning.

I got some great business deals from that effect. From that actual bar, sitting down with those people. That’s where business happens is the truth of the matter. It’s where people feel more at ease.

So for those who can’t get to a seminar and are not old enough to go to the bar, the big thing right now is Twitter. And you’re dominating Twitter at the moment, so do you want to share with us what you’re doing on Twitter and how my readers can do it too?

Yeah. Well I like to help my readers as much as possible. So I always put out things to my readers and say how can I help you? What’s the number one thing that’s stopping you in your business right now? Or what’s the number one thing that’s stopping you? And basically this month I have hundreds, well I’m sorry, it was last month. I had hundreds of people reply on my blog saying that they needed traffic. Now, I get a few thousand people a month to my blog, to my different sites, but I’m very lazy when it comes to driving traffic myself. I really am. I’ve got affiliates doing it for me. Pretty much I’m positioned now and it’s pretty cool. So I’m thinking to myself, like how the heck can I help these people?

So what I did was I actually thought I need to start a new traffic system and record it from start to finish as a newbie going through it. So I went to Twitter and I started using the system, and I actually teach this in tweetingwithyou.com . It’s a free Twitter product that I put together. It’s like six videos I put together and it shows start to finish me as a newbie first of all driving five people away from Twitter a day.

Then as soon as I started to learn the system, I was driving 50 people a day from Twitter. Then as soon as I got to grips with it, I can drive a thousand people a day away from Twitter to any website that I want. So that’s pretty cool and then I just recorded all that as a newbie.

And remember, this is marketing with you, so through the whole videos I’m saying I’m not a guru at this, and I’m not an expert. I’m just learning this with you. I’m a couple of steps ahead of you. So you can actually literally hang on to my tailcoat and follow me. And that’s what people want. They want somebody in between a guru and a newbie.

They want that person that can guide them and that’s how I like to play it out. So that’s how people can learn Twitter. Twitter traffic I talk about the whole psychology behind my Twitter system. The main thing is, Michael, this is the wording I got this from Perry Bechler, was don’t pimp your shit on Twitter. This is social media; you don’t want to be trying to sell on Twitter. You want to build relationships that move on to a business deal off of Twitter.

Like on Twitter, this is my bio. I like to brand me on Twitter, not my business, not marketingwithyou.com, it’s me. So this is my bio, if I can remember it. I love my fam, I love to jam, as I’m rocking the Internet marketing world, because I’m bad to the bone, so to speak. Marketingwithyou.com. It starts when people say, “Whoa, I love your bio.” And it just gets people to wonder like who is this guy? It’s called auto, what’s it called? Tweet later. So it’s like tweetlater.com. So this little service where you can program so when somebody follows you on Twitter, you can send them a Tweet back, a direct message. Most people say thanks for following me, here’s my website link, go to it. And to me I feel as if that’s spamming.

I have hundreds of these a day when I’m following so many people back and forth, hundreds a day. So this is my tweet that I send out automatically, why did the chicken cross the social media road? And then the answer is, to tweet of course. So what this does is people think, “Ha ha, this little joker.” But I didn’t know if it was going to be funny or not, but the response to that joke is so huge that people like it, reply back to me. It opens up dialogue that you can start saying to people, “If you want help with Twitter, here’s my free videos.” Then those people are more inclined to take action upon what you’re giving to them.

Jeff Johnson’s, I don’t know, most probably could be like the best super affiliate in our industry and I’ve met Jeff a few times. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to Jeff about business, but we’ve built up a great friendship through alcohol. Funny enough through alcohol. We get drunk together and me and him have a good drink every time we’ve met. And we obviously speak about some sort of business, but I don’t really, I’m not pimping my stuff to him. If he speaks about too much business I try and change the conversation. But we’re building great relationships. Of course if at some time there’s another party somewhere else in the world and all the big, big names are there, Jeff Johnson’s got access. Do you think he’s going to say, Alex, come on, get in? Because I’m a fun guy to be with, you know?

It’s those relationships. And is that sneaky? Well, you could call it stealth mode. But whatever, we all know what we’re doing. We’re building relationships for business purposes. I like people to ask me about me, not push myself on them. I like to ask them about them. People like to talk about themselves.

Let me just give you a really cool tip. I want to go back to helping people to success at the newbie level. And I know you’ve got some questions, but let me just tell you this. When I was in, actually it ties in to this. When I was in Florida back in July 2007, I went to Rich Schefren’s seminar over there. After the seminar funny enough we all went to the bar. So a lot of the people at the seminar went to a local pub, or a local bar, in the U.S.A. About 20 of us walked in there. Straight away, I went to the bar, and I bought everybody in the group a drink. I literally bought the first round of drinks. Then I went and played some pool. We were shooting pool, and I won a couple of games. So I’m on the pool table for a short while.

What started happening this is the cool part, and I didn’t understand it. But listen, people started coming to me, saying, “Hey, Alex! What do you want to drink?”

I’m like, “Yes, I’ll have another Corona.”

Then other people would be coming up to me with drinks because when they would go and buy their drink, they would just buy me a Corona. They saw what I was drinking, and they brought me one. Now all these latecomers were actually coming into the bar. I had all these people around me. Everyone’s buying me drinks. Everyone’s coming up to me. They were shouting to me, “What do you want to drink?”

Literally, I was double fisted with drinks all the time. I had a row of drinks on the side. People weren’t just buying me one drink back. Every time they went back to the bar, they were buying me more drinks. The people were buying me three drinks to my one drink.

Other people were saying, “Who the hell is this guy? Who’s Alex?” Then people were actually coming to stand around me, because they wanted to be around me. They didn’t know what was going on.

What you need to remember is at this time, I didn’t have a name in the market. Rich Schefren didn’t know who I was. It wasn’t that I had that connection with Rich then like I do now. Literally, I was a newcomer.

This had me thinking. When I left, I was like, “Wow! This is so powerful.” So I use that principle in my business stuff. If you can help people this is the thing. If you write an ebook, for instance, you write something. You help people.

Let’s use an ebook for an example. If I write an ebook, and then I give that ebook away for free, you don’t just give it to one person, so it’s not like you have to give a beer to each person. You give that one ebook one to many and what happens is because you use the Internet as leverage and you’ve got such a wide market, that ebook goes out to tens of thousands of people or whatever. As long as there’s enough value in that ebook, it doesn’t matter.

You’re not trying to sell in that ebook. What you’re doing is introducing buyin in that ebook. So you’re not pimping your shit in there. It’s not the oldschool way of adding affiliate links and all this kind of thing. What you’re doing is just adding so much value in that ebook that everybody’s like, “Wow. This guy is bloody cool.”

So what happens is you’ll get a certain percentage of people that want to be reciprocal, and they’re going to be reciprocal in a way that they want to get your next ebook or your next product.

What you do is, you’re not selling in the ebook. What you’re actually doing is you’re introducing buyin. You’re introducing the bar to them where they can buy you a drink back kind of thing. So what happens is you’re just introducing that buyin scenario to them. This is what I did with Guru’s Dream. I wrote the ebook. There were no affiliate links in it. There was nothing in there, apart from at the end. I let people know that I will be opening a coaching program shortly. It just sold out like crazy, because people wanted to be reciprocal, get more for me, and actually give me money for my time.

Michael: I completely agree with that as well, because I run my free ecourse on Income Diary. I actually have not just one, but multiple people quite regularly email me and say, “Wow, this is brilliant. Do you have a product I can buy, or do you want to tell me to buy an affiliate product so you can make a commission?” They just want to reward you for helping them out.

