Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

What I’ve learned from 6 months of blogging at Far Beyond The Stars.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

At some point at the end of last month we silently passed the 6-month mark since I began writing this blog. It’s time to celebrate!

Thank you so much for being a part of this minimalist movement.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without you, the amazing people who read this blog and support my work.

I’ve been fully supporting myself via income from this blog for two months now. This is the first month that my income surpassed my monthly income at my day job.

I can feel the momentum building behind my writing, my words. Change is happening. People are finding a way to bring simplicity into their lives in order to get their finances under control, stop buying junk, and start living free. It’s blowing my mind the kind of stories I hear from people on Twitter and over email.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey. I can’t wait for what comes next, I hope you’ll stick around for the future of this movement.

I don’t pay attention to stats that much, but here’s a few:

As of today (April 5th 2010) this blog has 2500+ subscribers. I have 1200+ followers on Twitter.

If you want to follow my writing and join these 2500+ amazing subscribers I’d love if you’d sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS. Thank you.

Far Beyond The Stars receives more than 35,000 unique views a month.

Some of the top traffic sources are Rowdy Kittens, Zen Habits/Mnmlist, and Becoming Minimalist. Thanks for your help guys, every mention makes change happen.

Many of the new readers find me via the wonders of Twitter. Thank you for every retweet — this makes huge difference in who finds this blog.

Thank you so much for everyone who’s linked into the blog from their own blogs. This is probably one of the most important ways to make this blog succeed. There are 710+ active inbound links to Far Beyond the Stars — thank you so much for your mentions.

I know a lot of you are also trying to become full-time bloggers, so I thought I’d put together a list of things that I’ve learned. I hope this writing helps you find success as well.

If you aren’t a blogger, these tips can probably apply to your field of work with a little translation.

Here are 15 bits of wisdom from my 6 months of blogging success.

1. Assemble a group of remarkable allies. I have the pleasure of being friends with some of the brightest minds in blogging today. In order to succeed you need a team of all-star people to share the stage with. This is why I spend so much time writing about and helping other bloggers succeed. Rockstar up and coming bloggers like Colin Wright, Jeffrey Tang, Tammy Strobel, Ashley Ambirge, Joshua Becker, Adam Baker, and Karol Gajda are making a huge difference in their own work, and their support of my work has been amazing. Thank you for being my allies guys!

2. Study the best and the brilliant. It’s so incredibly important to study the work of people who have been successful in any field that you enter. I owe a huge debt to the successful bloggers who’ve done this before I did. Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields, Glenn Allsopp, Hugh MacLeod, and Seth Godin have all contributed more than they know to my success. Thank you all for your brilliant work.

3. The more you give the more you get. Chris Guillebeau mentioned this last week over at The Art of Non-conformity, and it’s so true. If your blog is struggling, it’s probably because you’re not giving enough. The people who succeed are the ones who give as much as possible, that’s why I’m constantly pointing you in the direction of people who I respect and admire. I’ve had the fortune of some amazing support from remarkable people who’ve noticed and helped me out — I try to give twice as much in return.

4. Help your readers as much as possible. This is the #1 reason that I’ve been able to get to the professional level so quickly. If your blog is struggling, take a look at your posts. Are you honestly teaching anything important? Are you making a difference in people’s lives? One struggling blogger who I had a lot of hopes for is now simply selling bad products and writing boring information that doesn’t help people. Don’t be that guy.

5. Fortune favors the bold. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, even if it goes against the status-quo. Some of my most successful work has focused on ideas that honestly scare people — these ideas are hard to hear. Sometimes I’ll write things that make people feel bad about their lives and consumption choices. Sometimes people send me emails telling me to stop saying what I’m saying because it challenges their perception of reality. This is good, we need to challenge people in order to make change happen. You can’t succeed if you aren’t willing to challenge belief systems.

6. If you aren’t passionate, don’t publish. If you’re not 100% certain that your writing is going to change the way that people think about the world, don’t publish it! I only hit the publish button if I’m absolutely certain that I’m going to help people. Sometimes that means scrapping multiple stories before I hit on one that’s contributing enough value to make the cut.

7. The moment you go pro, everything changes. When I told the world that I intended to make a living from this blog, everything started happening. I began getting offers from people who wanted to help me make it. I also started writing some of the best work that I’ve ever created. Going pro forces you to rise to the occasion in order to make everything come together.

