041: How To Make Money With Every Online Business Model Out There With Pat Flynn

You are listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where I bring in successful bootstrapped business owners to teach us what strategies are working and what strategies are not. Now this isn’t one of these podcasts where we bring on famous entrepreneurs simply to celebrate their success. Instead I have them take us back to the beginning and delve deeply into the exact strategies they used early on to gain traction for their businesses.

Now if you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes and enter my podcast contest where I am giving away free one-on-one business consultations every single month. For more information, go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free 6 day mini-course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100,000 k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information.

Now before I begin, I just want to give a quick shout out to this episodes sponsor 99 designs. Now originally I wasn’t going to take on any sponsors at all, but 99 designs caught my eye because I suck at design. And in fact when I first started my online store back in 2007, the design for my website was terrible and I had absolutely no idea who to turn to. Now fast forward to today 99 designs is a site where you can provide a description of anything that you want designed whether it be a logo, a webpage, a t-shirt, pretty much anything and have dozens of designers compete to deliver you the best design possible. And by best I mean that you get to choose your favorite design among dozens of submissions from a pool of over 315,000 designers.

So if you are design challenged like I am, I highly recommend that you go over to 99designs.com/mywifequit and if you use that link and tell them that Steve from mywifequitherjob.com referred you, your design listing will be bolded, highlighted, given a prominent background, and featured before all regular listings so that your request stands out among all of the designers. And in fact this special offer is worth 99 dollars. So if you need a logo, website, t-shirt, business card, or anything designed go to www.99designs.com/mywifequit. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chiu.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have my buddy Pat Flynn on the show. Now if you don’t know who Pat Flynn is, you’ve probably been hiding under a rock. Either that or you went to Stanford and you don’t associate yourself with people that went to CAL. Now I know that for myself I tried my hardest to dislike Pat, but you know what the guy is just so damn likeable that I couldn’t help myself. Anyway Pat runs the popular blog, smartpassiveincome.com. And what’s interesting about Pat is that he’s done many different things when it comes to making money online.

Now last month he brought in almost 84,000 dollars from various sources such as affiliate marketing, iPhone apps, eBook sales software sales, and podcast, sponsorships, you name it and he’s done it. And I especially like about the guy, is that he is a family man. He is the proud father of two very cute kids and he’s actually got some great child care tips. Now did you know that if your child has the hiccups, all you have to do is take a piece of a napkin, lick it and then stick it on your child’s fore head. Yeah I didn’t know that either and I can’t wait to use that tip. Anyway pat is someone who I truly respect and we can all learn a whole lot from him so with that welcome to the show Pat.

Pat: Thank you for having me and go bears and the– you know I drank coffee right before this out of my CAL mug to just you know, celebrate this awesome moment. But no, like staying with you Steve like you know you being from Stanford, I was like ah ah, but you know I got to know you I think on last year and you are awesome. So you know colleges aside you know we are good friends, I’m happy to be here. Now the whole napkin thing people are probably like, what! What does that mean and…

Steve: It’s random.

Pat: Like quick story, when my son was born, you know we were at grandma’s house one time and grandma and grandpa were there and my son got the hiccups. And we were like “Oh it’s okay you know he has the– kids get the hiccups you know we read all about it, we heard from our friends.” And then grandpa was like “No, take a piece of napkin, wet it and put it on the fore head.” And we were like “what!” And then he did it, and then like after ten minutes he stopped hiccupping. And he’s like see it worked, and I’m like no he just stopped hiccupping.

And then the morph on his story was one time he got the hiccups again, so it’s like a month later. And then grandma put a napkin on his fore head and– because he was hiccupping. And he wouldn’t stop. He just kept going. And then grandpa comes down the stairs and he’s like. Well he said “what’s wrong?” “Keoni is hiccupping.” “You have it on wrong.” He moved it, seriously like a centimeter to the right and then he stopped hiccupping. We were like, man that’s just whatever. But you know they are old school Filipino traditional people and that’s kind of a big deal, and we let them have those little moments. So it’s kind of fun, but yeah I’m a family man at heart for sure, I know you are as well and happy to be here to talk about business with everybody.

Steve: Yeah you know, I know a lot of people in the audience probably know who you are already. But if you wouldn’t mind jus giving a very-very brief intro about how you got all started with the whole online thing, what your blog is all about, that would be awesome.

Pat: Yeah I mean I didn’t know that I was going to be here, like you know 10 years ago if you asked me what I was going to be doing, I would have say I would be a project manager at an architectural firm. I went to CAL and got a BA in architecture and things were going really well. I got a job coming out of college and it was probably my– it was like my dream job. Everything was going well, I was climbing the corporate ladder, I was the youngest person to be promoted to job captain in my firm. You know making decent salary at the time and then all of a sudden summer of 2008 comes along, and I get notice that I’m going to get laid off in a few months.

The economy was bad at that time and I just hoped that they would keep me because I was trying so hard, and I was doing a lot more things than I was asked of. But you know I got called into the office and told that I was going to get let go which was a really tough moment in my life. You know I had worked so hard, I went to school for five years and you know done all this stuff, dedicated and really committed to this industry and it was kicking me out.

Luckily, and what got me online was actually to help me pass an exam called the LEAD exam which stands for leadership and energy in environmental designs, a very niched exam that architects and designers and people in that industry take. I was having trouble passing that exam, so I created a website to help myself pass, so I could keep track of my notes and you know study my notes online while travelling, and also share with a couple of co-workers who were also studying for the exam. And so I passed before I got notice I was going to get laid off, then I got notice that I was getting laid off and then I discovered podcasts.

I listened to one podcast called ‘internet business mastery’ hosted by Jeremy and Jason. And on that show I heard one particular episode from a guy named Cornelius who was one of the guests who was talking about how he was making six figures a year teaching people how to pass the project management exam, the PM exam. And that’s when the light bulb went off for me and I said, hey I have this website that has helped a few of my co-workers and it’s helped me pass this exam. Maybe there is a way that I can turn this into a resource that can help people. May be there’s some way I could get paid for it too.

Well the first thing I did was I put a tool on the site, an analytical tool on the site to see how much traffic I was eventually going to get, or to see if there’s any at all and to my surprise there was literally thousands of people visiting that site every single day, and I had absolutely no idea. I still don’t even know how long it’s going for because I didn’t need an analytical tool before this point. And so I took a lot of action at that point. I ended up writing a study guide, an eBook and selling that on the site. I then launched an audio guide to go along with it. And I sort of became known as the quote expert in this space.