Alex: What we’ve just said there, seriously, was the thing that changed my business. It was the thing that took me from making nothing to actually making $2, 000 a month, to understand the process of making $2, 000 a month in this information marketing business, to making $5, 000 a month, to actually making $10, 000 a month, to making $20, 000 a month, to actually then blowing up the business to a half a million dollar a year business last year, and now bringing in a team to build it into a sevenfig business. What we just said then is so powerful. I think it’s the main key to that education implementation thing, you know?

So we’ve mentioned the whole Internet lifestyle you’ve got, and the fact that it gives you choices and freedom, but what exactly is the big Internet lifestyle to you?

The big Internet lifestyle? That’s a good question. Not having a boss. Sitting here in my khaki pants, my Tshirt, no socks on. A messy office. My lunch on the side of me. Literally rolling out of bed at two o’clock to speak to my project manager before getting on this call. Not having to get up. I go and play poker a couple of times a week. It’ll be like three a.m. by the time we’re wrapping up the last game. They’re like, “Man, I’ve got to start work at five.”

I’m like, “Bugger that! I’m sleeping in until I roll out of bed.”

Literally, I’ve never had an alarm clock in the last few years. It just comes down to very small things. Like yesterday, I took my son swimming. I did a lot what day was yesterday? Monday afternoon, I went swimming with my son. I came home and just went over to some friend’s house.

Of course, I do work very hard. It’s not that the Internet lifestyle gives it gives me the choice to whether I want to work or not. Mostly, that’s the answer to it, Michael. It gives me the choice to if I want to work or not. I love working. I love my business. I’m in love with my business not in the wrong way. I enjoy helping people because I understand that if I help people, they want to pay me.

This is the saying I go by, “Don’t chase money. Let money chase me.” If I can go out and give so much value that people are chasing me to pay me, like you’re experiencing yourself, and my experience from day one.

So I’m actually writing part two to Guru’s Dream. People can get as a free book. Go to
GurusDream.com. I’m writing the part two to it right now, which is called Newbie’s Nightmare.

Newbie’s Nightmare, I want to just give so much value in that report that people are begging me to pay me money to join my coaching program. But I’m not going to be selling my coaching program in the report. I’m just going to introduce a buyin scenario to them. Then it’s up to them to do it.

Of course, we’re going to do some psychological things, like subconscious messages and stuff. But that’s all down to marketing, you know?

So, yes. I love it. I really enjoy learning, and of course I really enjoy implementing, because I like seeing the PayPal account just explode.

What is your single biggest reason for your success, do you reckon, then?

Alex: This is really cool, and I’m glad you asked me this question. You just threw that on me, and I didn’t know you were going to say that question. It is acting a newbie, OK? When I used to go to seminars, people used to act the big guru. Even though they were newbies, they would say, “Oh, I’ve got this project going on, and I’ve got this going on.” They were acting as if they were really successful. Now, to me, I couldn’t see through it because I was a newbie with them. But if they started speaking to the gurus, the gurus would very quickly see that these guys were full of crap. They’d be like, “Oh my God. Another one of these fakeittiltheymakeit people.”

My mum used to say to me, “Alex, fake it til you make it.”

I was like, “No way will I ever do that. It’s like, no chance.”

So this is how I believe I’ve become so successful. When I was a newbie, I acted a newbie, and I asked for help. I would go to the people at the bars, and I would ask for help. I would buy a beer for Mike Filsaime, for instance.

This is what we did. There were like 20 people around him in this seminar, before he was my mentor. I stayed away from him for a couple of hours. I just went through the crowd, and I was like, “Mike, do you want a beer?”

He’s like, “Yes, I’d love a Bud.”

So I got him a bottle of Bud. I lifted it in the air, and I showed him my ID in my hand, and I went and sat down. He said, “I’m going to go and speak to this guy.”

We sat down and had a beer. I was like, “Dude! How the heck can I have a PayPal account like yours?” I went on. I was rambling like a big kid. It was just the point of I asked for help, and I acted. This is where I’m at. I was truthful. I think that’s the best way to be, and then just to take action on what these bigger people tell you.

So you have to go to seminars. If you can’t go to seminars, you definitely need a mentor. I don’t know if you’ve got mentors or not, Michael. I know your father must have been a great mentor, but obviously you must look up to other people as well.

I needed coaches. I needed people to make sure that I was taking action and then kick my ass if I wasn’t.

Michael: Exactly. If you can’t get to them, there is Skype right now. You can have a conference call. You can have a webcam. You’ve got to get someone pushing you to do better. That’s really important.

Alex: Yes, of course. If you can’t hold yourself accountable to people this is what happened. In January 2008, I put on my blog that I planned to generate a quarter of a million dollars in 2008. Now I didn’t have a clue how I was going to do that. Previously, in 2007, I’d only made $115, 000. So how was I going to double my business in a year? I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I held myself accountable. By the end of 2008, I generated over half a million dollars. So I quadrupled my business. In January of 2009, I put on my blog I’m going to make a million dollars this year. I was like, how the hell am I going to make a million dollars this year? I don’t know. But I held myself accountable to tens of thousands of people, and we’ll see what the results are. Hopefully we’ll do two million dollars, if it goes off anything like last year’s calculations.

But you want to hold yourself accountable to people. That’s what keeps pushing me forward. I know that I’ve put out there that I’m going to go for this figure. It’s not just me. Because it’s scary to think, I’ve got to build a milliondollar business this year.

I was on the call I was speaking to Rich Schefren last night. I told him that I’m scared. I don’t think that I’m scared of failure more than I’m scared of success. I think that I’m scared of success more than failure. We had a very good conversation over this. But, on all levels, it’s scary. The growth of anybody it’s got to be scary to build a million dollar business, whatever complications come in, because you don’t know the unknown. You’ve got to expect the unexpected.

Just bloody get out there and do something that’s proven. Follow what Michael’s doing. Listen. The group of people that Michael was with, whom I met in Washington in February your friends who are all on your blog, all those fellow young entrepreneurs, are geniuses. I was basically blown away by your crowd of people.

So it’s exciting times, I think. People should definitely be following you and asking you for help, Michael. Asking you for help, and of course you’ll be there to help them each step of the way. You don’t have to get it perfect; just get it going.

If you could go back in time and start all over again, what would you do different to make more money online?

What would I do different? I’m sure you’ll laugh when I say this but I would have built a continuity program.

I think if I would have realized, I would have built like a membership. The word “continuity” can scare people. Like a membership’s where there’s a monthly, recurring payment system in place. That would definitely be the one thing that I would do, because that’s just gold there. It could be like a $10 a month product, if need be. Like I’ve got friends who are making multiple thousands not tens of thousands but just multiple thousands a month from a $10 product that they sell. It just generates a couple of thousands a month. That couple of thousand could be a mortgage on a mansion, if you like, as well as doing other things.

Michael: You set it, and then you forget it. A lot of the time with continuity programs I mean everyone, and even if you’ve got an ebook, and you’re about to launch it, you can make a lot more money if you turned it into a recurring revenue stream.

Alex: Absolutely. So my whole business model is we’ve just done marketing with Alex 1.0. We’re actually going into marketing with Alex 2.0 right now with my next coaching program. Then, after that, we’re going into marketing with Alex 3.0, where we’re changing the whole business model to continuity. It’s all about bringing people in, leads, giving them an offer, and getting them into a monthly revenue. We’re going to build we don’t know the figures, but it’s going to be a very profitable business. Yes, continuity, I think, would be the thing that I would have changed.

What do you like least about the Internet?

The hype. It’s just the hype. I can say that, but then something else has just hit me actually using a bloody computer. I am no good at computers. I am the world’s worst at using one of these machines. I select the funniest thing about it. I just wreck them. All the time, I wreck these computers. I’m just not good at them. So computers first, then hype. It’s a hype driven market. I think it could be changed. It could definitely be changed, but does the market want to change? The market wants to buy the hype. It’s all about supply and demand, so it’s a very hard question, really. But I hate the hype on that. I’ve been sucked into it too many times and lost too much money. I built my business into a hype machine a year or two back, which I’m trying to change it from that now.