8. Perfect is the enemy of done. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I focus on the ideas. Sometimes I don’t have perfect grammar and I’ll spell things wrong. I do my best to have perfect prose, but ultimately it’s the good ideas that matter. Don’t get caught up trying to be perfect, if it keeps you from making work. Generate ideas that will spur remarkable change — I don’t care of there is a comma missing, or a word isn’t spelled properly.

9. Give your best work away for free. You can’t succeed in the digital age if you withhold your best work for paying customers only. Prove that you have the ability to help people by giving them everything for free, and your audience will support you by buying your premium product. People will support the value that they receive. Give your best work away for free and you’ll reach so many more people who can help you make the change that’s necessary.

10. Don’t be afraid to change direction. Sometimes you have to kill your babies. At various points during the last six months I’ve had to make some hard choices in order to succeed in other areas. I shut down a business blog that wasn’t taking off. I stopped photographing professionally. Sometimes you have to make hard choices in order to succeed. Be flexible enough to follow your interests until you find what you’re really passionate about. Also, trying to run two blogs at once is like trying to date two women at once — neither of them end up very happy with you.

11. Social proof matters. Take a look at the front page of your blog. Can new readers tell you have a community? Can they see your best work right away? These factors matter. This is why my retweet button is the first thing you see (192 retweets? I better read this!) and my biggest accomplishments are easy to see (Interviews with Chris Guillebeau and Leo Babauta? This blogger must be with the in crowd!) Don’t bury your best work, and make it clear that other people are actually reading your blog.

12. Good headlines matter. I use professional copywriting techniques to craft every one of my headlines. Sometimes this means they’re a little over the top, and I’m okay with that. Think about it: most people decide what they’re going to read based on the headline as they’re reading other blogs, flipping around on their phone or in their RSS reader. Would you rather read a post titled “it’s my blog’s birthday” or “15 Bits of Wisdom from 6 Months of Blogging Success?” Don’t short your ability to grab someone’s attention by using boring headlines. A great resource for learning to write remarkable attention grabbing headlines is Copyblogger.

13. Don’t undervalue yourself. Yes, I give away my best work free, but I also am not afraid to ask for people to pay me. My readers understand that if my work helps them, they should also help me out in return. It’s not easy being a full-time writer, you can’t work for free — at some point you have to ask people to support you. You’d be surprised how willing people are to help people who contribute value to their lives. Thank you for everyone who’d purchased The Art of Being Minimalist or generously donated to support my writing. Your support has made a huge difference in my life, it makes the work I do possible.

14. Live what you preach. I write about being minimalist in order to live and work anywhere. I actually am a minimalist and I actually live and work from anywhere. Take a look at the message you’re sending, does to match the way you live? Some bloggers just talk about ideas they think might be cool if they were to try them. The successful bloggers and writers (maybe even successful people in general) actually live and breathe a reality that they believe in. If you’re trying to make change, you have to live the change you’re making.

15. Support the work of amazing people. When I see a good blog, or a good story, I do everything I can to help that person out. I want you to succeed, because this isn’t a zero-sum game. If you can surround yourself with a community who you enthusiastically support, they will support you.

Here are a few links you should check out from writers who I enthusiastically endorse:

An Interview with Ashley Ambirge by Tammy Strobel.

The Lost Art of Solitude by Leo Babauta.

Man Vs Debt Turns 1 Year Old by Adam Baker.

I also wrote a short guest post for Gaping Void on how to focus on the important.

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Thank you for reading this!

If you want to follow my writing and join these 2500+ amazing subscribers I’d love if you’d sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS. Thank you.

Stay tuned for the part 4 in my series on using minimalism to leave the 9-5 on Wednesday.

If these words helped you, I’d love it if you’d take a moment to share this with someone who it can help. Thank you so much for your help.

Best,

Everett Bogue

7 ways why leaving your job doesn’t have to be hard.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the 3rd part in a now 4-part series on leaving your day job. The 1st was on preparing to leave your day job the 2nd was on how to make money online.

The last article in this series will be on how to survive the first three months after leaving your day job. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.

The idea of losing a day job is terrifying to most people in the modern world.

There are many reasons for this, but they’re pretty simple: we’re living overextended lives.