And even though I didn’t get 100% on the exam, and even though I didn’t consider myself an expert, I was considered an expert by everybody else out there who was studying because I had all this material on the site. And Google was pushing it up to the top of keywords that people were searching. So I launched my book in October of 2008, and this is again a study guide. An e-book completely all electronic including the delivery process was all automated. And that was something that I picked up from Tim Ferriss in “The 4 Hour Work Week.”. That first month I had made almost $8000, 7908.55 that I did and it looked big.

And that was just incredibly life changing. That was like three months worth– well you know three or four months worth of architecture income in just a month. And it was– the most incredible part about it was you know like I would wake up the next morning and there’d be sales. That was just so eye opening for me, that’s when I created smartpassiveincome.com. Just to– I just wanted to share with the world all the amazing stuff that has happened. All the stuff I discovered after getting laid off, so that people wouldn’t have to go through that sort of– so I could just share a thing and people could discover it before having to go you know through something like a lay off.

And ever since then, beginning October 2008 I’ve just been blogging and I started podcasting, I have a YouTube channel as well. Just showing as much information as I can to help people create a side income, quit their jobs, whatever it is they want to do online. I give them the sort of load down on how that happens in a very authentic, transparent way because I not only talk about what works, I talk a lot about what doesn’t work and I try everything. I sort of consider myself the crash test. I mean I’m in a very unique and blessed position to be able to try things out and report on how it works and how it doesn’t. And even if it doesn’t work, it’s always a good lesson and learning experience for everybody else who is following along.

And that’s why now, now I’m doing public speaking and getting on stage talking about this stuff. I’ve been approached by publishers and you know it’s just insane, the journey I’ve been on. I’m so-so blessed and thankful. And you know I found that the- you know if we’re going to be talking about business today the best business model I found in this sort of– I just stumbled upon the art by accident was just, give as much as you can and provide solutions for people who need it. And when you can do that, when you can serve your audience, I feel like your earnings are a byproduct of how well you do that.

Steve: Absolutely and were going to get into all of that and you know like I mentioned in your intro, you’ve tried a ton of different business ideas when it comes to making money online, and that’s actually something I really admire about you. You’ve got an open mind, you’re creative as hell, well you know for a cow guy and you take action. Now my audience is primarily composed of people who are kind of very interested in making money online. My personal specialty is ecommerce, blogging, and info products. And you have experience in just about everything else, so I think between the two of us we should have almost everything covered I would imagine.

Pat: I think so.

Steve: Yeah.

Pat: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So here’s what I thought we would do today. You know I often get asked what the best business model is in terms of making money. And that’s actually a very broad and far reaching statement, there’s a lot of primaries involved, but I think it would be very interesting to get your personal take in all the various business models today. So sound good?

Pat: Sounds good and you are right. That question is definitely you know far reaching. I mean what is best to you. I think what is best is going to be different for everybody, so that’s why it’s cool; we’re going to be talking about all these different things. For those of you listening you might be able to discover one that sort of fits you. And what fits one person might not fit another, so you know the cool thing is there are all these options available. So just listen, see what sort of resonates with you and then you could sort of go from there and learn about that.

Steve: And keep in mind that Pat has hands on experience with all of these different business models. So you know it’s not like he is teaching based on something that he’s read. He’s actually gone and done these things. So let’s start with affiliate marketing. Now last month you made over 55,000 affiliate marketing alone. Now for me I do okay with affiliate marketing, but your marketing skills are incredible, so here’s my question. Let’s say you had to start over from complete scratch. You just got laid off from your architecture firm. Would affiliate marketing be a go to strategy in the beginning and if so, how would you have gone up building this revenue stream?

Pat: I think it would be part of a go to strategy at the beginning. I mean the cool thing about affiliate marketing is that you are able to provide solutions for people without having to create those solutions yourself. Because you get you know the way it works is you get a commission every time you sell somebody else’s product. And the cool thing is there are people out there who have problems, there are people out there who are building solutions that you could be the person to connect those two you and you could generate an income.

The most important part about this, the reason why it works so well for me is because you know I work on primarily building a key and real relationship with those in my audience. So I know exactly what their problems, pains, and issues are. So I know exactly what solutions to provide whether I create those solutions myself or use affiliate marketing to provide the solutions from other people. But also you know in affiliate marketing, it’s easy technically to do.

Right it’s easy to find a product, you can go on Amazon right now and find a product and become an Amazon associate which is their fancy name for an affiliate. And then you can just send people through a particular link and every time people purchase you get 5-8% or whatever the case may be. Some industries they pay higher depending on what the product is, some 50, sometimes 100% actually. They give you 100% commission because they know you are going to get that lead in and then they are going to be able to sell even more things down the road. So you know you can make good money that way. It’s good and easy technically, but to do it right and have it become a part of a long term business model is very difficult.

And that’s why I focus primarily on the relationships because when you can focus on the relationship, the ability to recommend something and actually have people take action on it is much easier. You know it’s like if you– anybody you have a great relationship with, a friend or a family member, if you have a great relationship with them, if you tell them about something that’s cool, they are going to take your recommendation. There’s very little selling involved.

But if you don’t have a relationship and you’ve probably you know those of you listening, you might be subscribed to some e-mail lists for example where they are not focused on building a relationship, they are focusing on the best copy writers, all the incredible sales tactics out there, stuff that I don’t know or I don’t do those things very well. So I let the relationship take control of where the transactions happen. And I also let the results from these products work as well. So another big thing that I do is make sure that any product that I recommend to my audience is a product that I have used, and a product that I know is going to help. And I also treat that product as if it were my own. I talk about it like it was my own; I provide support for it like it was my own.

Steve: I did not know that aspect; you actually answer questions about the products that you refer?

Pat: Absolutely, like why wouldn’t you do that because people who have questions, like if you open up the fact that you could answer questions; A it shows that you care about this product and you know that it’s helpful. But B the people who actually email you or ask questions about it, they are hot leads, they are thinking about getting it. And if you can provide them the answers and show them that A you know, and B that it’s the right fit for them, then of course they are going to get it.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: And also you’ve given them something as far as value and they are going to give you something back in return, and you know the cool thing about affiliate marketing is it doesn’t cost any extra for the customer to get, you know for you to get a commission too. So you know in terms of overall strategy, it’s a great strategy because it’s rather you know it can be done rather quickly as far as finding the right products. But building the audience is going to take a little bit of time, but if you do build the audience, even if the audience is small, you know I would implement affiliate marketing in your business right from the start if possible.