What do you like best about the Internet?

Money, money, money! Money. Just the money. Man, you want to have a life. As I say, opening up your PayPal account when you woke up and see how much money you made. But it isn’t kind of like that, because I’m consistent in my business in not being consistent. Literally, I’ve got no major consistency in my business, but I can make very high fluctuations in cash at any time that I want. So it’s just when you see that coming in, and it just goes, “Ching! Ching! Ching!” You see all those sales come in, and it’s just life changing. So the money, man.

If the Internet had not existed, what do you think you would be doing right now?

Packing up a load of bricks and taking them to somebody to put a load of cement on them and start building a wall. A load of crap, seriously. But the funny thing is that I’m actually building we’ve got a plot of land right next to my house well, actually we’ve got a halfbuilt house where the builders are actually working for me. They keep saying to me, “What the hell do you do?” Because they’re in my house, and I’m in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. They’re making a cup of coffee, so I walk down like, “Grrrr!”

They’re like, “You’re going to work at all?”

I’m like, “Yes, I’ll be working.”

What I like to do is I like to work at night, where my family goes to bed my young son and my fiance. So I like to spend some time with them then go to bed. I like to work through the night, where there’s no distractions.

So where would I be? I’d be on some building site somewhere, mostly covered in rain, because of this ugly UK weather that we live in.

Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

There’s a lot of people that I look up to. If you look around my office at all the different education packages I’ve got and so forth. All the seminars I’ve been to and stuff. But the one person that I modeled was Mike Filsaime. Basically I met this guy and he showed me his PayPal account. It was fully loaded. I’m talking just stupid figures. Then he showed me a web account of his mailing list and we sat there having a beer together, funny enough. And as we sat there I was like dude, how the hell can I copy this? And he said his whole multimillion dollar business is built around his mailing list. Is built around his building a mailing list and then making money from that mailing list. Through building relationships and then making money from them. And I was like, I need to copy that.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been following Mike Filsaime. He has changed his business an awful lot now. Which again I’m going to be following in “Marketing With Alex 3.0.” So I would say Mike Filsaime is the guy that I followed. You can find him at twitter.com/mikefilsaime. Or his blog is marketingdotcom.com.

Then of course, he put me onto his mentor who is Rich Schefren. And now Rich is my business coach and pretty much one cool guy. So I look up to him. But I don’t try to model Rich, because Rich is way out of my league. Like seriously, that guy is like, he bends my brain every time I speak with him. It’s just that much knowledge.

He actually changes the way that I think. When somebody can do that to you, it actually hurts your brain. But so I would say them two are the guys that I really look up to. I love them. I tell them every time, I love them. Because they’ve changed my life.

Michael: Just to add to that, I think 95% of the hundreds of people I’ve interviewed, they’ve all said when asked the question what would you do? And they’d say build a list from day one. It’s really important.

Alex: Yeah, I mean, of course. This is the thing, like I built a list and my list for the last almost a year has been very stagnant. I haven’t grown it at all for the last year. It’s been very stale, let’s say, in growth. But what I’ve been doing is I’ve been learning relationship marketing with that list. I’ve been learning how to email market, how to relationship build for the people on the list. How to really make money from a list. So I built a list, that’s one thing. Making money from a list is another thing. So when I learned that, I built the relationships with these people. Now I understand list building and email marketing, now I’m deadly. Now I’m going to go off and build my whole business model.

Like I said “Marketing With Alex 3.0” is we’re going to have one squeeze page. We’re going to forget about all my other sites. We’re going to have one squeeze page and we’re going to drive as much traffic to there as possible, build a list, and then follow up with those prospects and turn them into customers and clients. And build a serious business. So I understand the formula now.

You’ve been talking about your very small amount for how much you work. How many hours do you actually work daily?

It depends. It depends. A good few, I would say. Some days I don’t work at all. Some days I can work eight hours. But then again, it depends. It really depends Michael. I’ve got no set agenda right now on my work. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to come to work for weeks if I don’t want to. Like I said, I’ve got the support people in place. I’ve got my project manager doing all the day to day tasks. All I need to work on is forward moving tasks like writing a new report, creating an event around that report. But it’s the buzz around it, so that a lot of people come and download it, read it, go through the whole process of man this guy’s giving me so much value. Then introduce buying to them. Then offer them an offer they cannot refuse. A certain percent is going to give me a load of cash.

So I would say I can work eight hours a day, three days a week. So let’s just say two to three hours a day, seven days a week.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

That was a very long winded answer for you, wasn’t it? What’s the best bit of advice I’ve ever been given? There’s too much. If you can make money, then you can make ten times the money, like I said at the very beginning. So anybody that knows how to make money right now in any certain industry, can you teach that to people? Because they are going to be willing to buy it from you. But instead of trying to sell it to them, offer them help. Then once you’ve offered them help, they’re going to be very thankful to you. Then introduce to them the selling opportunity. That’s just one.

I mean, yeah, list building is the number one of course. List building, build your list. That’s the number one thing Michael. I could give you a thousand different things.

Give things away for free, and then people will want to pay you money.

Alex, thanks very much for the interview. I know you’ve got lots of things going on. Do you want to share with us any personal or business future plans or goals?

Get back into the gym. As soon as I get off this call I’m going to the gym. I really want to get fit again. The truth of it Michael is that I’m learning how to build a multiple million dollar business right here, right now. For people to say this is just easy I work two hours a day or something, that’s pretty much a crock because I know all the big, big guys, they work. They own big corporations again now. So I’m trying not to get to that level, but I want to build a multimillion dollar business where I have to just come in and do a couple of hours a day. It’s taken me a lot of time sitting here at the computer which I’m very crap at. Like I told you. So, yeah, it does take time to get there. But I’ve got the end goal; I know the four hour work week philosophy. I don’t want to work myself to death. I want to just have a nice lifestyle, which I do live.

So yeah, one of my goals is get back to the gym. So exactly after this call I’m in the gym for the first time this week. I only went once last week. So really that’s my life goal. And of course, maybe travel a little less, Michael. It’s just jet lag constantly. I’m just forever being jet lagged.

This is a crazy experience right now. But people say you’re living the life. To me they say we’re living the life, so it’s pretty nice to know things are happening for me. It is nice. Because I’m a forward thinking person, so I’m always thinking forward. So sometimes you have to sit back and reflect on the past and then you just say wow. Sometimes you’re like bloody hell, you know?

Thank you Alex — You are one REAL GUY — I think a few of my readers will be surprised with some of your answers — but you know, I like to “mix it up a bit”

Plenty of variety and Daily Inspiration for Entrepreneurs – that is my Goal here at IncomeDiary.com

Hello Everyone,

The best bit about being a successful Internet Entrepreneur is the wonderful Internet lifestyle and freedom that goes with it. You set your own hours for working, vacation when you want and if you wish, work from anywhere you can get an Internet connection. Many internet entrepreneurs travel for as much as 6 months at a time – just logging in for an hour or two every day or so to keep on top of things. (count their earnings!)

Yanik Silver runs exclusive business adventures for entrepreneurs all around the world including Zero G force flights, Baja Racing, Airborne Action and Rocky Mountain experiences. To see some of the past trips, click here. Yanik Silver blogs about his experiences and has a list of all the amazing things to do, all made possible because of the Internet lifestyle.

Some of these experiences are relatively in expensive – getting there will not be. Check out the list below for some possibilities – which of these adventures inspires you? Or perhaps we are missing some adventures you would like to recommend?

I look forward to your comments…

If you want to start your journey to financial freedom with your own blog and have the opportunity to live a lifestyle like mine or Yanik’s then check out my FREE eCourse to making money blogging.