A number of factors contribute to permanent workplace servitude among them:

• Expensive car payment and insurance.
• Subscriptions to Cable TV, etc.
• Consumer debt that hasn’t been paid off.
• College debt, because of the rising cost of getting an education.
• Large expensive houses.
• Eating out at every meal, or pre-packed microwavable foods that make us fat and stupid.
• Spending on stuff you don’t need because you thought you needed it.

We can further reduce these contributing factors to one simple message:

You have too much stuff.

This is why you can’t leave your job, because your life costs so much that the moment you don’t have $2000-$4000 coming in with every paycheck, everything comes crashing down around you.

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one in this situation. Luckily, there are other options.

The story of stuff: too much to less.

Tammy Strobel was in this situation a few years ago. Two cars, a big house. She couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t able to break even. Then she employed a healthy dose of minimalism, sold her costly cars and recently started a very small writing business. She details her story, and how you can go car-free in her new e-book, Simply Car-free. Now she’s happily biking around Portland and works when she wants on the projects that she cares about.

Tammy Strobel isn’t alone. A small army of creative individuals are realizing that they don’t need the junk that the televisions told us to buy.

Perhaps you’re already applying the principles you learned in the last article on making money online to build a small online empire destined for world domination like Chris Guillebeau? It certainly takes some time and a lot of effort to make this move towards freedom, but if you’ve got the goal of visiting every country in the world by your 35th birthday (like Chris), two weeks of vacation a year just isn’t going to cut it.

What you need is freedom.

The funny thing is that freedom is so easy to attain.

In September of last year I asked myself a simple question: what would it take to leave my day job and live and work from anywhere? If you’ve read The Art of Being Minimalist, you already know the answer.

This answer is too good to keep a secret though, I’d rather share it with you. I’ve decided to pluck the secret out of my simple e-book and summarize it to you right her. I hope it helps you find your own personal liberation.

If you apply these guidelines below, you’ll have no trouble freeing yourself from the confines of your day job — or any other goals you may have.

Here are 7 ways to apply minimalism to leave your day job.

1. Reduce your possessions to a more manageable amount.

The biggest mistake people make when they decide to leave their jobs is thinking they can keep it all. If you have a McMansion full of junk and you leave your day job, you will have to pay for the space to store these things, and also spend money on upkeep. Living with a lot also encourages rabid consumerism. The secret is to reduce your possessions to a minimal amount.

I live with less than 75 things, and I’m attempting to reduce that amount to at least 50 by the time I move to San Francisco on May 15th.

I realize that living with 50 personal possessions seems crazy to most people, but it’s how I choose to live. With 50 things I can move whenever I want with a backpack. You might think you need more than 50, that’s okay! 150 things is more than enough for most people.

When you find yourself living with less than 150 possessions, you’ll start to notice how much freer you are. Suddenly your mind is free to think about things other than your junk.

Make a list of your 100 most important things. If you feel the need to buy something, it has to displace one of those things.

2. Remove all dependence on expensive and needless entertainment.

In the modern age we’ve been trained to think our human lives should be spent in front of a TV watching endless hours of television.

This is absurd, you’ve been duped.

Sell your TV, unsubscribe from your cable. If you have a show you really need to keep up with — pick only one! Chances are you can watch it online. Anything else that falls under the category of entertainment and is either an addiction or a subscription needs to go. All of these costs add up, this is when you get into the situation where you have to work 60 hours a week to survive.

3. Stop needless consumerism.

Stop buying stupid stuff. Many people are hooked in the little adrenalin boost they get from spending small sums of money every evening.

This boost from consumerism is NOT a momentary happiness experience, it’s actual parallel is a low-dosage hit of heroin.

Corporations have scammed you into thinking that the only way that other people will accept you is if you have a new H&M top every time you go out. This is not the case. A week’s worth of simple and durable clothes is all a person needs to live comfortably. This frees you from thousands of dollars a month of needless expense. Stop shopping, start living.

Personally, I’d rather spend more on a pair of jeans that can withstand 4-6 months of daily wear.

4. Find joy in simpler things.

Many of the best pleasures in life are free, and infinitely more fulfilling than shopping.

Go for a walk with no destination. Go sit on the beach for a day. Lie on your roof and watch the stars at night. Cook a meal for your friends. Plant a tree. Climb a mountain and sleep on the top. Read a book. Minimalism doesn’t have to be boring.

