I really like this post by Steve Pavlina that I wanted to share it here with you. Enjoy!

One of the most potent lessons I’ve ever learned (and would love to impart to you) is just how powerful a seemingly simple perspective shift can be.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I hope you realize just how profound that statement is. But just in case you don’t, let me share a personal story about it.

During my first 5 years in business (1994-1998), I lost money every year, turning my $20K life savings into $150K of debt. That’s a net loss of $170K, or $34K per year on average. In 1999 I finally went bankrupt when my credit ran out.

Every year since then, my business made a decent profit.

So I suffered a negative cashflow each year from 1994-1998, and then from 1999 – present (12 years in a row and counting), I enjoyed a positive cashflow each year.

What the heck happened in 1999? What was responsible for this major change in results?

Learning How NOT to Make Money

I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when I felt the shift. I underwent a radical change in my perspective. I turned the way I thought about business upside down. My attitude and my motivation changed.

Obviously there were some catalyzing experiences that led to this epiphany such as getting kicked out of my apartment and going bankrupt, but when the conditions were right for it, the actual mental and emotional shifts happened fast — in a matter of minutes. It was like flipping a switch, partly in my mind… but mostly in my heart.

Here are the main before-and-after differences:

During my first 5 years in business, I focused on making my business successful. I pursued deals, money, and projects as if they were things to be acquired. I wanted to create hit products that sold well (computer games at the time). My motivation had a lot to do with proving myself, with making my mark on my particular field. I visualized my games getting glowing reviews, and I imagined seeing them selling in software stores. Money was a big concern. I always went for the deal that I expected would put the most money in my pocket and lead to the greatest success.

During my last 12 years in business, I focused on having fun, enjoying life,and creatively expressing myself. I stopped worrying about whether or not I was ever going to be successful. The bankruptcy supplied plenty of proof that I’d already failed dismally, so I didn’t see any point in continuing to pursue the same priorities that led me there. I was using a cardboard box as a piece of furniture, a symbol of just how much financial success I’d been able to achieve. Since I’d been soundly thrashed while playing the success game, I decided to change the rules and try my hand at the “let’s just play for fun” game.

A Tale of Two Mindsets

My initial motivation for starting my computer games business was to make more money. For several months before that, I worked as a contract game programmer on the side while going to college. I completed a 4-pack of Windows games, doing all of the programming and much of the design work for a local games company. When the games got published, I received about $1 in programmer’s royalties for every $7 the company received. Other people at the company contributed artwork, music, and some design work, and of course they closed a deal with a publisher too. But these were fairly basic games from a resource standpoint, and it was clear to me that I was doing well over 50% of the actual production work, probably 70-80% in terms of sheer hours invested. I even wrote the help files and instruction manuals.

I recognized that with a bit more effort, and with the help of the right people, such as an artist and a musician, I could essentially do what this company was doing, and I’d get to keep a lot more of the profits. Finding talented people to work with wasn’t too difficult, so soon I was off and running.

I had the technical and design skills to create more games at least as good as those I created for the local game company, but after years of trying, I was never actually able to make a profit.

While running the business for the first 5 years, I was constantly looking for ways to make money. If I smelled potential dollar signs, I’d chase after them. I ran after a lot of elusive deals that fizzled, fell apart, or collapsed, even after some advances were received.

I worked hard, hard, hard, sometimes even sleeping at the office. But I could never get the money coming in with any consistency. Ironically the harder I tried to make money, the faster I lost money. Instead of the Midas touch, I somehow mastered the Medusa touch.

Looking back, I didn’t do that initial contract programming work for the money. I did it for the love of game programming. I was in college at the time, and a friend pointed out a flier about a game programming position. He suggested I take a look at it because he knew I was into computer games, and we were both computer science majors close to graduating. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me.

I went for an interview with the company. I felt confident about getting the job, and I really didn’t care how much they paid me. I just wanted to work on games. So when they asked me how much I wanted to be paid, I said “$10 an hour,” which was a ridiculously lowball amount. Game programming may not pay as much as some other types of programming, but it certainly pays more than $20K per year, even for a starting programmer who’s still in school.

That company hired me on the spot, and I must say they got a great deal. I hit the ground running and threw myself into the first project they assigned me. They were stunned that I had a prototype up and running after only 9 days, and they actually pulled me off that project and assigned me something more ambitious.

One time my project manager asked me how many hours a week I was putting in. This was during the summer when I wasn’t attending classes. I told him about 40 hours, which would have seemed reasonable because I worked at their offices Mon-Fri during normal business hours. But I actually lied. In truth I continued working on their game projects at home on evenings and weekends. Realistically I was probably putting in 60-80 hours most weeks. And those hours were dedicated to solid coding work, not to email or any other distractions. I said that I worked 40 hours a week because I didn’t want to make the other programmers in the company seem less dedicated. I was on good terms with them — and I wanted to keep it that way.

I wasn’t working hard and fast for low pay to impress anyone. I did it for the sheer love of the work. I was enthralled by the technical challenges of each game. There was nothing else I wanted to be doing. I probably would have done that work for free.

Within a month or two, I think the management of the company could no longer stomach seeing me do such high quality work for so little, so they voluntarily doubled my pay. I didn’t request it, but I received it with gratitude. $20 per hour is a lot for a college student.