Steve: So let’s talk about the building audience part. So would you just start a blog, if you want to start affiliate marketing?

Pat: I think the first thing I would start doing is researching a market and trying to find a niche with a problem that I can solve. Whether I know the solutions for that audience already like I did with smart passive income, you know I started building an audience over time with my own experience. Or something like green exam county, which is just basically a resource of information that’s there to help people pass a certain exam, or you know be able to you know really knock out a certain pain that people have. I think that’s the best thing to do is if there’s a pain out there, if you know people need help with something, and if you can provide that solution for them and make it easy and convenient, then they’re going to like who you are, they are going to resonate with you, and take your recommendations and potentially buy products from you.

Blogging is a great way to do that. It’s a great platform for building an audience, but there are other ways of doing it too. For example a podcast, a lot of businesses have started on iTunes, the internet. There’s this mastery guys, they didn’t start with a blog, they started with a podcast. They had a blog to sort of become the place where the RSS feed lives and you know all that stuff, but they weren’t focused on creating blog content or getting subscribers for their blog. They are focused on their podcast meeting me. And that’s one way to do it. People like [Inaudible] [00:16:59].

You know they have primarily a video strategy and they are sort of bloggers, and that’s how you know– whatever the platform may be pick one that resonates with you the most, and makes it sort of comfortable for you to work on. For me it was blogging because I wasn’t comfortable with my voice, I wasn’t comfortable with putting my face on camera at first, so it made sense to start with that. But I since brunched out and sort of tried all the different ways, and actually they’ve all combined to become this big brand that I have now which is really cool.

But in terms of building an audience you know the most important thing to realize is you don’t have to serve everybody. You know I was on [Inaudible] [00:17:33] and he asked me a great question. Kind of threw me of a little bit, but it was a great question. And I was quite proud of my answer too because it was off the cuff, but he had asked me you know because he knows I have all of these different sites and little niches like Food Truckr niche, security guards site and Green Exam Academy, lead exam site. He’s like “pat, those are all great, but how are you helping the most people, you know why won’t you do something like you know– why don’t you create the next excel something that everybody uses, why don’t you change the world that way.” And I was like, well you know what, like I might not be able to change the entire world, but I am changing some people’s worlds. And those worlds are those little niches that I am targeting.

And the real thing to think about and the saying that I say over and over again is you know the riches are in the niches. And if you can become an expert at one thing, when people talk about that one topic in a conversation, you want to be the person, the ultimate resource that always pops up in conversation. And you don’t actually have to have that big of an audience to make a huge difference in your life. I’d recommend everybody to read an article by Kevin Kelly called 1000 true fans. The idea behind that is you only need a 1000 people. A 1000 people out of this world of six point how many billion to just become a true fan of you and what you do and what you provide. A 1000, Imagine a 1000 people paying you a 100 dollars a year for something. That’s six figures right there.

Steve: Yeah that’s– you know when you break things down like that, it makes it much more obtainable. So what sort of strategies would you suggest just to get that first thousand subscribers?

Pat: Well I mean I think you know the research is really important. It’s like that saying by George Washington,” if you give him six hours to cut down a tree, he’ll spend the first four hours sharpening his axe. Like the research is really-really key there. And so trying to find that market you know actually going out and not just– you don’t want to create a blog about a topic that you think is something that’s going to be useful to people. You want to know that it’s going to be useful for people, so you want to validate it. If there’s competition out there, that’s good.

Don’t start a blog because nobody else is doing it. Start a blog that you know you’re going to be able to provide better information that people who are out there are already providing. Because the fact that there’s competition means that there’s a market out there. And you’ll be able to discover by looking at all the competition where the holes are.

Find out what people are talking about on those blogs or for those products or whatever it is that you at are selling. What’s missing, what is missing from the customer experience? Become a customer yourself or be a reader yourself and see what is lacking and then come in and provide everything else that’s missing. And that is your advantage of coming in late in the game. Quite a people feel like they are behind, but you actually have an advantage because a lot of people are stuck in their own ways or the old ways of doing things. And you can come in with a fresh look and you might think that you have a disadvantage, but you have an advantage coming in late.

Steve: Okay, so let’s say the content is all there. Let’s say you’ve done your research, you’re writing about stuff that isn’t covered in any another blog, and you are standing out. So how do you get that initial burst of traffic?

Pat: Well you want to connect with other key members. Like I have just talked about you know discovering who your competitors are. They aren’t actually your competitors; they are people that you want to become friends with. That you want to network with and just try and help as much as possible, and have them help you as well. Because I think the idea here, if you are going to come in here fresh with all this information, but you want other people to know that you have a different take, a different angle on it, something to add to what they already have that allows you to do things like guest posts or guest video posts, or to record guest posts on interviews for those particular people who have and share the same target audience as you, that’s a great strategy.

You know the more you write of course and the more you publish and at least if you are conscious about that basic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, overtime those articles are going to be found in Google as well. And you know just making sure that they are great articles that when people come across, they can’t help but share it. You know those types of things, but I think the most important thing you know people always ask me, what’s the 80-20 of traffic building? It’s honestly getting to know everybody else out there who has your target audience too, and building a real true relationship. Just like you and I Steve, like you are sharing my stuff now and I’m sharing– I’ve shared your stuff before on online blog and you know Derrick Hopper from Social Triggers.

He got really big really quickly by providing value for people like myself and Chris Brogan and other huge names, by actually coming on and sharing convergence advice for us. Actually things that worked and actually we saw results from. I couldn’t help but share that, and actually promote him, and you know he and I have been best friends ever since. And so, you know, things like that will go on a very-very-very long way.

Steve: So how do you know when to approach these people, and how do you actually approach people who are just so much higher on you in terms of the hierarchy?

Pat: Well you can do what you can to just get on their radar at first. You don’t want to obviously send a cold in and then be like “hey what’s up I am a new guy in your niche, and I’m going to beat you,” like you don’t want to say things like that obviously. So the cool thing to do is to just hit them up on twitter, say that you are a fan, that you like what they do and you are also talking about and are interested in the same topics. You know don’t act or ask for anything, at least not at first and do what you can. If there’s anything that’s missing on their site or something that’s wrong or like an error or you know a page is broken or something. Those small things will go a long way in people– just sorts of understanding who you are and to remember you.