There are so many inexpensive ways to have great experiences, you don’t need to go spend hundreds of dollars to live your life.

5. Move to a city where you can live without a car.

Cars are the second most expensive purchase you will make in your adult lives. Did you know you can live without them? Well, you can. There are a number of cities in America where cars aren’t the norm, move to one of them and suddenly you’ll have huge hunks of cash that you forgot you had. Go car-free and the possibilities start to open up.

It’s a myth that living in a city is more expensive. It’s not, because you don’t need a car. Check out Portland, OR for amazing quality of life. Brooklyn, NY for amazing opportunities. Both of these cities are walkable, bike-able, and awesome.

More at SuburbanShift: How Cars Rob Americans of their Retirement.

6. Focus on the important.

When you focus on only a few very important things in your life, you actually succeed at them.

What is important to you? Write that down, now! It’s sad story when I ask a person what their priorities are, and I get blank faces.

Worse is the people who tell me they’re a painter (or any artist,) but they’ve only done two canvasses. If you’re a painter, reduce your possessions to the essentials: your brushes, your canvasses.

When the TV is gone, the only way to entertain yourself is to paint. Eventually you’ll start to make decent work, this can be translated easily into making a living from your art like Soniei does. Focus on the work that is important to you.

7. Stop searching for the next half-assed spike of adrenalin (go for the real stuff.)

Shopping gives you a temporary high. So does drugs, alcohol, TV, video games, etc. These things are fun over the short-term, but forty years down the road no one is going to care that you watched the entire Lost series three times through.

If you’re into adrenalin, do something crazy, like move to New Zealand and go skydiving.

Destroy your Guitar Hero (if you spent as much time playing guitar as you do on Guitar Hero, you’d actually be talented at music) and actually go on tour. Trade manufactured happiness for the real experience. Stop engaging in the detached distain of current affairs by reading the newspaper and go try and make a difference in the world.

Is this really so surprising?

I realize that the idea of adopting all of these systems is incredibly difficult for most people. I know this because I’ve been there.

You’re used to living in a fantasy world.

This world is propped up by over-extended credit and modern day wage-slavery.

You can either continue to live that life, and I know many of you will. Keep waking up every morning, stumbling to the car, sitting under fluorescent lights for the entire day.

Alternatively, you can pop the red pill and choose to wake up.

Reduce your possessions to the basic essentials that you need in order to build a life outside the confines of this corporate system.

When you get to this point you’ll start to notice long a basic amount of savings, such as $3000, will actually last you. Then you can start to build your own minimalist business and find your own personal liberation.

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Here are a few links to check out, I hope they will help you.

Pavarotti’s Secret to Success by Chris Guillebeau.

How to Say ‘No’ Gracefully by Tammy Strobel.

An In-Depth Guide to Buying and Selling Websites by Glenn Allsopp.

A Little Celebration of Less by Jeffrey F. Tang.

The Reality of Digital Content by Seth Godin.

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Did this article help you? The best way you can help me out is to take 10 seconds and share this post. If you have five minutes, I’d love if you could write about me on your blog, this really helps people discover my writing.

Thank you so much.

6 Steps Toward Additional Income Streams In Order to Quit Your Day Job.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the second post in a series on quitting your day job in order to live and work from anywhere. The first post was on the challenge of preparing to quit your job.

Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.

Last week I wrote a long article on how to prepare to quit your day job. If you missed that post, I definitely suggest going back and reading it.

In that post, I mentioned that it was useful to develop income on the side using the Internet, in order to quit you day job. I glossed over the details of how to do this, in that post.

A number of people emailed me asking for more information, so I decided to write this post in order to help more people start to make a small amount of side income in order to quit their jobs more effectively.

I’ve been working online for most of my adult life — I was part of the professional blogging team at New York Magazine, and Gawker before that. I’ve been a student of the income potential of the Internet for over ten years now.

Recently I began to earn my entire living from this blog and from my e-book The Art of Being Minimalist.

I hope that this article will help you gain independence.

Many people haven’t realized the unlimited selling potential of the Internet.

They’re stuck back in 1982, calling people 1-on-1 on the phone and hoping to make a sale. It doesn’t have to be that way.

You’re much more likely to succeed if you embrace the power of the Internet.