By the time the royalties were added in (after the game hit store shelves the following year), I probably ended up making about $50 per hour for programming those games, even though I only asked for $10 per hour. Plus it was really cool to walk into software stores and see something I created on the shelves.

That’s rather beautiful, isn’t it? I certainly thought so. It’s a classic example of sowing first, then reaping.

And then over the next 5 years, I proceeded to take this beautiful model and completely screw it up.

I underwent a perspective shift that seemed intelligent at the time. The potential for greater success hit me, and I began seeing dollar signs. That local games business immediately offered me another project to work on, and I turned them down so I could start my own game development business. I did that specifically because I wanted to make more money.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was simply expressing the American entrepreneurial spirit, right?

Getting My Ass Kicked by Kolrami

After 5 years of total failure, I finally had to admit that my great plan wasn’t working. Going bankrupt was a hint and a half that something went awry. The more I chased after money, the faster it ran away from me, as if screaming, “The horror! The horror!”

So in 1999 I finally gave up. I didn’t enjoy living this way. It wasn’t producing the results I wanted, so for that reason alone I could justify declaring “game over.” But beyond that, those 5 years were very frustrating. I did my best to be positive and optimistic, but seeing some great projects canceled after years of work were serious disappointments.

In my moment of epiphany, I realized that my decision to pursue money was when everything started going kittywompus. Becoming more financially ambitious simply did not work.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Peak Performance,” the master strategist Kolrami competes with the android character Data in a game of Strategema. The crew expects Data to win, just as you’d expect a modern chess-playing computer to kick your ass at chess. They confidently advise Data to take the shortest path to victory in order to put a dent in Kolrami’s smugness. However, Kolrami soundly defeats Data without breaking a sweat. Data is stunned by the loss and assumes he must have some kind of programming defect, going so far as to remove himself from active duty until he can figure out what’s wrong with him.

Later in that episode, Captain Picard informs Data that it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. This leads Data to challenge his assumptions about the game. He accepts Kolrami’s offer of a rematch, and this time he plays Kolrami to an endless stalemate, leading Kolrami to eventually surrender in disgust. The crew celebrates Data’s victory and asks how he did it.

Data confesses that he couldn’t defeat Kolrami by playing to win because that’s what Kolrami expected him to do. Every advantage-maximizing move that Data attempted was blocked by a superior counter-move from Kolrami. So in the rematch, Data used a different strategy. He bypassed obvious avenues of advancement and played for a draw instead of trying to win. This visibly frustrated Kolrami and allowed Data to theoretically play the game indefinitely, rendering defeat impossible.

This episode may contradict game theory and minimax algorithms, assuming that Data could search ahead more moves than Kolrami could, but setting aside that issue, I found tremendous value in this lesson. It seemed like the perfect analogy for my own situation. I felt like I’d made no serious mistakes, but I still lost. When I reviewed my previous moves, they still seemed reasonable even though they led to failure, and pondering whether I might have a defective brain proved as unhelpful to me as it did to Data.

During my first 5 years in business, I played to improve my financial score. I saw each business negotiation partly as a competition. If I got more money out of a deal, it meant that the other party got less. The more I succeeded in setting things up to maximize my financial score, the more I had to diminish the scores of others. In order to maximally win, someone else had to lose, at least a little bit. The harder I tried to win, the more friction I created that would ultimately cause me to lose.

Maybe some people are good at playing this kind of game. I wasn’t. Someone always had more resources, more time, or more expensive lawyers. The more I pressed for gains, the more I felt an opposing force pushing back against me. This led to many problems such as delays and cancelations. I could blame others for it, but the truth is that I was responsible for creating that reality.

When Internet marketers treat you as a dollar sign, can you sense it? Can you feel that tugging sensation — the sense that their main motivation is to get something from you? How does this ultimately affect your relationship with them?

Bypassing Obvious Avenues of Advancement

In 1999 I decided to stop trying to make money. I stopped trying to achieve success. I had 5 years of failure to convince me that it was time to change my approach. The bankruptcy was like a bonk on the head that told me I’d better not live the next 5 years like I lived the last 5. I had no more credit and no more cash to burn, so I had to make immediate changes. I had little choice but to try a different path.

When I tried to succeed, Kolrami always showed up to kick my ass. I could never defeat him no matter how hard I tried. The harder I tried, the more vigorously he thrashed me.

So I surrendered to his superior skills. I stopped trying to win. I accepted the irony that trying to get a higher financial score actually doomed me to a negative score. The opposing force was always greater than anything I could overcome.

I decided to apply Data’s lesson to my business. Instead of trying to win, I began to play for a draw. I bypassed what seemed like obvious avenues for financial advancement, recognizing that it was exactly what Kolrami expected me to do. If I made those self-maximizing moves, he would simply knock me back, and I’d be worse off than when I started. Again, I had 5 years of experience to drill this lesson into me.

In practice what this meant was that I stopped trying to maximize revenue or profits. In each business transaction, I opted to give more than I received in return. I always sought to leave extra value on the table.

For example, in mid-1999 I priced my next game release at only $9.95, even though I believed a competitive price would have been $19.95. I began writing articles for free. I committed hundreds of hours to unpaid volunteer work. I hosted free discussion forums on my website to help other game developers succeed. I spoke at conferences and hosted roundtables for free. I made it impossible for Kolrami to counter my moves because my moves weren’t competitive.