You might even you know mention them every once in a while on your own site, see those track back links, re-tweet their stuff every once in a while. Like the people that I know who follow my blog, I’ve gotten to know them very well through what they have done for me, and I can’t help but do things back for them as well. A video is also good too. Anybody who sends me a video I can’t help but watch that, like I feel bad if I don’t watch it, because people have taken the time. And even though it’s probably quicker than actually sending an email, there’s just something about the video that you know I know it makes an impact on me now but I say that and everybody is going to probably send me a video.

Steve: I was just thinking the same thing.

Pat: But no I’m just being honest though, it works, and that’s how you can sort of build a relationship with people out there, and I think you know, and you and I know this, going to conferences. There’s just something about meeting people in person that really makes a big difference. I mean I have met a lot of colleagues, people who have become you know JB partners with me at conferences. You know when in between sessions in the hallways or even at the networking events at night. You know you just get to know each other and you know you never know who you might click with until you go out there and you know just start talking to people. So I think that’s really cool.

One thing I forgot to mention as far as traffic I think this– and this was a big mistake I made in the beginning was I didn’t focus on building my email list. I didn’t start with Green Exam Academy, my lead exam site until about a year after I started selling my book. I didn’t even create a list of customers, which sucked because when I started to create new products I had– I didn’t have anybody but that day’s blog readers to sell to. I could have made much more money, and actually provided more value and serve my audience better by collecting a list and being able to share these new things that would help people if I had built that list. Same thing for Smart Passive Income, my blog started in October 2008; I didn’t start an email list until January 2010, almost a year and a half later, because I didn’t realize exactly how important it was, and it was such huge mistake.

And the reason I bring it up in terms of traffic building is because even if you have like a hundred people on your list, I mean imagine getting a room with a hundred people in it. That’s actually a lot of people you know and you might not think that 100 people is a lot, but that is actually a lot of people. And if you were to provide value for them and that gives you an opportunity to connect with each and every one of them. Again another advantage of being small and starting out and they are going to become big fans. They are going to notice that they are going to get more attention from you than some of the bigger guys because you don’t have a big audience yet. And they’ll be fans for life at that point if you could provide value for them.

And not only that when you come up with a new post or some new resources, something you share it with your email list. What happens is people come to that post not because of how easy it is to implement sharing, or to sort of encourage sharing through social sharing buttons and things like that. People who come from your email list to your blog; nothing gives you more traffic than your email list seriously.

This is something that I have recently found out too because I haven’t been using my email list as much. But when you come out with a new post, send an email about it, people come over and they share it. And what happens when people share it, new people discover it, new people come on your list, and the next time you come up with a post, more people are coming back to your post. And then you are sharing it more. And then it just becomes this growing sort of cycle that just takes off. And you know at first you are not going to see huge numbers coming from that particular strategy, but it just rows exponentially, especially if you continue to provide great value and awesome epic content.

Steve: So you’ve given us a lot of tips just now so– but you know what I found that happens is a lot of people just get overwhelmed with the whole bunch of different things coming at them all at once. So let’s say you were just to start from scratch. What are like two things that you would just focus on from the very beginning?

Pat: Okay, two things I would focus on and try to do is I would say okay if I’m just starting out completely from scratch before anything in terms of research, I want to talk to 25 people in one industry. Pick an industry whatever it is; get on the phone with those people if you can. Pick something in small business. The reason I say start with that is because those people you know obviously have things that they do every day that they can potentially find– they potentially need a solution for. Those are people that have money of course and there are several instances of that type of business around the US as well. So you’d be able to get more and gather more data from those people.

But I would just try to discover, you know have a real conversations with them. Say “Hey I’m this person, I’m looking at providing solutions for people in your industry, I’m just curious like what are some of things that you have to do every day that you hate.” You know and just start to sort of– it’s called like idea hunting, or data mining, try idea mining. Try to get deep into really what the pains, problems, and issues of these people are. And once you talk to a few people, at the end of the talk like it could be hard to get on the phone. I mean where is the phone; we don’t even use the phone any more. Which is why I think it’s cool to do it now. Because now a lot of people are getting these types of calls, so you give them a stand out.

And then once you start to find these sorts of patterns and these things that you could create a solution for, pick one. Pick one problem and see what you can do to provide a solution for it. Whether that’s a piece of software and typically in small business it would be a piece of software that would help them. Just pick one, one problem. Again, focus on one thing and create a minimum viable product for it, the MVP.

This is sort of startup lingo now we are talking about. And this is something that is just the first iteration that solves that one problem in a very simple way. But because it solves that problem the people who you have spoken to and the people in that niche are going to be really thankful for it. But then you could work with those people to make it even better, to add features to it, and work with them. And you know I actually had a guy named Danni Maxwell in episode 46 of the Smart passive income podcast. He talked about this very topic and even gave us examples of people doing these kinds of things. And I even had a person come on later, I forget what episode but a guy called Carol Mendiola who talked about actually listening to that episode. Putting this into action he quit his job at Tesla to do work full time now online as a result of this sort of strategy.

And the reason I mention this is because software to me is really interesting now. It’s something I’m doing right now; I just came up with my first software product. And it’s really fun. It’s really cool. And I like the idea of you know the cool thing about software too, even though it’s a little bit more difficult because you are going to have to spend a little more money upfront to find a developer and to do all this research and stuff. The cool thing is you know when people buy your solution, they get it right then and there, and they are able to use it. And if it’s something that they need over and over again, you can potentially– you have people pay a recurring income for it every month you know.

Steve: Yeah you know I was actually going to get to that. I mean we are still talking about affiliate marketing, but you know since you started talking about software. I know in the past and you know I have a technical background, so creating an iPhone app or a piece of software has kind of always been on the back of my mind. So let’s talk about iPhone apps first because you haven’t actually talked about that in quite a while.

Pat: Yeah it’s been a while because the markets been pretty crazy. So I have an app company actually, an iPhone app company that was started actually right after I started my blog. I was just so like stopped about doing things online; I’m like let’s do everything. And so my buddy and I we heard a story about a guy called Joe Comb [phonetic] who had made like 40 million dollars with this one application.