Name	Description	Country	Prices From
Camel Ride to the Pyramids	Your exciting Egyptian adventure begins in the lively city of Cairo, and takes us to Aswan, Luxor, and the Red Sea town of Hurghada. You ride camels & donkeys, sail on feluccas and cruise boats and ride in a horse drawn carriage.	Egypt	$1,420
Canyoning in Australia	Led by professional guides in the world’s best adventure environment, you will combine water jumps, subterranean swims and waterfall abseils, all set against a stunning Lost World backdrop	Australia	$150
Crocodile Cage Diving	Not for the feint of heart. This cage dive will bring you face to face with vicious crocidiles.	South Africa	$628
Gumball Ralley Baby!	The Gumball 3000 is an annual 3000 mile (5000 km) international rally which takes place on public roads, with a different 3000 mile route around the world each year. 120 cars participate, often driven by their owners.	America	$44,000
Baja Racing in Mexico	Get off road and try going over speeds over 100 MPH on rough terrain, now that’s fun!	Mexico	$3,000
Naturally Heated River Bathing	All though this experience isn’t “extreme” – it is by far one of the coolest things to do. In Iceland if you walk up into the hills, the rivers get hotter and hotter, I was able to find a spot to match the heat of my hot tub with a waterfull hitting my back, now thats a cool experience!	Iceland	FREE
Go into Outer Space	Virgin Galactic, set to launch in 2012, will be the first opportunity for commerical space flights. Its planned trajectory will overlap the Earth’s atmosphere at 70,000 feet, which will make it a sub-orbital journey with a short period of weightlessness.	USA	$150,000
HALO Skydive	On a HALO dive you will jump out of the plane at an altitude higher than Mount Everest and free fall for 2 minutes before pulling your parachute.	USA	$3,495
Hang Gliding	Prepare to fly like a bird over a goregous landscape. Relax and soar!	Spain	$1,350
Heli-Ski	Forget the chairlift! Ride to the top of the mountain in a helicopter, then jump out, board first and immediately start carving the mountain.	USA	$3,250
Hot Air Balloon Ride in Califonia	Prepare for a flight over mountains, from beach to desert or somewhere in-between. The length of the flight is up to winds and fuel. This can put you in the basket for hours at a time.	USA	$650
Fly a MIG Jet to the edge of space	Adventure tour – Advanced aerobatics flight in MIG 29 Fulcrum jet fighter to the edge of space.	Russia	$40,000
Bungy jump in Macau	Imagine you’re standing on the tower, 233 metres up. Now take a stroll around the outer-rim that encircles the tower. Piece of cake, right? Oh, did we tell you that the walkway is just 1.8 metres wide and, get this, THERE’S NO HANDRAIL!	China	$2,088
Hire A Private Island	Hire for example Sir Richard Branson’s private island – Necker Island. Like a vision of Eden, Necker Island juts up from the ocean a mile north of Virgin Gorda in the celebrated British Virgin Islands.	British Virgin Islands	$45,000
Operation Titanic	If you seek adventure like nothing on this earth, then you are sure to enjoy a trip to the bottom of the ocean floor to catch a glimpse of the infamous Titanic. Operation Titanic is a 12-day adventure to the ocean floor aboard a research vessel in the North Atlantic.	Newfounland	$52,931
Paramotoring	Paraglide without a boat! Paramotoring allows you to surf the skies in a parachute with a small motor attached to it.	UK	$1,950
Play Pebel Beac	There is no equal to the two resort hotels that make up the Pebble Beach Resort. Both of the hotels command views of the most scenic stretches of the California Coastline. The two hotels are both exceptional resorts unto to themselves offering outstanding service in a relaxing world-class atmosphere.	USA	$4,400
Ride the biggest coaster in the world	The Diamondback is the largest roller coaster in Kings Island’s history. The $22 million roller coaster travels at speeds of 80 mph over 5,282 feet with ten hills and a splash down water feature.	USA	$50
Running with the Bulls in Pampalona	Put on your best running shoes and prepare to defy death. You will be chased around the ancient streets of Pamplonaby thousand pound bulls, before watching a bullfighting and eating the slain animal.	Spain	N/A
Sand Dune Boarding	Just like snowboarding, without the snow. This exhilirating sport allows you ride the dunes on a sandboard or boogie board. Nothing beats the feeling of standing strapped to a sand board on top of a wind crafted sand dune with wide open spaces surrounding you.	South Africa	$45
Scuba diving at Night in the Caribean	Swim through the deep waters of the open ocean in the middle of the night. Adventure out to see the nocturnal wonders of the deep blue sea.	Bahamas	$2,295
ZapCat Racing	Take an insane trip on the English channel in a ZapCat race boat with a professional and see just how crazy it can get.	England	$350
Snow Mobiling a glacier in Iceland	This is one of the things I have ticked off my list, greatest experience ever hanging with local people. In Iceland they work really hard, but party really hard and it shows on the ice!	Iceland	$750
Stay in an Ice Hotel	You will be staying in a structure made of ice! After a day of adventure, nightfall approaches quickly. The outdoor temperature drops and when you step inside ICEHOTEL, you feel a rush of warm air.	Sweden	$800
Swimming with sharks	For the serious diving and shark enthusiast, this unique trip starting in Cape Town, South Africa features 13 dives in total with full diving equipment included in the price. At Cape Town there are three shore dives, two boat dives, one night dive, a dive with sharks in the Two Oceans aquarium with the highlight being the Great White shark cage dive in the Gansbaai region to the east of Cape Town	South Africa	$2,242
Trekking the himalayas	Our once-in-a-lifetime journey to Kailash begins in fabled Humla, the far west of Nepal, with an eleven-day trek to the Tibetan border through the remote Limi Valley, where the inhabitants of the upper reaches are Bhotias, of Tibetan descent.	Nepal	$4,680
White water rafting	Get ready for one of the most challenging physical experiences of your life – a category 5 white water rapid. Hang on tight and be prepared to get thrown from the boat as you cruise down the aggressive waters.	USA	$849
Wing Walk on a Bi Plane	Strap yourself on to the wing of a classic bi-plane and relive the glory days of aviation, looping through the sky with nothing but goggles and leather to shield you from forces of up to 4G and 150mph wind pressure.	UK	$1,000
Zero G Force Flight	Two years ago just before Yanik Silver launched Maverick Business Adventures, I was able to go with him and a few other big name Guru’s on a Zero G flight. An amazing experience and the best fun I have ever had!	USA	$4,950
Zip Line through the Rain Forest	Fly through the canopy of the Rain Forest on a zip line that runs for miles.	Costa Rica	$75

To our success in 2009,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Make sure to check out our newly released forums for Internet entrepreneurs.

Hello Everyone,

Todays interview is by far the best you will ever read or listen to, this guy has a really cool revenue model which allows him to earn money day after day from work he did months and even years ago. After this interview my head was buzzing just with the new ideas and the money I could be making.

I have just started to implement some of Ryan’s tips and advice so that I can work now and in the Summer, still be earning from it so that I can be down the beach with no finacial worries at all. Recently, Ryan put together the first and only 3 day super-summit dedicated entirely to the topic of creating “continuity income”. Some people call it residual income or recurring revenue or passive income. Instead of trying to sell products one at a time, “continuity income” brings you guaranteed money month after month He used every contact he had to bring in A-List presenters and guest panelists to open up and share their secrets… This was an event I went to and it blew me away, if you want all of the videos and audio from the event, click here!

Last year I got to spend some time with him over in LA, along side Yanik Silver and others. Here is actually a picture of us:

Yanik Silver, Barry Dunlop, Ryan Lee, Myself, Dean Hunt, Michael Holland and Mason Thomas

We really were not faking it, that night rocked! Although the transcription of the interview below, you must listen to it, I have had it professional edited and it rocks! Just click the play button at the top or start reading now.