Last year I uncopyrighted all of my articles and podcasts and donated all of them to the public domain. I also committed to placing my new articles directly into the public domain (including this one). I encouraged people to republish, translate, and/or sell my work for their own financial gain if they wanted to.

I deliberately and intentionally earn less revenue and less profit than I feel I’m capable of earning. When it comes to income generation, I hold back when it seems like the logical move would be to advance. While Kolrami expects me to play to win, I’m actually playing for a draw.

Playing for a Draw

When I played to win, I lost for 5 years in a row. I never actually won. Even when it seemed like I nailed a winning move, it always turned out to be a mistake that led to my being checkmated several moves later.

When I played for a draw, I was able to make money for 12 years in a row. And I didn’t have to work nearly as hard to make that happen.

When you play to win in a competitive game, you’re playing for someone else to lose. If you want to maximize revenue or profits, you need to maximize the amount of money your customers or clients pay you. The more money you make, the less money they get to keep. You can only go so far down this path before you start meeting serious resistance. And the more tactics and techniques you use to try to combat that resistance, the stronger the resistance becomes.

How many businesses have had to learn this lesson the hard way? The more they try to extract the maximum amount of money from you, the more you feel driven to resist them, such as by resorting to piracy to cut them out entirely.

Which businesses do you dislike most? Do you feel those businesses are playing to win at your expense? How does that affect your ongoing relationship with them?

What are your favorite businesses? Why are they your favorites?

One of my favorite businesses is Google. I like them because I feel they give me a lot more value than they ask in return. They provide me with a free search engine, free email, free calendar, etc. I benefit from their engineering expertise every day, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve paid them back in some ways over the years, such as by generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of business for them when I had Adsense on my blog… and probably millions if you include all the referrals I must have sent their way, such as other bloggers who signed up for Adsense after learning about my results with it.

Facebook, on the other hand, left me feeling used and abused after two years as an active user of their service. So I shut down my personal page and my fan page and wrote multiple articles about why I had to abandon them and take my social networking to greener pastures. Ironically, one of those articles racked up 2000+ Facebook likes.

Of course these evaluations are being continually refreshed. Google might screw up, and I may have to bid Larry and Sergey adieu. Facebook might correct its problems, and I’ll have to refriend Zuck. But for now, my perception is that Google is still playing with me, while Facebook still wants to play at me.

Becoming an Enigma

What does it mean to win? What does it mean to succeed? Does it even make sense to pursue these ideals?

I learned the hard way that it’s actually easier to enjoy an abundant and fulfilling lifestyle by playing for a draw instead of playing to win or succeed.

When you play for a draw, you change the way others relate to you. They may not understand this consciously, but they’ll behave differently towards you nonetheless.

Some of your decisions may confuse people at first, especially if they’re used to dealing with businesses that play to win, but generally people seem to respond positively. A business that plays for a draw is a breath of fresh air.

When you leave extra value on the table without trying to extract it, that value rolls over into goodwill, which is the lifeblood of a sustainable business.

For example, by giving away so much free content, my business receives a massive number of referrals. New referrals happen every single day — passively and with zero marketing costs.

I’ve done okay financially too. Not counting income from my workshops or my book, my blog alone has generated well over $1 million in revenue since I started, mostly from joint-venture promotions and affiliate programs. That’s plenty for me to sustain a positive cashflow and to enjoy an abundant lifestyle.

What about the economy? I live in Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate of any U.S. state, according to the U.S. Dept of Labor. Lots of people here are looking for ways to make money, and they’re getting thrashed by Kolrami. They’re trying to beat a game that they can’t win. The odds are better in the casinos.

The irony, however, is that I perceive my actual income as much lower than it could be if I put more effort into it. There are lots of ways I could potentially earn more money, and some are dirt simple. For instance, for about an hour’s work, I could immediately start earning at least an extra $10K per month in passive income just by putting up Google Adsense ads, which I used to have on the site for several years. See this post if you want to know why I dropped Adsense. I deliberately choose not to earn this money.

Now you might be wondering, What kind of idiot would pass up an easy $10K/month in passive income? The kind of idiot who’s had his ass kicked by Kolrami way too many times. 

You see… I don’t run my business to optimize revenue or profits. When I tried to do that, my real-world results were the exact opposite of what I wanted. So these days I deliberately make business decisions that leave significant value on the table, untapped and unextracted. Kolrami cannot make sense of these moves, and therefore he cannot counter them. Consequently, any potential competition with him remains in a state of perpetual stalemate. He cannot defeat me, and theoretically I can keep playing indefinitely.

Instead of seeing me as a competitor, my peers in this field tend to regard me as a bit of an enigma. Many of them became very curious when I did the whole copyright giveaway thing last year. From their perspective it seemed like a very risky thing to do, perhaps even foolhardy. Some regard it as very brave, while others simply don’t know what to make of it. Most aren’t willing to go down a similar path, preferring to keep all their work copyrighted so they can control it. They know that I’m an intelligent and strategic thinker, but since this action doesn’t really make logical sense from the standpoint of maximizing revenue, they don’t perceive me as any sort of competitive threat, so by default I’m treated as a non-threatening ally. And the truth is that I’m not a competitive threat of any sort because I’m not playing this game to win. I’m still playing for a stalemate with Kolrami, and I plan to continue doing so indefinitely.