Steve: Iphone or is it something like that.

Pat: Yes exactly, and you’re like what! That’s like so dumb but awesome at the same time like maybe we could just experiment with this and see what happens. So we ended up creating a company for iPhone specifically, and we hired out all the development which was an interesting process. I mean we wouldn’t have been able to do it any other way, but we got really excited and ended up hiring the first developer at the lowest price possible, which ended up costing us a lot more money and a lot more time. So it was a big learning experience later down the road, we decided to actually spend time screening the people who wanted to work on our projects and things like that. We had used elands.com at the time, the company did really well, I mean we were making upwards of 20-25000 dollars a month with about 10 applications when we first started, but when we first started there was only about 50-100,000 apps in iTunes. Now there’s…

Steve: Yeah.

Pat: Quite more and the app environment has changed. All of our apps that were very successful before sort of just fallen down and out of the radar and you know it’s a lot harder now. And I think, if you want to succeed in apps now, especially on the iPhone you build a niched app, build an app for a particular community that like I said earlier consumer fashion just completely solves a particular problem, or because what we were doing is we were creating similar apps to iPhone. Not forwarding apps, but entertainment apps that we would hope go viral and people would pick up.

And some of them went sort of semi viral, but when you can be the number one app for a specific type of group of people, that’s when you’re in the money especially for a long run, because then sell more apps or create more apps for that same group and you’ll be able to get feedback from the people who are already customers, and you know serve them just completely serve them. I had a guy who I interviewed– his name is Mike Dunin. He is the one who built an app called speech with Milo, Milo is a mouse character, and their apps would do speech therapy for kids essentially.

Steve: Wow, okay.

Pat: And they were making 30,000 dollars a month from that.

Steve: Right, well that actually solves a real problem; it’s not an entertainment app.

Pat: Right.

Steve: So I can, can kind of see how that would work, but overall how do you feel about the viability of kind of this business model, and I’m just curious how come you haven’t created any more apps since then?

Pat: You know to be honest I’ve just had more things to focus on, so many other things to focus on.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: You know that’s why. My business partner as well he has another company that he works with, and we just haven’t had the time to really go deep into the market research and try to find the niche and that whole thing. And we were just kind of– it was built experimentally and we have other things going on. So that’s why we haven’t really put much focus into it, but currently I’m putting a lot of focus into software specifically a word press plug in that is actually a podcast player as well.

Steve: Yes, let’s talk about that, so let’s talk about this podcast player. I actually took a look at it and it’s actually pretty incredible. So let’s talk about the effort and the monetary investment, and everything that it took to get launched.

Pat: Yeah, so it’s interesting because I came up with another podcast about five months ago called ask Pat, and this was a five day a week podcast where I take a voicemail question from the audience and answer it five days a week– a different question five days a week. And I asked my team, we need a player or something that can make it easier to find new episodes, because these are sort of shorter episodes and I wanted people to be able to quickly scroll through all the episodes to see which ones might be relevant to them at the time. All those like cue type situation, and so we developed– we actually have a UX guy named Dustin who is awesome. He is our user experience guy, and we asked him to create a sort of a podcast player that would accomplish these goals for us and look good and integrate well on the site for me.

And if you go to ask Pat.com right now, you’ll see it right there being used right now and it’s great. It’s the fanciest player out there, does a lot more things than just play, and after all that came out, I had about 50 or 100 emails come in and say Pat like I want that player, where can I get it? I’m like sorry guys, it’s custom, sorry guys it’s custom, custom. I was like wow this is cool, like people want my thing, but it’s mine nobody can have it. And then I was like wait, people were telling me essentially that they would pay for this. So you know a light bulb went off, and so we decided to put some effort into taking this sort of custom code, and turning it into a WordPress plug-in for easy distribution.

And we just launched it last month finally after about two months of development. And you know putting all, making it easy to customize and things like that and making it easy to use, you know use a short code and just make it real easy for people who pick it up. We also had to do extensive testing on different themes and things like that. So monetary speaking in terms of investment you know a little bit of money was put into just creating that thing in the first place, I would say about 5000 dollars.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: Before turning it into a plug in. That was just for me, and then turning it into a plug in I would say maybe another $10,000 of time.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: Because I wanted– I have a developer and he’s spent a lot of time on it in the testing of it. Actually it’s took most time because I knew, and I talked to a lot of people when getting into this software thing especially WordPress plug-in. I had talked to people like Michael Dunlop who did– not mountain monster, that site…

Steve: No, he’s got something domination, purpose domination.

Pat: Purpose domination, thank you. And then I talked to Glenn Alsop who did opt-in skin. And a bunch of people, and they were like Pat, make sure your customer service team is on par because you’re going to get people who have compatibility issues and all these stuff, and I was like how bad can it be really and they were like it’s bad, just be ready for it. And so we spent even more time making sure the customer service experience was good. We had talked to other people while it was being developed to see what their initial thoughts were about it, and which was great for validation and making quick little changes of things that were not obvious to us, but obvious to other people who were outside which was good.

And we launched it last month, we decided to launch with a beta team or beta group meaning we’re going to limit the numbers of licenses for it. And the reason for that was because we wanted to make sure that again our customer service team could handle it. Because even though we tested it extensively, we knew there were going to be bugs and there were, but we are also very honest upfront with the people “hey you guys are going to join a beta group, 250 licenses only,” which does create some sort of scarcity which is good. People– if there’s scarcity involved there are going to be inclined to make a quicker decision and buy, but we were also very honest “hey guys there might be bugs,” and there were and that sort of sassy expectation upfront.

And I think what’s cool about it is it makes people feel like they are part of the process too. When people become part of the beta group, they know that they have an influence on the direction of where this particular piece of software is going, and actually where it is now based on where it was last month, it’s just– it’s not completely overhaul, but a lot of new features were added, a lot of compatibility issues were taken care of, a lot of bugs squashed, and it’s so much better now because we just launched to 250 people. And we are about to re-launch it again, actually we launched it again today exclusively for Johnny Dumas’s community, paradise you know his…

Steve: Podcast in paradise, yeah.

Pat: It went really-really well, and so it’s selling extremely well. I keep getting emails from people saying when are you going to open this to the public, it’s great. So we are sort of working with people to add new features, and it’s really cool because there’s nothing like it out there in the market which is great, but more than that I think people who are a part of it now feel like they have influence. Which is the whole part of– this is the whole theme strutted model. I’m actually “The lean startup” by Eric which is a fantastic book to read whether you are doing software or not, it’s a great strategy.