Well the first thing I want to really mention is you have got this new website called Ozworth, and I think definitely my readers would be interested in hearing more about that, because it’s a sevenminute speed coaching, I hear.

Right. I find the best coaches in the world, whether it’s teaching how to make more money, save time, organize, marketing, success, self improvement, we just spend exactly seven minutes in a real intense speed coaching program. I find that in seven minutes, I just get the meat of the content, really, really good stuffall practical useable strategies. And it’s all free.

I interview them so people can listen to all this online.

Michael: Oh really? Great. So you can check that out. That’s ozworth.com, definitly worth signing up for if you enjoy success storys and interviews like this one!

You’re pretty much known as the continuity king. You’ve got, as I mentioned, over 50 active recurring revenue programs. Would you like to share with us how you achieved this and how we can do it ourselves?

Sure. The thing is with recurring revenue there are so many different types of programs you can create. When people think of recurring revenue and continuity programs, as we like to call them in marketing, and they think of it online, they automatically think of membership sites. And they think of these big huge sites with discussion forums and thousands of members and content. And they just get overwhelmed. Obviously that’s one way you can create it, with these fullblown membership sites. I have a couple of those and that’s how I first got started. But there are also a lot of other opportunities.

There’s also what I like to call micromembership sites, where the content is released on time intervals. So every week or every month or whenever you plan your lessons the content is delivered to them automatically. The easiest way to do it is by email.

There are also continuity programs that are offline. Instead of delivering the content online, every month you could send out a newsletter, an actual print newsletter. Remember that, where you actually go to the mailbox and open the mail? So a print newsletter, an audio CD of the month, a DVD of the month, I have those kinds of programs as well.

The key is just finding a topic that first obviously you are passionate about and a topic you want to continue to write about and really delve deep into, just as you’re doing with success interviews. This is something you’re really interested in and it comes across. So that’s number one.

And number two is figuring out what it is about your market. What are their biggest wants? What are their biggest desires? What keeps them up at night? Then you figure out a way to solve their problem and put it and this is an important step put it in the format that they want to consume information.

So just ask them. They may want it delivered as a print newsletter. They may want it as an online membership site. They may want it delivered as an audio CD. Or maybe your audience wants it as a DVD. So you have to ask them.

And then just take action. It’s really not hard to do. All the tools are done for you. When I first started back in 1998, there wasn’t software like Member Gate available. I hired a college student to do all this stuff for me and it was a nightmare. That’s nothing against college students.

But I remember there was a technical issue and I called him up and his roommate answered the phone. He was like, “Dude, he’s not here.” I’m like, “OK. I think I need a professional solution.” So that’s it. That’s kind of the formula.

Can recurring revenue programs be included in blogging and other platforms?

Absolutely. Blogging really lends itself well to it. I know you write and you do a lot of programs for bloggers. Think about it like this. You can take your content, and without even creating new content, you can create recurring revenue. So let’s say on your blog you do these interviews. And maybe the interviews you publish are all free, so people could just listen to them online with a Flash Player.

Get Ryan's $4,500 "E-Publishing In-A-Box" DVDs for... FREE!

But if they want to maybe have the mp3 downloadable version and the transcript PDF files, maybe you could just take those specific things and then put it on a hidden page, a password protected area of your blog, and call it the Michael Dunlap VIP area.

And then you offer that format and charge maybe $5, $10, or $20 a month, whatever the market will bear. You can do some research with it. But that’s an easy way.

People want coaching. They want more access to the “guru,” so you can easily turn your platform into monthly group coaching where maybe every month you do a telephone seminar for your lists. They pay $29.95 a month and they get access to this teleseminar with live guests. And maybe you give them access to the program on audio CD as well and you ship it to them. There are a lot of ways to turn your blog into recurring revenue.

Another easy way is just to create a separate forum, like a private coaching forum where they can ask questions and you can charge access to that. People want to have a connection. They want to feel like they belong, so there are a lot of ways to turn your blog into a recurring avenue.

That’s some really good advice. I think I’m going to take some of that myself and work out a few ideas. Thanks for that. So you’re going to be actually holding your own summit for building continuity programs and recurring revenue. Would you like to tell us more about that?

Michael, I’m glad you asked. I would love to tell you about it! [laughter]

It’s going to be, depending on when people listen to this, it’s going to be May 15th17th in Stanford, Connecticut. It’s three days of nothing but the type of information I’m talking about now, building your continuity program. It’s going to be myself, and I have some really incredible guests. Mark Victor Hansen, who is the author of all of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books. So you might want to listen to somebody who has sold over 130 million different products.

Then we have Robert Joiner, who is considered the godfather of Internet marketing and my first mentor. He’s the first guy who created ebooks and squeeze pages. He never speaks and He’s flying all the way from New Zealand to the US to speak at this event.

Then we have Russell Brunson. He’s like a wonder kid. He’s like 28 years old. I don’t even know how many millions He’s making with continuity programs.

Matt Baystack is going to teach how he had over 14,000 people paying $30 a month and he got them all within a week. So there are some really incredible things.

Andrew Lock is going to be talking about pimping your Internet television show and then backend the continuity program, similar to blogging. So there will be a lot of really cool topics. And it’s three days. The information is all at continuitysummit.com.

Should we be going out to sites with banner ads and Google AdSense or should continuity be the thing we think about first?

That’s a great question. I don’t want to try to skirt around it and say it depends, but it really does depend on how serious you are about your business and the kind of traffic you are getting. Personally I think it’s much easier to monetize it on the backend with your own products and with continuity than it is with AdSense. You know as well as I do, to make any decent money with AdSense well, decent has different definitions for different people. You might think $100 a month is great, where with me, if it’s not bringing in $50,000 a month I would be disappointed.

So there are definitions. But, look, if you want to make a couple hundred bucks a month, then yeah, you’ll probably find it with AdSense and some affiliate programs. But if you want to make big money, the six figures a year, the six figures a month…

I saw recently on your blog, I think you had a list of the top bloggers and what they are earning per month. With my recurring revenue programs through my blog, I earn more than all of them and I don’t have one ad. I don’t do AdSense at all.

So I would definitely figure out ways to monetize with your own program, because think about it like this: that is the beauty of continuity. With AdSense, you are only as good as your last day.

So let’s say yesterday you had 50,000 visitors and you made $100. Great. But tomorrow you are starting at square one again. But if you have continuity, let’s say out of all the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that visit your site, 1% of the hundred thousand people join your continuity.

So 1% percent of 100,000 Michael, come on. I’m going to quiz you right now. What is 1% of 100,000 people?

1,000 people. So 1,000 people paying you… Let’s say you have a really good program. You include transcripts and mp3s. You do a coaching call and you include some cool bonuses. Let’s say you get 1,000 people to pay you $30 a month or $29.99 a month. Right there, every month, you are going to be doing $30,000 a month. Plus you can still do upsells and crosssales, and backend, and backend affiliate programs. But that is $30,000 a month every month as opposed to, “Oh man. What am I going to make this month with AdSense?” That’s the power of it.

That’s why some of these bloggers are doing well, but they could be doing so much better. It’s amazing to me how much money they are leaving on the table, some of these bloggers with the audience they are getting. It’s mind boggling. Millions and millions of dollars. And you mentioned before, where I met you at Yanik’s, even Yanik told me during our conversation, that he estimates he has lost at least $4 million by not doing this stuff that I’m talking about earlier.

Wow, yeah. From that, I think everyone is going to realize that they need to take their monetization in a completely different way, because a lot of them… I speak to a guy quite often, and he’s doing nearly a million visitors a month to his web design related website. And he’s only pulling in about $4,000 a month.

Oh, my God.