Making money is very easy now. I don’t consider myself uber-rich, but I’ve achieved what I consider to be functional abundance. All my bills are paid, and I have sufficient income to enjoy the lifestyle I desire. I can work when I want and take time off when I want. And I feel I can keep this going indefinitely.

Even though I’ve made plenty of money from this business, I always have the sense that I could be earning many times more than what I’m actually earning. But I deliberately avoid that level of success, not because I’m resistant to success but because I recognize that the pursuit of such success is a trap.

It was a major lesson for me to learn that I can actually make more money by trying to make less money. I can achieve more success by trying to succeed less. This is what has actually worked for me in the real world.

The path of abundance isn’t the path that maximizes velocity. It’s the path that minimizes friction. If you try to maximize velocity, you end up maximizing friction too, thereby causing massive amounts of heat. Ultimately, you burn up.

If you race to every destination by driving as fast as your car will allow, is that the optimal approach? Or is it better to intentionally hold back a bit, driving at speeds well below your car’s maximum potential?

Success = Sustainability

Instead of seeing success as some kind of accomplishment, victory, or conquest, I think it’s wiser and more effective to define success as sustainability.

This isn’t just about how we run our lives or businesses. It’s about how we relate to each other and to our planet as a whole.

Is the most successful energy company the one that extracts and sells the earth’s resources as quickly as possible? Is a successful relationship one in which you extract maximum value from your partner, leaving them drained at the end of each day?

I like Stephen Covey’s analogy of the goose and the golden eggs. If you try to maximize all-out production by extracting as many golden eggs as possible, you eventually kill the golden goose, thereby causing your production capacity to crash. For long-term sustainability, you must nurture the golden goose. Getting greedy with the eggs will cause Kolrami to swoop in and turn your goose into foie gras.

The game of business isn’t winnable. No matter how hard you play to win, you’ll always lose in the end. Even if you become an extremely cunning player, laying waste to all who oppose you, eventually you’ll die, and your deathbed score resets to zero. Kolrami always gets the last move.

But if you largely ignore the score and play for a draw instead of trying to win, Kolrami cannot defeat you. You can play the game for as long as you like.

When you seek sustainability, the games of money and business are transformed. Instead of competing for survival and success, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Playing for fun is a whole different ride.

When you play for fun instead of trying to win, most people will relate to you in the same manner. Some players may initially assume a competitive posture with you, but once they realize you’re playing for fun instead of trying to win, they’ll quickly lower their shields, and they’ll begin to play the game with you at your level — for fun. Even highly competitive players naturally sense there’s no honor in thrashing an opponent who isn’t trying to beat them. No real victory can be achieved against a player who stands no chance of winning. Players that try to overwhelm defenseless opponents simply make themselves look ridiculous.

I’m not saying that you’ll never encounter a stubborn victory-minded person who seeks to trounce you anyway, but it’s a lot rarer when you decline to resist them. Competitive people tend to expend more energy on those who resist them. If you offer no resistance, they’re more likely to consider you a potential ally.

When I tried to win in business, I experienced frustration and failure. When I played for a draw, I had fun and enjoyed sustainable success.

If you’re still trying to win, maybe it’s time to give it up. Kolrami is just too good. You cannot hope to beat him. He’ll take all your best moves and turn them against you, causing you to end up worse off than when you started.

As for defeating Kolrami, in the strictest sense, I did not win.

I busted him up. 

Thanks for the inspiration, Gene. You are still loved. <3

Just yesterday, I noticed one of the members in a popular Webmaster forum, Digital Point, selling one PLR pack which looked exactly like the one I am selling here: Forex PLR Product Review Articles.

The title of the thread caught my attention as it was exactly the same to mine. Upon further investigation, the individual articles in the pack again bearing very close titles. What was even more amusing was the number of words for each article was a few words different!

What a coincidence!

I thought he was one of my affiliates. But the payment page told me otherwise. The payment goes directly to his Paypal account.

As I stated clearly in my Terms of Use that no one can sell any pack they bought from ReliablePLR.com as it is. In short, they can’t sell the PLR articles with the same private label rights to third party – regardless of whether they have or have not rewritten the articles. ReliablePLR.com is the ONLY place where I offer all my PLR articles. If you get it from anywhere else, you have been cheated and you are having a pirated copy.

(Note: Having said that, if you got any pack from somewhere else, you can report to me stating where you got the pack from and I will reward you with another PLR pack of your choice for free.)

What I did to handle this tricky situation

Sensing something was amiss, my first reaction was to post to the thread to warn the member of the infringement of Terms of Use of his purchase. And I further warned prospective buyers to be more alert and they might end up buying a pirated copy of the product.

To take it one step further, I notified the Admin of DP of this “scammy” thread and I hoped that they would take action to maintain the integrity of the Forum.

And when I did that, I didn’t know how effective it would be and what kind of action they would take. I just did what I needed to do.

A few hours later, the member replied in the thread:

“These are rewritted articles. Thanks for your concern.”