I mean that same lean strategy when creating info products and things like that, membership sites you know working with a small beta group to do group consulting or group coaching. Those– validating it with a small group, but then having that small group influence where it goes. You can then reopen it and it’s much better, is so much better than just putting everything into it at first, having them not use all those things, and having spent money to put it out there. Plus you can get out there now instead of waiting till later.

Steve: You know I had a quick question, when you were talking about iPhone apps you mentioned that you picked the cheapest developer and everything and everything was a disaster. How did you change– how did you find a developer for the software project and was that whole development cycle smooth?

Pat: The development cycle was fairly smooth or relatively smooth.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: There is always going to be hiccups and things like that, and I think you just have to expect that. I mean it’s good to have a date– you know a launch date and then sort of rewind from there again. This is when you want the task force to come out before that when we want to be able to see the Photoshop version of it, like all that stuff is really important. But it’s not going to always be on schedule, it’s just good to expect that, but you know if you work with somebody for like I think we paid 1000 dollars for an app that was the first one. And they said it was going to be done in three weeks, it actually ended up taking 4000 dollars and three months.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: That as opposed to working with a great developer you know there was only a week or two delay in the actual time of everything, and just the quality of it is much better.

Steve: And so this particular developer, so you’re not a technical guy right Pat?

Pat: Not really, no.

Steve: So how do you convey how you want it to work to a developer being non technical?

Pat: Yeah, great question. Whether you’re doing iPhone apps, creating a membership site or putting themes on your site, or work on a piece of software, fantastic question, wire frame it. That means actually draw it out, and you don’t have to be an artist, you can just sketch it out. But actually have it drawn out in every single part of it sort of, and then that was another mistake and probably partly our fault in the beginning, why my first iPhone apps did poorly as far as that experience of developer because we were just like, hey in an email we are like we want to do this, this and this and it should be like this,” and then we got the first version and we are like this isn’t what we were thinking about. But then we looked at it, we’re like “oh, okay it actually does what we said, but that’s not how we meant it,” let’s get more detailed this time. And then even then the next iteration was like oh no, no, no that’s not what we meant, but you know they did it, they just misinterpreted it.

And so the best thing to do is draw it out you know what does every part of that screen look like? And then where does that button go? What does it look when people land on that? What does the action look like? Get really detailed with it and it’s going to take time, but what is going to happen when you that, when you wire frame whatever that piece of software is that you want or whatever the design of your website looks like, when you begin to wire frame it, you get to understand exactly what happens, and what the user experiences is like. And you get to think about all the different pieces that you might not have thought about when you were just explaining it to somebody in an email. It’s going to save you so much time down the road even though there’s that time investment upfront, because the developer will have no questions, there will be no issues as far as what things you will do when a person does what.

Steve: That is very good advice. I was just curious what you were going to say because as a kind of like a developer, kind of a hardware designer myself, like we always spend an enormous amount on specifications. And I was just curious what it was from a non technical perspective on how that works, and yeah absolutely everything you said makes perfect sense. You want to specifically specify every single aspect of your app, so that’s there is no misunderstandings about what you wanted it to do.

Pat: Right.

Steve: So..

Pat: Right, right.

Steve: So you know we still have another couple of business models to cover here. I want to talk about your niche sites.

Pat: Sure.

Steve: A while back you kind of became famous for your Niche Site Duel and that’s when you created security guard training. And then today you started foodtruckr.com, a niche site about catering to the food trucking community. Can you talk a little bit about the business model there, and what kind of the end goal is with that site, and how are you going to make money with that?

Pat: Yeah, I mean niche sites are similar to what we are talking about, but they are created in a more scientific way I guess you can say, based mostly primarily of off keyword research. So the idea is to build the site that you know is going to serve people based on what people are looking for in Google. And you can use tools like the Google keyword planner just free if you set up for adwords, you won’t have to pay for anything, you can just use that keyword on adwords. There are other tools like long tail pro, there’s another one called market samurai.

There’s a bunch of other ones out there, but they will essentially tell you know how many people are searching for different keywords, and then you can discover from there which keywords are more competitive or not, meaning is there room for some new site to come on the first 10 spots of the first page of Google, or do you feel like you would be able to create something better than what exists. And if so, then you have the potential to create a site about that. Now that’s just one component, that’s just the research part of it and a scientific way of approaching that research, but there’s also the idea of building the site and creating content for that site.

So you know it’s interesting because you could find a great keyword, but it may not be something that you’re very interested in. So for a while my strategy was to just build sites based off of these keywords, and even though it might not be a topic I know much about, I’d go and find out what that information is to help. Some people hire writers and just don’t even care about what content is on there. They just hire writers that seem to know what they are talking about. That’s not what I did, I found out what the added information was. So the first experiment which was done in 2010, I did keyword research and I found a keyword security guard training, which was relatively highly searched for in Google. It was searched for per month I think it’s 6400 times per month.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: And then the keyword competitiveness, it wasn’t very competitive and doing more research I found that there wasn’t very many sites talking about security guard training, or doing it in a very organized way. So I knew that there was sort of this hole that I could fill, but in terms of what content to put on the site, and doing even more research I found that every state in the US has a different set of requirements, or sort of things that a person has to do to become an official security guard in that state. It’s different in every state, and at first I was like “oh man this sucks, like this is going to take me forever,” but then I realized “wow maybe this is why there isn’t a site out there because it’s actually a little bit of work.” And what I ended up doing was was calling security guard companies in each of those states. Actually I did like the first 20 and just asking, “Hey I’m interested in becoming a security guard. What do I need to do in your state in order to do that?”

And so I was just getting that information directly from who I would normally need to go to if I was actually going to become a security guard in that state. And so I got the exact right information. I just easily organized it online, shared some links to you know government sites for those states if they were relevant, and then moved on to the next one. And when I got to about 20 my site ended up becoming number one in Google for that particular keyword security guard training, and then the traffic started coming in, and people started finding me not just on the home page, but all the content that I wrote for those 20 states, people ended up finding me through just a long tail keywords that I had written in those particular articles.