I’ll just throw up in my bathroom.

If you take a million visitors a month, if you’re only doing $4, 000… You have to try to not make money to only get $4,000. You have to try.

I’ve been… Well, I’m not reading, I’ve been watching your blog. You’ve been doing a lot of video blogging. Why do you see video blogging? Do you think it’s better than writing out your posters yourself, or what’s the benefit to doing video?

I found it works well for me and the big reason is it allows you to connect on a really personal level with the people reading your stuff. Because what I see is, look, even when you look at your list of the top popular blogs, most of them have to more with the techy world. The Tech Crunch and those type sites. Life Hacker, so it’s a little bit more of the techy stuff. But there’s also a lot of people who want to create blogs on softer topics. Whether it’s parenting or raising your pets or cooking, so I think that personal interaction is just going to separate you from your competition.

Because most people, to be honest, are either too lazy to create a video, which is just… I think it’s easier to create a video than to write a whole fivepage blog post. Because it takes two minutes to create a video and to upload it to YouTube and copy and paste it on your site.

So it allows you to connect and people feel like they know you. I have people now who come to my events and they say, “I’m so happy you started video blogging, because before I only saw you through the email and I didn’t really get a sense of you.” And now they feel like they know me. And with me, my personality is people tend to relate to that.

Look, if you’re the most boring stiff in the world and you’re like, “Hello, my name is Don.”

You might not want to blog. And maybe you’re a better writer, and that’s fine. But if you have any type of personality and energy and passion, then I think it’s best that you do video. And maybe you don’t do it every day like I do, but maybe once a week do a video blog, but have a little personal story, have a sense of humor with it and let people connect and get to know you, because they’re going to be much more loyal and you hook them in.

You started back in ‘98, I believe, and you’ve obviously made a lot of mistakes yourself, so have I. But what do you think, apart from the monetizing a site without recurring revenues, apart from that, what’s the big mistake everyone is making right now?

There are a couple of big mistakes. One is, there’s no differentiation in the marketplace, meaning they’re copying everyone else’s site. They’re using someone let’s say the fitness industry, teaching people how to lose weight. They find every other site and they make it look exactly the same. It doesn’t stand out. And on a related note, there’s no big hook. That’s a huge mistake, is people create these products and they are a carbon copy of everything else and there’s nothing outstanding about it. There’s no hook. You’ve got to have a hook. You’ve got to have a reason, what people are going to buy online.

The other thing and I could spend probably three hours talking about mistakes. Some other big mistakes are not looking at things from your customer’s perspective. They look at it from, OK, I want to make $100,000 this year. And they just look at it from: how can I make the most amount of money?

Instead of saying, OK, here’s this client. Here’s what they really need and here’s what they want. How can I create a product that’s really good that I’m going to build this longterm business, this longterm relationship with them, instead of trying to just suck as much money out of them as possible?

When you look at it from that perspective, and treat each client and customer with respect, then every person, every email you send, is an actual human being on the other end of it. It’s not just, hey, I have 10,000 people, I have 50,000 people. It’s each person gets an email and reads it.

And I have on my list, my Dad reads every one of my emails, my sister, all of my friends, so it kind of makes me think twice before I send an email. Like is this right? Should I be saying this? But if you think of it like that, if you think of, OK, your Mom is reading every one of your emails. Or your Dad or your sister or friends, would you still send that email?

And if no, why not? And how can you change it so that you feel comfortable sending it to everyone? So those are a couple of big mistakes.

Other things are not spending enough time learning about the right way to write sales copy. And I’m not talking about overthetop, his blood dripping money with it. I’m not talking about really overthetopcrazy copy. I’m just talking about writing, talking about benefits, giving people…

Here’s another reason, another big problem too, is they don’t give people a reason to buy right now. They just say buy it. There’s no reason to act now, whether it’s limited number or whether it’s special bonuses.

So those are some of the big mistakes. Oh, another one is not taking action and not working fast. There’s no speed. They suffer from paralysis by analysis. They overanalyze everything. You talk about a website and they’re like, “I’ve got to write a business plan and go raise money,” and blah, blah, blah. It’s like just take action. If you have an idea, just get it out there . Get something out there.

Start the process, because once you get out there and you start making your first dollar, you’re going to gain momentum and you’re going to start taking that momentum with you. So just take action and act quickly. If you have an idea, act on it right away. Don’t over analyze.

Yeah, I tell all of my readers that on so many occasions. That’s brilliant advice. And what you said about your family and your friends reading your emails. My dad and my mum usually read all of my emails I send to my list and so I always make sure it’s all clear for them and there’s nothing bad in there. So that’s good.

You start off, “Dear Readers, first I made sure I had my good breakfast this morning, right, Mom?”

I have one of your books, “Millionaire Workout,” and it’s sold out right now, isn’t it? I just wanted to ask a question about that, because it’s about not just making money online, but your lifestyle and your health and stuff. Do you want to speak a little bit about that, quickly if you don’t mind?

Sure. The “Millionaire Workout” is a program that I put together because it basically teaches you how to make money online, but also take care of your health and your well being, because the two are connected. You can’t reach your highest level of success unless you are healthy too. You ask anyone on the deathbed, or anyone who’s rich, they’ll say you’re nothing without your health. And it’s true. And it doesn’t take a lot. It’s really simple choices with what you are eating. Instead of having coffee and donut for breakfast, have a higher fiber cereal or some egg whites, just simple choices, and just get active. I’m a big fan of highintensity workouts. My workouts take 10 to 15 minutes, tops. And that’s it.

Ryan Lee Featured In Millionaire Magazine

But you really have to take care of your health, because you’re never going to reach that highest level of success, because there’s also all the physiological benefits. There’s reduced stress, there’s improved energy, there’s better concentration, and you’re going to see your business grow as you get healthier as well as take care of yourself. So that’s a brief overview.

Michael: Brilliant. And will you be selling that book again?

I might be. We do have some copies still in the warehouse, but I’m holding them for my event, I was going to give people copies of them.

We might do an updated one of them.

So you’ve done a book, you’ve done a load of products, what would you say to other Internet marketers, considering they have this following and they want to make their own product. What would you say to them?

There’s so many different types of products you can create. If you’re going to create your first product, probably the easiest one is an ebook, because it’s just a… And when you think of ebooks, you don’t have to think of starting right actually physically writing 100 or 150 pages. It could be something as simple as “Interviewing an Expert.” Like if you interviewed my about recurring revenue for an hour, and then got it transcribed and now had the mp3, all of the sudden you have a digital product. You have the mp3 and the PDF file. And that’s a program and you can sell that as an “ebook.” So it doesn’t have to be starting from scratch. But that’s the easiest way to get started with a digital product.

Another way to get started quickly is to do a live event. Whether it’s a telephone seminar and have it recorded, or do an inperson event, invite some friends. Rent a space, a conference room or a hotel room and hire a videographer to record it. And now all of the sudden, if you do an eight hour seminar, you have eight hours of content and footage.

And that could be a five, six, a seven DVD series that you can sell, depending on your topic, for $100 bucks to $1,000 bucks or more. So, creating product is easy, it’s just that you’ve got to have that idea and you’ve just got to get started. Before I created my first product, which was really like a telephone seminar, for about two years I contemplated what kind of product. Is it audio, is it going to be cassette? Is it going to be a seminar?

At that time, it was cassettes and video tapes. No one was doing DVDs and CDs. So just think of the product, whether it’s an ebook or a seminar, and just get it done, like now.

By the time you finish listening to this, get it done.

All right, that’s good. Yeah, I like that. OK, so you mentioned you make money pretty much while you sleep now, because you’ve got recurring payments and you’re healthy. So is that the Internet lifestyle for you or what is the Internet lifestyle?