These were the exact wordings from him.

I retaliated by saying that the package looked very much the exact copy to mine. Even had he rewritten the articles, and as stated in my Terms of Use, he had no rights whatsoever to resell the articles. I further strongly urged him not to sell this package until the case is cleared and I challenged him, in order to prove his innocence, he should send me his articles for verification.

Surprisingly, he replied and sent a two-paragraph of one article to my Private Message inbox. Do you think I am convinced? Of course not! Two paragraphs out of 10 articles don’t mean a thing!

The cost of an unscrupulous act

While I was trying to cool off and think of ways on how to handle this situation, I checked back again the thread and the PM sent by the member.

But to my surprise, I was greeted with an error message:

Invalid Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

I further looked for the member’s member page and again I was greeted with the same message. Only then it dawned on me that the Admin could have deleted the username and all his posts from DP.

Fortunately for me as some form of action is taken by DP to maintain the integrity of the forum as it doesn’t take long for one to notice that there are many hanky-panky activities going on there. Things look different after DP has implemented its new forum rules recently and I am happy for them.

Now why am I telling you this unhappy incident?

The objectives are two folds.

The first one is to tell you that taking a shortcut is not a smart thing to do. You might let off the hook for some time but eventually you will be caught and the price is too much to pay when you are caught. Also, the reputation you have been building so far goes down the drain in split seconds. This is what exactly happened to this member. Ironically he has actually accumulated more reputation points than I have on DP (don’t ask me how he did that!).

When you build your business without integrity, you are always on the run… trying to avoid being caught and change your name to hide your real identity. After a while, you get tired of doing all this running and hiding… which is to me a total waste of time and a silly thing to do.

Here’s what you can do if this happens to you

Secondly, if you are a product owner, there are certain things you can do to stop piracy.

Monitoring what people do and say is one of them. Now you may ask this: How on earth do I come to find out this “scammy” forum thread out of millions of new web pages created everyday?

There’s one little free tool that I use to track what’s going on on the web and it sends me email alerts whenever someone mentions certain words. Google Alerts is what I am talking about. It’s a simple but powerful tool. A real time saver I must say. I received a Google Alert for this post with keywords “Forex PLR.” You may want to try Google Alerts out if you have not done so.

Then, informing the person of authority (in this case Forum Admin) is the next step to keep piracy at bay.

I am not sure why someone would do this. Maybe I should take it as a compliment as that also shows that my PLR pack is excellent and above par… if I want to look at it from that angle.

I understand that we can’t prevent this 100% but some effort must be carried out to stop this nonsense from spreading as I feel that it’s our responsibility to safeguard our intellectual property and business assets.

At a Glance

Product Name: Profit Loophole
Creators: Dave Kelly and Chris Rempel
Product Topic: Site Flipping
Product Specifications: A PDF blueprint and 10 videos
Price: $147
Rating: 7/10

If you keep tabs on the never ending product launches in the Internet marketing world, you wouldn’t miss this new product. Profit Loophole was officially launched last week. In fact, it’s the backend offer of another free product called Authority Loophole.

Despite what the authors say, Profit Loophole is still about flipping websites… even though they promise a crucial twist to the traditional creating and selling websites.

If I am not wrong, Profit Loophole is the second collaboration between Chris Rempel (of TheLazyMarketer.com) and Dave Kelly (owner of Linkvana) after Ranking Loophole. As usual, Dave is the author while Chris is the mind behind its marketing and promotion.

What Is Profit Loophole?

In short, Profit Loophole is a systemic process of finding a niche, creating a simple website (10 pages of content), driving traffic to the website, monetize the website, and finally sell the website for a profit.

In my opinion, the only main difference from traditional site flipping methods lies in making the site profitable (target: Adsense income of 2-3 bucks a day). If your site is profitable, you can fetch a higher selling price.

By repeating the process, Dave advised that you should create more than one website and sell a few in a package. This, according to him, would increase the value as compared to selling one website alone.

What Will You Get?

Main products of this package are the Profit Loophole Blueprint (PDF). And 10 accompanying videos. If you read the Blueprint alone, you will get the main chunk of the course already. One thing that I find disappointing is I expected more from the videos. The visuals are nothing more than a few slides with texts (at least most of the videos). I would prefer Dave to walk us through with more illustration in the videos.

However, one of the things I like about this product is finding niches. If you are thinking of markets like dating, weight loss, or credit cards, you are totally wrong. These are not the markets that Dave talks about in this package. Frankly, all the niches shown in his bonus report 20 Most Profitable Markets was never cross my mind. The niches are so “real” and “not hypey.”

Dave goes to great lengths to show you how to list your website for sale. As many as four videos (out of ten) on this topic. That shows how important it is to get it right when you are selling your site.

When you get hold of the product, beware that there are some backend selling for other related tools and products. The obvious one, of course, is Dave’s own product: Linkvana. No doubt Linkvana is one of the best backlink services I come across but Dave is quick to point out that you don’t have to subscribe to Linkvana to make this system work.

Why Should You Get Profit Loophole? And Who Is It For?

Should you buy Profit Loophole? Yes if you can afford $147 and you are willing to spend the time keep building websites and promoting them to get free traffic. Dave mentions that he never holds onto his websites longer than 60 days. Which to me is quite a short time for promoting the site and you might not be able to get a handsome return – as what he promises.

