Making A Living Online –

My entire life I have worked hard and done more than my share. In 1995, as I've mentioned before, I started my own ISP business. I have never worked so hard – and I've promised myself that I wouldn't do that again! It wasn't the hard work so much as the commitment of my time.

In 2001 I moved away from the office – I used to live within 10 minutes of the office and datacenter. My time was always being eaten up by the business. I moved to more than 30 minutes from the office and started to pull back – my son was now in charge… well he had the responsibility at least.

I slowly pulled away from the day to day business and started looking at some things that would give me some freedom. You see working for yourself doesn't always mean that you have freedom to do a lot of fun things!

I did take a lot of vacations during the early 2000's – mostly to Florida where I bought a timeshare. BTW – don't ever do this! If you have cash to pay for one of these things like I did then put the money into a condo or some other property. My opinion at this point of course.

In 2004 I dove head first into something that has always been an interest of mine – Real Estate! Yep – I figured out how to flip properties with a single back-to-back closing. I was encouraged to write an e-book and all I will say is that the rest is history!

I've written a number of e-books for the Real Estate niche – and between 2004 and 2007 I made a really good living on these books and marketing to this niche. I also went through a divorce at the same time and my energy was not focused at all from time to time. I did enjoy the automatic income and the easy life. 

You see, there are a lot of ways to make money online. The main point and something you need to really realize – you must set a course and never look back. My books, training, and other online services made me a good chunk of change – actually, I was enjoying online sales in excess of $100k per year just from the sales of my books. In 2008 that dropped to about $30k per year because of the economy and the Real Estate market. Most 'wannabes' just couldn't see how this could work.

Well I can tell you that I've flipped a number of properties for myself and I've overseen a bunch more. On average I would pocket about $19k per transaction. Not too bad considering I just did all of the leg work and thinking…

That's all gone now – I've pretty much pulled out of the Real Estate market niche. I still work on simple projects and maintain several web sites. Actually you can see the part of my collection of my books that still applies to the market today at http://ShortSaleBooks.com – the sales keep coming in, but I can't pay the bills with sales from this one niche.

Over the last couple of years I've worked to get my life back together and to get a better focus on what I was doing – I still earn a good living online, but I'm working to diversify. You see while Real Estate and the RE niche provided a good income for a number of years, it wasn't my real passion. And because the RE niche was a really hot niche at the time – a lot of 'buyers' – it made me a lot of money… I ignored my first rule – diversification.

So what is my real passion? The technology that runs the Internet of course!

I've been involved in technology my entire life – I love to see web sites come to life and I love to see them rise to the top of the search engines. This is where I live…

Now I'm finding a lot of little niches where I can apply what I know – it's working. And I'm going to share some of this with you here on this site so stay tuned.

Here's something interesting – did you know that the tattoo niche is hot but not many marketers are participating… hmmm… I see an opportunity. Let me do some research!

No I don't have any tattoos and I don't know anything about tattoos… although I have dated several women with tattoos…

To your continued success…

Michael Hobach

MLM and Network Marketing Schemes

I thought I’d cover this early in our discussion – I have been involved with a number of Network Marketing Companies in the past. I have built a downline of several thousand people. I have earned thousands of dollars per month through Nework Marketing – years ago…

I have several really nice suits and cotton white shirts in my closet.

I’ve taken and written off many vacations.

I even purchased for cash a timeshare in Florida just outside of the Disney properties.

I never worked so hard in all of my life!

Some companies have really wonderful products and I still order Nuskin through my distributor account. Other companies have fizzled and all but gone away. Yet others keep going because they make so much money that they can stay alive.

I was a presenter – I had my laptop connected to a video projector and I stood up there talking to the groups that my downline ‘Invited’ to our presentations.

I did in-home demonstrations – I just can’t tell a woman that she has lines and wrinkles in her face that our product would help!

I told people that it was easy to make the money that I made – that I would show them exactly what to do.

Have you been here?

Pay attention to what I’m going to say for the rest of this post…

If a company has a product that is sold through a distribution channel that requires multiple people to earn a commission – no matter how good it is, it is going to be over priced. Remember that the company makes the biggest profit – then all of the ‘Distributors’ down the line to where the product actually gets to the customer. Whew… hard to imagine the whole $$ thing. You have a  $1.00 product that ends up costing the buyer $49.00 because of everyone in between that needs to get a cut.

No matter how good it is it takes a lot of ‘selling’ to convince the buyer that it’s worth it.

Don’t forget the ‘autoship’ product that you have to maintain – $100 of product produces commissions for all of that upline – doesn’t matter that YOU are buying it now does it!

Here is what I really didn’t like about Network Marketing…

My (BIG) income had nothing to do with my ability to sell or market the product(s) – it was directly dependent on how well I recruited, motivated and babied those in my downline.

I stopped counting how many times I heard – "I can’t find anyone to buy this stuff" or "I don’t have any friends who I can recruit"

But this is why I won’t do this ever again – no matter what the product or how close to the top I’m placed. Just never going to happen.

The difference with doing my own thing…

When I have my own company, products, services, etc – I can decide what I’m going to sell today. If wigs that make a woman look like beyonce are hot (look up ‘beyonce wigs’) then I will promote it… if it’s the beginning of the NFL season I want to be able to promote ‘NFL wear’ or Fantasy Football League web sites.

I want to choose what I’m going to sell… something that I know is hot and real people are really buying them!

I don’t want some company to tell me that their product is hot – because that’s what they produce and market – regardless of how cold the market is for their product. Just because they say that their products are needed – it’s the wanted products that I will be promoting!

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Please don’t comment about how the MLM or Network Company that you are with is different. I’ll delete your comment and ban you from this site.

We are not here to promote MLM / Network Marketing as the way to really make money.

To your continued success,

Michael Hobach