Well, for me, it’s all about freedom. I’m married, we have three little kids, a fiveandahalf, threeandahalf, and oneandahalf, all little girls. And we’re actually expecting our fourth child in a few months. So for me, it’s a question of being able to be home every day. I have an office outside of the house, because I cannot get anything done with an office in the house. I tried, and it lasted a day. So being able to be home every day at 5:00 and have dinner, and I haven’t set the alarm clock in years. We wake up when our youngest one, a yearandahalf, she usually wakes up at 6:00. That’s our alarm clock. But every morning I give them I make them lunch, I give them baths, and being able to spend all that time with them. And we just got back from a vacation, we spent a week in Florida and we went on a cruise. That to me is living the Internet lifestyle.

It might be different for someone else. Maybe for you it’s hanging out with your friends, you’re going out, or for someone else it could be maybe they’re a musician and they just want to play music, so this is going to supplement their lifestyle. I’m not here to judge. Whatever is your priority and your life, that’s what the Internet lifestyle is, but it’s giving you the freedom.

It’s not having the boss, and asking permission, say, “Oh, can I have off this week?” I’ve done that. I did that for about eight years, and I could never do that again. So it’s just freedom, freedom to do what you want.

To finish off this interview, I’ve got a few quickfire questions for you, just to get to know you a little bit more. OK, so first one is, who do you look up to? Who do you model yourself on?

That’s a great question. Someone who I’ve always admired and look up to, but not in well, I guess in a business, is my father. We talk every day on the phone. So I just admire… He’s just a great person. Everyone loves my dad and he’s just showed me how to live a really good, honorable life. So in terms of just living a good life, he’s someone I definitely look up to. In terms of business, that’s a really tough question, because a lot of the guys who I kind of model myself after, I’m friends with. So it’s weird to kind of look at it that way.

Yeah, but there are some… One of just the greatest guys in the world, we mentioned him already before, is Yanik. Yanik Silver, I’ve known him for years, one of my good friends. And he’s just a guy who does everything ethically, legitimately, honestly. There are some guys who are well known gurus who, I think they’re smart in business, but they have no balance in life. And they’re divorced three times, they have no relationships with their families, they’re miserable, they’re cranky, and it’s like, do I really look up to them? Do I want to model my life after them? No. Maybe my business, not my life, though.

So my next question is, how many hours do you actually work in a day?

Depends on the day. Like today, after this interview I get my massage.

I get a massage every week. And it’s not just a wimpy, froufrou massage, it’s like deep tissue, which is just so good for your body. But I won’t even get into that. Here’s my schedule now. I get in the office about 8:00 in the morning. I work on my big projects, I don’t even check email. And I work until usually like 11:00 getting the really big stuff done. Check email, have lunch, and then in the afternoon, I’ve already done my big stuff. So, sometimes I’ll get a massage. I usually go to the gym each day at 3:30 or 4:00. Or, I’ll go to the bookstore and do some reading or watching marketing videos, so I probably put a good six, seven hours in.

Maybe, sometimes three hours. I like to usually see a movie once a week, too. I just get out of the office and I’ll go for a couple of hours just to see… I love movies. Again, that’s the Internet lifestyle, freedom. It’s being able to go to a movie at 2:00 in the afternoon and not look like a serial killer.

There’s a lot of cool things. And then I coach. Later today at 4:30, I coach my kindergarteners soccer team. So some days I’ll put four hours in, some days I’ll put seven. If it’s a big launch, I’ll put more hours in, yeah.

If the incident had not existed, what do you reckon you’d be doing right now?

I’d probably be doing what I was doing before. My first career was as a recreational therapist and a gym teacher.

I would still be working with kids either as a gym teacher or working in the Children’s Hospital and doing some fitness training, and I still love to do that kind of stuff. So I would be doing that. But, I still had the entrepreneurial itch, so I definitely still have my parttime business. I was actually, before the Internet came around, back in ‘93, ‘94, the business I was looking to start was going to be a print newsletter. So it’s kind of funny that even 15 years later, I’m still doing a print newsletter. So, I probably would have done something like that as well, but I definitely would have been working with kids or in the school system.

All right, that’s good. OK, what do you like best about the Internet?

The amount of people you can connect with. Making all of these connections. Interacting with people that I never could have met before. Before the Internet, you’re still relatively young, so you probably don’t remember really much before the Internet. But you had your group of friends and you went out and you had a circle of friends. But now, the fact that I can send an email and reach 200,000 people is just amazing. And the amount of research you can do. If I want to look up hotel reservations or we want to go on vacation, you could just click a button and see the rooms and see pictures of hotels. In the past, you’d have to look in the yellow pages and call information and ask for brochures and it would take two weeks to get there.

And if I wanted to go to a movie, you’d have to call up or open the newspaper. It’s just so convenient and it’s hard to imagine life without the Internet now. And obviously, what it has done for me and my family, it’s just given me, like we said before, the Internet lifestyle. It’s just been incredible.

My last question here is what do you like least about the Internet?

What do I like least? Obviously, the predators. The people who prey on… Whether it’s they prey on children or they prey on people who are innocent. And the scammers. There are so many legitimate ways to make money online, and to have to do something unethical or illegal or scam people, I just don’t get it. So that really gets me crazy. And the other thing is you have to be careful, because it could become addictive. You don’t realize how many times you check your email. So it definitely has an addictive nature to it, and just the shady stuff gets me a little annoyed. But the positives more than make up for those negatives.

All right, that’s great. I really appreciate having you on today, Ryan. Is there anything that you’d like to share with us, personal business, future plans, goals or anything?

Yeah, I’ve got some really cool stuff happening. If you want to learn more about me and the stuff I’m doing, definitely check out my blog. It’s just my name, RyanLee.com. I have a big thing I’m giving away is, I’m giving away a seminar. People pay $4,500 dollars to attend these type of programs, and I recorded the whole thing and there’s three DVD’s, about eight hours of content. All this stuff, literally, how to create your first information product from scratch. Everything from setting up your site to marketing to niche to blogging, everything. So you get that all for free, and you get a free month of my newsletter, The Recurring Revenue Report, where I go into detail about all of these programs.

So, go to RyanLee.com – I’ve got some cool things I’m working on, some new products. I’ve got the seminar, and just trying to simplify life, and focus, and spend more time with my growing family. And continue to do more interviews with Michael Dunlop.

Brilliant. Thanks very much, Ryan. It’s been a pleasure to have you here today.

It’s been my pleasure, and best of luck and keep doing what you’re doing.

If you have enjoyed this interview then check Ryan Lee’s Blog, Twitter, FREE DVD’s and FREE Interview Series!

I am info publisher, perhaps best known as a leader in Buzz/Viral Marketing… some call me an eccentric marketer, I like to make money, but I also like to do it by my rules, and I like to have fun also.

You are very well known on the Internet for buzz marketing and driving insane amounts of traffic to websites, how did you get into this?

Like most good things, I got in by accident. I moved to Spain 6 years ago, and didn’t speak a word of the language. I had nothing but a laptop and an Internet connection, so I studied, tested and learned as much as I could…. Mainly because I had nothing else to do.

I used to keep notes all over the place, and then one day I had an idea – why not create a blog so that I could store my notes and ideas online.
I never really intended to make it popular, it was more for my own amusement, 6 months later I had 245,000+ unique visitors in a 10 day period, and that really launched me into a totally different level.

What advice would you give bloggers trying to tap into buzz marketing and driving these insane numbers of traffic to their own website?

Stand out from the crowd.

The worst thing you can be is generic. Also, try and magnify aspects of your personality… for example, you can be super funny, controversial, loud, shy, whatever you want, just magnify it.

And remember, a person who is loved by 50% and hated by 50% will make a fortune, a person who 100% of people think is ok, will go broke.