And again, I think I had an advantage not knowing anything about it, because I put myself in the shoes of somebody who would actually use this site, somebody who is a complete beginner, and I can talk in beginner terms. You know there is this whole idea of the curse of knowledge, if you know something it’s hard to know what it’s not like to know that thing anymore. So it’s hard to teach sometimes because of that, but because I was coming in fresh, it was easy for me to sort of know what it was like to come in fresh, because I was coming in fresh, and just reporting on everything that I was learning along the way. And then when I got to 20, I actually made a mistake of just stopping. I was like yeah, I got to number one in Google, I’m done. And the site started to make money through adsense actually. I had ad sense on there the moment I had traffic coming in which is some code…

Steve: Okay.

Pat: You can put on your site serves as ads for Google and companies you pay auctions to get served on sites that are rolling to that keyword, and I was making about 800-2000 dollars a month at that point and it was great. And then I was like “wow maybe I should finish the rest of the states.” So that’s when I actually hired somebody, and I was like “hey you need to call these states, and then write articles that look like this one,” the ones I had already written. And I paid somebody an evening it was about 1000 bucks to do that. So talking about 1000 dollars or one month worth of that sites income already and re-investing in my business, and then they filled out the rest of the articles. So I had all 50 states, and then I had that same person actually call all 50 states again to discover what it would take to become an armed security guard, so someone who actually carries a firearm.

Steve: Sure.

Pat: Because that was sort of the second highest search for keyword was armed security guard training. So I wanted articles for every state, so then now I have over 100 articles on the site, and the site has been number one in Google for almost four years now, and it’s making about 2500-3500 dollars a month purely on auto pilot, I don’t touch it at all.

Steve: And so in regards– I remember that Niche Site Duel, and a lot of the tactics that you use to get that to rank kind of no longer apply, and so how do you feel about– do you feel that Google is kind of effectively making niche sites a little bit less desirable to start today?

Pat: I think– you know that’s a great question sort of talks about the part I left out is to help it gets to number one on Google, it’s just not the content I wrote which did help because it was good unique content– stuff people were searching for, but I implemented a lot of back linking strategies. So back linking is a way for Google to understand what sites are important linking to particular keywords. So Steve if you were to link to my site that would be a back link from you to me and vice versa if I link to you, you would have a back link from my site, and that sort of counts as a vote in Google’s eyes, sort of like somebody vouching for your site. So I was using strategies like creating articles and putting them up on articles directories and linking back to my site. Google was very-very young in terms of how that worked and what actually counted as a vote.

Now it’s only links that come from relevant sites and you know those strategies actually do still work, but they are also more easily found by Google, and I wouldn’t risk that anymore. That’s why foodtruckr.com is sort of my new experiment that I started last year, where I am serving the food truck industry, again based of off keyword. And then I’m doing all I can to research and create content for this industry, and I actually fell in love with this industry ever since doing research because they are amazing people. People on food trucks– they work like 18 hours a day to serve food, and it’s amazing you know they have such– like they have an amazing entrepreneurial spirit. So anyway the strategy here though is just to stay connected with everybody in my audience, and to have them you know subscribe you know I have an email list now about 3500 food truck owners…

Steve: Okay.

Pat: Who are following the blog which is cool. I also have a podcast that goes along with it. And again creating an extremely high quality content that is relevant to them now that they are also asking for information about, and doing what I can to find and research that information as well so…

Steve: Okay.

Pat: Focusing mostly on that and not doing any sort of forced back linking and you know it took a little bit longer, but I am sitting number one or number two for Google for a lot of relevant keywords like how to start a food truck, how awesome is that.

Steve: Nice, okay.

Pat: Food truck business plan and actually in terms of my fixation, I just experimented. I just put out on some site a couple months ago to see what would happen. That’s not the primary strategy here, but I was able to generate 100 bucks just in 10 minutes of putting quote up there which is pretty cool. So 100 bucks a month now, but we are actually launching a book this month.

Steve: Wow.

Pat: We’re launching a book, so we spent a lot of time putting the book together and that has actually a sort of supped up version of a combination of posts that have been written for food truck and that’s going to be sold on the site, and we’ll see how it goes, but we already have an interest list of people who are interested in the book of 150 people.

Steve: Nice, that is very important.

Pat: Yeah, it’s definitely getting to email list, we start from the beginning this time. And it should be pretty cool, the book is not going to be on Amazon, it’s going to be one that we’re selling directly from the site, because we have already built that audience and we’re going for profitability. Amazon is great for you know getting exposure and taking advantage of their ranking system and things like that, but we built an audience already which is great. We have about 3000 Facebook fans. The site’s doing really good, it has become what I want it to be which is sort of the ultimate resource for food truck owners, it just– it’s just taking more time.

Steve: Sure.

Pat: But it is reflecting exactly what smart passive income did, and what [inaudible 00:50:10] did. Both of those sites took about a year and a half until it really started to make a dent in terms of income, and this one we’re at about almost an year now. And so we’ll take some time, and I really do believe in it, and the content is great, so I know it’s going to work in the end.

Steve: You know I was just about to comment that it seems like you’ve taken kind of the authority blog approach to your food trucker site, whereas security guard info, or security guard HQ was more like kind of more like the– you know you target a niche, try to just get to rank. It sounds like you’re going the more traditional route with content– really great content, building an audience, and then selling to that audience. Is that accurate?

Pat: Yes, yes absolutely, and because of the research we did, I mean this book is only one of several like several dozen business opportunities in this particular niche from software. I mean imagine creating a software that would allow food truck owners to discover you know what their inventory is like, or where to go to get the best produce, or what’s the most fresh, and what’s in season, or the nearest mechanic. Because one thing we found out was actually food truck owners– their food trucks break down all the time. That was one thing that almost every food truck owner we had talked to said, and we were like wow what if we could make your life easier in terms of what if your truck breaks down, whether it’s like a– maybe it’s an iPad app that goes over the most common issues for trucks, or you know connecting people with the nearest mechanic or something like that, they would pay for that. And it is just a matter of me and my team you know…

Steve: Right, putting it together.

Pat: Putting it together, yeah.

Steve: Hey, so Pat I want to be respectful of your time. We’ve already been talking for 50 minutes, but I did want to just kind of go through everything we’ve talked about here. And what I want you to comment about specifically is revenue velocity, meaning how much time you think it would take if you follow all the steps that you just outlined to make significant income to perhaps replace someone’s fulltime income you know for all the different aspects. And what you would actually do if you were to start all over, you just got laid off, and you kind of want to replace your income right away, what would you kind of go for?