In this system, the most time consuming task is link building. And you are not sure if what you are doing would work.

Another way to go around this and save your time doing what is stated in this package is to outsource the tasks – which Dave has covered in this package. He also shares with you an example of job posting looking for virtual assistants to help you in content creation. And for link building, you can try out Dave’s Linkvana to automate the task or hire someone to do it for you.

Conclusion

Overall this package contains solid information. And I also come to know  that Dave is a no-nonsense guy and he’s very down to earth. However I feel that the package is over-priced. Nevertheless, judging from the quality of the information, this is a package you can benefit from if you are new and want to learn the ropes of site flipping for profits.

Click here to visit Profit Loophole website

Note: If you are tight on budget, you can always check out a cheaper alternative: Flipping Websites for Instant Cash.

Everybody is talking about private label rights articles or PLR articles for short. Why? Because it works! It’s a great form of leverage for content creation- especially for those who can’t write or don’t want to write.

If you are new to PLR articles, here’s a crash course for you. PLR is a type of articles that once you purchase, in the most part, you can do anything you want with PLR articles. You can edit or change them. You can rewrite them. You can combine or chop them. You can even claim authorship to the articles.

But having said that, what good do PLR articles do if they can’t make you money? Many of us have bought them but never put them to use… or worse we don’t know what to do.

If you have bought or going to buy PLR articles, here are 10 things you can do to make money from PLR articles.

1. Blogs – Use PLR articles for your blog. I do this when I have no time to crank out articles for my blog. Won’t you be penalized with duplicate content by the search engines? You ask? I don’t think so. It never happens to me. But to be safe, mix PLR articles with some original content. Attract traffic to your blog with carefully selected keywords. You can monetize your blog or website with Adsense, affiliate products, advertising placement, or even your own products.

2. Autoresponder messages – Another great use of PLR articles is to use them to follow up with your subscribers. Build trust by providing them with quality content through PLR articles. Not only can you build credibility, you can also promote some products in the messages in an indirect way by telling your list how your offers can help them.

3. Go audio – Turn PLR articles into audio programs by reading out loud the content from PLR articles. Oftentimes, audio programs fetch higher price than ebooks as the perceived value is higher. Better still, you can offer both the articles and audios.

4. Create a special report – This technique is very effective. This is what you do. Turn your PLR articles of the same topic into a report, say 12-20 pages. Use this report to promote your website, newsletter, product in the report. Give readers the rights to distribute the report. This is a great idea for viral marketing.

5. Create a niche mini site – Use PLR articles of the same topic to start a mini site. The main objective is to promote affiliate products to your visitors. Besides providing useful content, you can add one paragraph at the top of the page that promotes an affiliate product. You can do so by providing the benefits of the product in bullet form. Include a picture of the product if you want.

6. List building tool – By combining 5 PLR articles, you have created yourself a mini report or 5-day ecourse. Offer this report or ecourse in exchange of emails. Create an opt-in page for people who are interested in your report or ecourse. Those who want to read the report or ecourse have to sign up to get it. This is an excellent way of building your list from scratch. Once you capture the emails, you can follow up with them with other content or offers.

7. Create an article directory – It’s easier than you think to create an article directory. Firstly, download and install article directory software that manages and publishes your articles. You can get it free from ArticleDashborad.com. Once you have installed the software, post your PLR articles to the directory. There are many ways you can profit from the directory. Such as Adsense and promoting affiliate products.

8. Sell physical book – Not many have done this. But that does not mean you should not do it. You can combine and/or expand on PLR articles and publish a physical book. Not only have you created a new source of income, people also place higher regards on published authors and it’s a great branding tool. One great resource to help you get started is Lulu.com

9. Setup a membership site – Membership sites are great because they provide recurring income. The members pay you as long as they remain members. You only need to sell them once. One of the easiest ways to build content for your membership site is by using PLR articles. The next thing you need is a password protected site.

10. Flip websites for instant cash – Create a new content site with PLR articles (15 – 30 articles). You can use a website template or a blog for this purpose. Put it up for sale as a turnkey website in marketplaces like SitePoint or Digital Point. You can make instant cash with 1-2 day work. Your target market is those who are interested in Internet marketing.

If you are looking to buy PLR articles, check out Reliable PLR. Over there, you only buy what you need. No membership required. And all articles are brand new and written by native English speaking authors.

Some say this is not the best way to make money because it involves hard work. I say, what the heck, because it gives me instant cash. In a matter of a few days (less than a week), I can make $90-$200 just by using this approach.

Furthermore, this is the way how freelance writers work. And they are all over marketplaces such as eLance, Guru, GetAFreelancer. It’s something that you should consider, especially if you are strapped for cash.

In a nutshell, you create a website with PLR articles. And you sell the website for instant cash.

Here’s how to do it – step by step.

Step 1: Choose a topic

With this approach (by using PLR articles), you don’t need to do a thorough niche selection because the work has already done for you by the person who created the PLR content. All the topics of your PLR are good. But personally, I find health and hobby related sites sell better.