You run a buzz marketing membership website with my father, Barry Dunlop. Why should my readers check BuzzProfits out?

It is the place where we store the techniques that quite simply, we don’t want to publish on an open blog.

They are that good.

Most people setup a site, do some posts, get the occasional comment, the occasional link etc… and the lack of progress frustrates them… they can’t figure out why some people have popular sites and make tons of cash, and they are not achieving this.

I know EXACTLY what makes great content, and what’s more, I know ways to achieve it with minimal effort and time, afterall, I have the attention span of a 6-year old boy that is high on sugar. So I engineer tricks and techniques so that I get maximum output from a minimum amount of time and effort… AND, all my tricks and techniques are free.

If this sounds interesting, then it is simple, join Buzzprofits.com
In fact, the first 100 people to join will get coached, and access to me personally… I charge up to $14,000 per DAY for intensive coaching, so to get access to me for $47 is frankly ridiculous.

It wont last for long, I can assure you of that.

On your blog you have some really crazy things such as claiming you have 6 billion RSS readers, website run by killer bunnies and you can’t get a review for less than a million dollars. Do you think by being so out their and “edgy” has helped you become a more successful blogger than others?

Absolutely.

I have killer bunnies on my blog for two reasons:

1) It has absolutely NOTHING to do with my subject
2) Nobody else has killer bunnies on their site

It might sound crazy, but I can’t go to an event without people coming up to me and saying things like: “Hey, you are the guy with the killer bunnies, I love your site!”

This wouldn’t happen if I had a boring site.

The 6-billion readers, $1 million dollar review etc are all my protests to the stuff that most webmasters and bloggers do.

I like to be different, make my own rules etc… so this is my way of having a little fun.

Running a Internet Business gives you choices and freedom to do what you want, when you want. What would you say the Internet Lifestyle is for you?

Options.

I love options!

When I watch tv I will often have 3 or 4 different remote controls on my lap, simply because I like to be able to choose whatever I want. It represents freedom for me.

So, in life, if I want to travel, then I can… if I want a new car, I can get one, if I want to stay in bed until noon, then I can… even last week, I was playing xbox360 with you, when really, we could have been working… but that is why we are both entrepreneurs. We have the freedom, flexibility and options that most people just don’t have.

You have had quite a lot of success online and because of this been invited to speak at seminars and on webinars. Do you think without the Internet you would be so loved and followed?

I doubt it.

I am more comfortable behind a keyboard, it gives me time to process my thoughts.

Speaking at events is fun though, I love to party, and I find the REAL networking happens at the bar.

I will be speaking all over the world in the next 12 months, it is very exciting. Webinars are cool as well, I enjoy those.

What would you say is the biggest single reason for your success?

My desire to not follow the crowd.

Most people try to fit in and copy what everyone else is doing, I like to be more of a maverick or renegade.

Also, my imagination.

A big reason for my success is because I surround myself with very intelligent people who are doing better than me, have you found doing this yourself to help you have better results? What tips would you give other Internet entrepreneurs looking to find like minded people to hang out with?

I appreciate the value in this more than ever, but I used to live in Spain, so it was very hard for me to find people of serious caliber over there.

Now I am back in the UK, and visiting the States regularly, I am learning loads.

I also am in Mastermind groups, both online and offline, there is huge value in those.

Twitter is currently a great way to network… but remember that Twitter is just the ignition, you need to take the relationship to the next level by getting on IM, email, the phone, meeting in person etc…

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

Outsource the things that you hate doing, model yourself on someone who is already where you want to be, and try the FREE ‘Max Traffic‘ program.

We launched Max Traffic today actually, basically, it is a free, 7-day course, that consists of 7 emails. Each email gives a technique to help anyone generate tons of traffic.

We teach some really crazy techniques, such as:

* Ethical Mind control

* How to STEAL traffic from your competitors and get them to thank you for it

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

Focus on your strengths, network like crazy, and live for today.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

“If you don’t value your time, nobody else will.”

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

We have loads of huge projects planned for the next six months… we are going to be creating a course that basically teaches people how to become famous in their niche… this will enable them to charge more, make more money, get tons of opportunities, speaking gigs etc…

It will be awesome!

The Internet lifestyle has given me the opportunity to lead the lifestyle most could only dream of, I get to do what I want, when I want! Here is a list of 8 cool things that the Internet lifestyle has permitted me to do.

Gives you time for more important things

Yesterday just after lunch I went out and did one of my favourite things in the whole world – Mountain Biking / Cycling! Quite often I climb to the top of South Downs here is Sussex, England (The South Downs is bunch of large hills running across the south of England).  You get the most amazing views and then comes the best part, the downhill, all I can say is, it is exhilarating! So whether your hobby is gardening or paint balling, the Internet lifestyle gives you time to do the things you really enjoy!

Here’s a photo of me on the South Downs yesterday – stunning isn’t it?

You get to hang out with really cool people

Have you managed to hang around people who run billion dollar companies? Celebrities? Some of the smartest and gifted young entrepreneurs in the world? Well I have and its super cool, If you want to see if who I have hung out with, check my about page!

You also get to do really cool things

You may be able to spot me behind Mike Filsaime , Yanik Silver , Mike Dillard and Rich Schefren . I have a quite a funny story about this adventure. At the time I didn’t know many of the BIG names in the Internet marketing industry and I actually sat next to Mike Filsaime on the plane. Unfortunately at the end of the Zero G flight I was sick (in a bag, unlike some people who managed to be sick while still in Zero G and had the lovely experience of seeing it float around before splashing down on the mats – guess that is why it is also called the Vomit Comit) Anyway I didn’t know who Mike was back then and on the way back down he was trying to talk to me and I basically told him to shut up, that’s like telling President Obama to shut up – LOL!

In fact Yanik Silver has started a business just to help Successful Entrepreneurs have so much more fun. These entrepreneurs get to do crazy things such as Baja Racing, White water rafting and even a chance to stay at Necker Island with Sir Richard Branson! If you are interested in any of the above, check out Maverick Business Adventures here!

Because nothing is holding me down, I can travel as often as I like. I proved that by doing some crazy fun trips last year including Volunteer work in Africa, Snowmobiling in Iceland and attending Seminars in America.

Here is a picture of me on a Glacier in Iceland:

Stroll out of bed long after everyone has rushed to work

I admit, its 1:50pm and I have just started work, that’s the great thing about being your own boss, you call the shots! Typically I only do an hour or so of work a day, could you just imagine how much money you would earn if you worked a whole day like the saps who have to do the 9 – 5!? Glad I will never have to experience that.

Freedom

You can do what you want, when you want! Nothing is holding you back, no financial worries and no set work hours, nothing! Here is a cool video by James of a bunch of Internet entrepreneurs being asked what they thinking the Internet Lifestyle is all about:

I Can Travel First Class

I now have around 120,000 air miles which should keep me going First Class a while longer and now because of this so called “Credit Crunch” its now cheaper then ever to live the high life! Here’s me chilling in the Virgin Atlantic lounge at Heathrow, note how stress free it can be:

You earn money while you sleep

Yes, pretty much everyday I wake up and get the lovely chore of accepting payments and looking at stats and its none of that working 13 hours a day to earn money while you sleep bullshit, I actually really don’t work very hard at all!

You can get everyone to do your work for you!

If I can outsource it, I do! I have a designer, a programming team, even a team of blog writers. Everything is self-run, even my content is written by other people, interviewees write the interview themselves and my forum is run by the users, my business is all on autopilot! I don’t even have to be around to pick up my paychecks, they do pretty much just come straight into my bank!

To summarize…

There really isn’t anything holding you back but a better future! You can teach a old dog new tricks so start your internet business today!

To your online success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. What’s your favourite part of the Internet Lifestyle?

PPS. The recession has only made me more money. Things can only get better!