Pat: Sure let me answer your last question first…

Steve: Okay.

Pat: Which is if I got laid off what would I do to make income the fastest? And what would I do first? I believe the best answer is some sort of consultation or freelancing. Freelancing is the best way to go, and even though that’s not necessarily creating online business where you’re creating a product that can be sold while you’re sleeping. It’s the best way to get online, it’s the best way to meet and connect people in a particular niche and serve them and get paid for your services upfront. I mean the people you meet through sharing your skills and selling your skills out there, I mean there are people out there who know that they can’t do everything, and if there is something that you have that they don’t want to do or can’t do you know they are willing to pay you for that.

And then that might help you start to build your audience in terms of you know the specialty skill that you have, and potentially create products or help other people who want to freelance in this particular situation as well. I mean there is a lot of possibilities that come on with freelancing, but it takes time to create an audience, it takes time to create these products, and that’s what’s cool about affiliate marketing is you don’t have to create the products, but you have to know about them at least which takes time. But consulting or freelancing is definitely a great way to go especially– you know it’s something you could do on the side too while you have a job as well.

Steve: Absolutely.

Pat: And then your other question in terms of revenue velocity and how long it would take, again it depends on what business model you have. The freelancing route would be the quickest I think, but in terms of building on that business using maybe software or something, I say that might take up to six months in terms of actually doing the proper research, and you know that’s something that’s going to take a little bit of investment. So you want to make sure you do it right and have the proper research and development team and that’s going to take some money as well.

In terms of building an audience, the blog or podcast or a YouTube channel for example and then serving that audience, that can take some time as well, I mean months perhaps. The niche site authority site route will take months, perhaps years. Well, I mean it’s not going to happen overnight, I think that’s key thing to realize. As long as you work at it, you chip away; put an hour in everyday, that’s what’s going to get you there for sure. And again what’s going to help you get your revenue even faster is more quickly understanding what those issues are, and more quickly understanding how to provide solutions for those problems in your particular niche.

Steve: Okay, you know I just wanted to comment on your answer. I would say that probably out of all the things we talked about, building an audience whether it be through a podcast or a blog will take you know more than a couple of months I would say right, at least a year or a year and a half maybe.

Pat: Yeah, it depends on how much time you have, how much you hustle, what the niche you chose to work in you know and there is a little bit of luck involved there as well. But I think in terms of what can give you the most long term success, once you build that audience say for example you have an email list of 1000 people all interested in deep sea fishing. You know they’ve subscribed to you because you give the best deep sea fishing advice; you have that list forever, right? You could take it anywhere with you, you can provide them with products or if your site breaks down you’ll be able to start a new site anywhere else and you have that group of 1000 people to you know who you’ve specialized to serve. And once you have that, you’re in for the long haul for sure.

Steve: You know when you started Green Exam Academy, was that a pretty quick process to get your stuff out there or?

Pat: You know I had created the site while I was still working, and I was studying for that exam, that took about a year.

Steve: Okay.

Pat: So I had that set for a year, but during that time I was getting found in Google, and again I didn’t even know because I had talked to people who purchased my e-book, and they are like “hey I’ve been reading you for like over a year,” and some people actually bought the book even though they didn’t need to, they already passed the exam and they were like Pat I just wanted to buy the book because you helped me out so much a year ago when I passed exam. I was like really, I didn’t even know people were using this a year ago. So like and that was just me not knowing what I was doing exactly, but I was very-very fortunate to get laid off, so I can then put my attention into this and see what the possibilities were. But it did take about a year and a half from the moment I created that site and started producing content for it, to the moment I started making money from it, about a year and a half.

Steve: Okay, yeah I just don’t want to spread kind of this misconception that you can get started up and in just a couple of months in any of these respective areas of online businesses, so everything takes time, you’ve got to put in the effort, it’s a gradual process with a lot of long term gain potential. You know my last question for you, I noticed that you haven’t tried selling physical products, and that’s probably the only thing that you haven’t tried yet, is that correct?

Pat: That is correct although it is something that is definitely on my mind. I believe and I’ve debated about this but once food trucker has sort of set and good and you know doing its thing, I might want to give ecommerce a try, and so definitely I’ll be contacting you and look to have you come on the show at some point to talk and get strategies about that.

Steve: Right, sounds good Pat. So hey if anyone wants to get a hold of you, what’s the best way besides sending you a video.

Pat: Wish you didn’t remind me that one.

Steve: Yeah my bet.

Pat: No, that’s cool. Smartpassiveincome.com is where you should go, and you can also find me on Twitter @Patflynn, and then everything else I have going on is sort of connected to that response.

Steve: All right, it sounds good Pat. Well, it was a pleasure having you on the show, and thanks a lot for coming on.

Pat: Thanks for having me, and thanks everybody.

Steve: All right take care.

Well there you have it and I hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Pat’s been on many different podcasts prior to this one, but I think this is the first time that he has compared and contrasted all the different online business models, and hopefully out of all the ways to make money online that we discussed you can find one that really suits your personality. And remember there is really no right or wrong answer, you simply have to pick a business model and take action.

For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode41. And once again I just wanted to thank 99designs for sponsoring this episode. I know a lot of you listening are waiting on the sidelines and trying to get the courage to start your own online business. I also know a lot of you out there run your business already and know that your website design could be better. Now designing a website is not that intimidating anymore thanks to 99 designs, where you can get over 300,000 designers to compete for your design. All you’ve got to do is list your design on their site and within 48 hours you will get dozens of design submissions to choose from and from there you can ask for slight tweaks and changes until you are a 100% satisfied with the results. And the best part is that the price is very reasonable and there’s a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Plus by using the 99designs.com/mywifequit link and telling them that Steve from mywifequitherjob.com referred you, your design listing will be bolded, highlighted, and given a prominent background and featured before all regular listings, so that your request stands out among all the designers. So head over to 99designs.com/mywifequit and get something designed right now. And finally if you enjoyed listening to this episode, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. When you write me a review, it not only makes me feel proud, but it helps keep this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this info and find the show more easily, and get awesome business advice. It’s also the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give me is to provide a referral to someone else either in person or to share it on the web.

And as an added incentive I’m always giving away free business consults to one lucky winner every single month. For more information, go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over a 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information, and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.