Step 2: Create a website

To setup a content site, I prefer using a blog than normal HTML sites. Because it’s easy and flexible. I can use many free templates available online, not to mention some useful plugins that I use to enhance the perceived value of the site. Here’s what I do to setup the blog:

• Register a domain name. Preferably keyword rich domain. I will do a search in free Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery tool and look for ideas for my domain. I will register a .com or .net domain if possible.

• Create a new webhosting account. For an easy transfer to the future buyer, I would encourage you to have a separate webhosting account for this site. I sign up for a reseller account whereby I can create unlimited webhosting accounts as and when I need – at a fixed cost.

• Install Worpdress. By using the Fantastico in cPanel of your webhost, it makes installing WordPress a snap. Sometimes, to make the site more complete, I will install forum on the site. Pick a WP theme that is suitable for your topic by searching online. Try themes by Brian Gardner or Chris Pearson.

• Install plugins. Plugins I use for creating websites to flip are Adsense Manager, Tubepress video, and Contact Form.

• Add content. With WordPress, it’s easy to post articles to the website because you don’t need to know HTML codes and FTP. Use what you have from your PLR library to create content for your website. I will have 10 – 20 articles posted. You must read the terms that come with your PLR articles before posting these articles.

Step 3: Sell the website

You can use either Site Point or Digital Point to sell your website. Both have it’s own pluses and minuses. For Site Point, you have to pay to list your website for sale. For Digital Point, you have to make at least 20 posts before you can put up your site for sale. When I started out, I used Site Point because I couldn’t wait to fulfill the minimum posts on Digital Point. For a content site like this, you can sell between $90 – $200 a site. You can fetch higher price if you have more pages of content (say 30) and other features like forum, videos, sitemap, contact us form.

Sad but true, now you can’t get a price as high as before. But as long as you can cover your cost (domain name – around $10, PLR – negligible, webhosting – negligible) and make a good profit, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do this.

Again, this is not a long term business model but it’s excellent in generating instant cash. But there are many ways to bring flipping to the next level: How To Turn Flipping Websites Into A $40,000 A Month Business

SIDENOTE: If you are looking for high quality, reliable PLR articles, check out Reliable PLR. No membership required. You can pick and choose what you want.

Many gurus have been selling the idea of creating your own membership sites. The idea is excellent because it gives you recurring income.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against membership sites. But creating a membership site brings some problems, especially to lazy marketers:

1. It involves a lot of work. Many of you can’t even create a single web page (not to undermine your capabilities but it’s a fact), let alone a comprehensive membership site. We have not even talked about the content yet.
2. You can’t set it and forget it. Membership site is not a model that brings in passive income. It requires constant content creation and promotion. Literally, you work till you die or you sell the site.

If you insist on creating a membership site, I urge you to create a membership site with a twist – without the problems above.

This idea comes from a trusted guru: Jimmy D. Brown. He’s simply a genius!

With his membership idea, aptly called Fixed-Term Membership (FTM), all you need is one page of content to begin with and you can take orders within 48 hours.

I must say this is the lazyman’s way of earning recurring income from membership site.

In contrast to traditional membership sites, this takes minimal time to set it up. Once you set it up, you can let it go on autopilot.

You can get quite a bit about the FTM concept from the sales letter on Membernaire. You don’t need to join the membership to find out how he did it. He even shares with you some of the ideas for a fixed-term membership site.

If you choose to join, the length of the course is 52 weeks. That means you’ll receive 52 lessons delivered weekly to you on how to setup and promote a FTM site, and also how to keep your members active – in PDF format.

The membership fee is $27 per month. You can stop the subscription if you find it not up to your expectations within 8 weeks.

I have had a look at the content and oh boy my head is spinning with ideas now.

Want to know what Membernaire covers in the first 10 lessons?

Here you go…

1. How To Setup Your Own Membership Site In 48 Hours Or Less
2. FTM Quick Start 1: Preparation
3. FTM Quick Start 2: Presentation – 4 parts
4. FTM Quick Start 3: Production – 2 parts
5. FTM Quick Start 4: Promotion
6. The Magic Sentence That Keeps Members Paying
7. How To Double Your Profit In One Easy Step
8. Getting New Subscribers Automatically
9. The Backdoor To Keeping Members Active
10. Turning On Your Built-In Profit Streams

Remember these are only 10 out of the 52 lessons you’ll be getting (I hope Jimmy won’t come after me for revealing this!)

Jimmy has helped eliminate the barrier of entry of a traditional membership site. With the FTM strategy, he makes it easy for “normal” people to start and build a profitable membership site.

Seriously, forget about traditional membership sites. It’s just too much work. FTM is the way to go if you want to have recurring income.

I understand that Membernaire had closed its door a while ago when it reached 1000 members. But Jimmy has reopened the door again now. So take a look before he closes his door for the second time.

Visit the site: http://www.abelcheng.com/FTM.html

This is a long overdue post. I wanted to write about this some time ago but just couldn’t.

If you are in Google Adsense program, this can have an impact on how fast Google pays you, especially you are not from the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

That was the case with me. Before this, the only form of payment is checks. But a few months back, Google introduced another payment method for my country: Western Union.

I knew nothing about Western Union but I decided to give it a try. So I changed the form of payment in my Adsense account setting to receive payment via Western Union.

(You can do so by clicking “My Account” >> “Account Settings”)

When the payments come, what I need to do is to logon to Adsense and get the payments details. Go to an authorized Western Union counter (it can be either a bank, post office, or a Western Union branch) and fill in a form.

That’s it. You can cash out or bank into your bank account.

I prefer Western Union to checks for a few reasons:

• Immediate cash - as fast as the payment details are out from Google, I can get the cash. As compared to check payments, I have to wait for at least a month before I can see money in my account.

• No charges - When I bank in Adsense checks, my bank charges me some fees – a percentage of the check amount. But for Western Union, I pay nothing. Every penny I make from Adsense is pure profit.

When was the last time you check your Adsense account settings? You may want to see if Western Union option is available in your country. If it is, change the form of payment to Western Union. It’s like getting your paychecks faster. For me it’s a month earlier!

You have heard it thousand times like a broken record.

Many “gurus” say in order to make your fortune you have to do what you are passionate about.

“Do what you love and the money will follow.”

What if your passion doesn’t pay?

What if the market for your passion is too small?

What if your prospects of your passion have little or no money to buy your product?

Does it mean that you can’t make a buck online?

My friend used to joke that his passion was sleeping. Can you think of a way to make money from sleeping? If yes, let me know.

Onward.

Seriously, if your passion does not pay, what can you do?

Or worse still you don’t even know what your passion is — even after you’d meditated in the deep forest for years.

Let’s me tell you, there IS a way out.

(Don’t get me wrong, if you can marry passion and money, then it’s a bonus. But what if you can’t?)

The trick is simple. And there are two.

First, think of a problem that you have solved before that people are dying to pay for. For example, maybe you have an experience of getting out of debt.

Or you have a secret formula on how to approach a girl and ask her out for a date the first time you meet her.

Or you managed to get your prospective employer (every time you look for a job) to call you for an interview and convince them to hire you without a sweat.

The list goes on.

I think you know what I mean. It’s easy to write from your own experience and your experience is unique too.

In fact, no one does better than Alexis Dawes. Her approach to this is superb! I learn so much from her.

Second method is to see what is already selling and you jump on the bandwagon.

What better way than knowing that the product is already selling in a particular market? And there’s a ready-made market for it.

But how?

One of the most effective ways to see if a topic/niche is sellable is to go to Clickbank.

Click on “Marketplace” located at the top right hand corner.

Do a search with your keywords. For example, guitar. This is what you get:

Then you’ll see a list of products (guitar related in this example) sold on Clickbank.

Look for products with %refd more than 60% and grav is at least 1.00 (the higher the better). These numbers show that they are selling well on Clickbank.

That’s all you need to do.

You can either make money by selling affiliate product or create your own product.

Easy? Neat?

OK, let’s recap.

All you need to do is 1) IDENTIFY A PROBLEM you have solved that people are willing to pay for or 2) identify a topic/niche that the market is ALREADY buying.

Who says you need to do what you love to make money? Not anymore with this approach.

Have fun,

Abel Cheng

Now, for the first time, I’m going to reveal to you how I got my ideas to generate cash as and when I want.

This is one of the secret places that I’ve never revealed to anybody before.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to create income anytime you needed to?

If one idea is not enough, what about 101 different money making techniques?

In fact my friend James will give you access to 28 Case Files of real people who are putting these techniques into action.

Click here for ideas.

Take a look at Mike:

Mike loves to travel. While vacationing in Florida one summer he stumbled onto a great little money making idea that netted him $50,000 his first year — while he was traveling around goofing off and having fun.

Now Mike travels all over the country — from Key West, Florida to Salem, Oregon — doing this business and makes all the money he needs. You don’t have to travel to do this. You can do it right in your own hometown if you want. And the market is wide open because hardly anyone else is doing it.

There are more true stories here.

Enjoy.

Abel Cheng

I am going to share with you a report that is so powerful that you’ve never heard of the idea before.

It’s not any hocus-pocus that you’ve heard.

BUT it’s along the line:

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW – IT’S WHO YOU KNOW

But again, having said that, it’s not quite like that. Read it and you’ll find out!

And best of all the report is free.

It’s written by J.F. (Jim) Straw. A legendary mail order millionaire. Jim is a very talented and diversified entrepreneur.

To know Jim more, I quoted this from his website:

Straw’s career has progressed through direct selling, service contracting, wholesale merchandising, entertainment (he was a professional Trumpet player, vocalist & Radio Announcer), freight forwarding, import/export, retail merchandising, warehousing, real estate, electronics manufacturing, finder’s fees, closeout merchandising, financial brokerage, business consulting, steel fabrication, mining, banking, mailorder, writing, and publishing

Amazing? Impressive?

You bet. You’ll definitely learn a thing or two from Jim, who has 50 years of experience in business.

Click here now and get his report entitled:

“The Most Powerful Wealth Building Secret Ever Told!”

While you’re there, look for “A Special GIFT for you!” at the top left corner.

Click on “The Most Powerful Wealth Building Secret Ever Told!” to download.

NOTE: It’s not hit-and-run type of idea. The idea here will make you rich throughout your lifetime.

Alternatively, you can visit Jim’s website at:

www.businesslyceum.com

He shares his OWN experience how he made his fortunes in areas like information products, Internet business, mail order, real estate, etc.

Enjoy.

Abel Cheng