This was made clear to me a few days ago — I was at a bar in Brooklyn, wishing a good friend farewell the night before she crossed the Atlantic for adventures in London.

I found myself in conversations about what I do, with two people. One an old friend, another a random stranger.

1st person, who is on unemployment for 6 months after being fired from his job:

Him: “So, how did you land that job, being a blogger?”

Me: “Well, I didn’t land it, I built it.”

Him: “You can make your own job?”

2nd person, who is working as a temp after not finding much luck getting jobs five years after graduating from college:

Her: “Well, I’m a temp, and I just sit around all day on Facebook.”

Me: “Why don’t you use that time to build an empire and start making $1000 a week on the Internet?”

Her: “You can do that?”

Both of these people got blank looks on their faces and walked away from me when I suggested that they could actually change their lives. This illustrated to me just how unconventional the idea of selling a digital product online really is.

There are only a handful of people actually making the jump to digital sales, the rest of the planet is still stuck back in 1982.

I imagine some of you are already thinking of clicking off this page. You think I’m just trying to sell you something, but I’m not.

I want you to realize how simple it is to embrace the Internet as your job.

If you’re interested in the above statement, I suggest you read this blog post thoroughly. Do not skim it. Do not jump around. Read each word, bookmark this, and then try each step separately until you’ve done everything here.

You can live and work from anywhere, –if you put in the work.

It will take you at most half a day to complete the first 3 of these steps and start making money online. It’ll take you a little longer for the last step, creating your own product, but you’ll get there eventually. Trust me!

The changing reality of Internet communication.

The reality is, you can change your life, and you can make a decent living working online — if you put in the work. I’ve done it. It’s far easier than you might think. I’m starting to believe that one of the biggest barriers to people making money online is their willingness to admit to themselves that it’s possible.

We’re a society that trains people in school to work in factories, and then they get out and their wonder where all of the factories went.

You’re on your own, the only person who’s going to give you permission to work online is you.

The true dynamics of the Internet.

Twenty years ago, the only way you could establish a brand and market a product was:

1. By spending a ton of money on ads on the television or other media.
2. By opening a brick and mortar storefront.
3. By pimping yourself and your friends to a mid-level marketing scheme.
4. By calling random people on the telephone and crossing your fingers.

All of these options still exist, but the internet bypasses all of the inadequacies of these systems. This means you can skip them, and go straight to the Internet.

On the internet, instead of your relationship being 1 to 1 with a buyer. The relationship is 1 to whoever you can get to come to your website and contact through social media. This can be 1 or it can be infinite.

The power of the digital product.

The internet has revolutionized how products are produced.

The cost of broadcasting on the web has fallen to zero –see Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price for specifics. This creates a situation of complete selling democracy, and infinite potential, because:

1. Anyone can create a product.
2. Anyone can sell a product.
3. To anyone in the world.
4. At any time of day.

This creates amazing situations for independent professionals, such as making money in your sleep.

The way I see it, if you have something to offer people, you should product a digital product and sell it. You can’t lose money, because the distribution is free.

What’s the worst that can happen? You create a product and no one buys it. This means that no one needs it. If no one needs what you offer, you probably need to reevaluate what you’re offering.

The minimum you need to start.

I write about being minimalist, so I’m not going to go overboard recommending what you need to use in order to make money online.

Some people will tell you that you need to invest in all sorts of infrastructure in order to sell online. This is absurd.

Everything you need to sell online can be yours for free. Don’t spend any money until you’ve made money, it’s just absurd to be buying expensive software when there are free alternatives.

That’s not to say that you don’t want to upgrade eventually when you need more advanced technology, but don’t do this until you’re making at least $50,000 a year off your website. Then you can actually afford the expensive stuff.

That being said, I’ve recommended a few products below, that I believe in and I’m an affiliate for, that will help you learn. If after reading this you’re still scratching your head as to how to begin to earn money online, these educational products can go a long way towards filling the gap in your knowledge.

These products aren’t requirements, they’re simply options if you need additional learning in order to be able to take this path towards success.

It’s not necessary to dish out a lot of money in order to find success online. You can learn everything you need to for free by reading blogs and experimenting on your own.

The minimalist tools for making money online.

1. Why you need a blog.

Your blog is your home on the Internet, you need to make one now if you don’t have one already. Go to WordPress.com to sign up for a free WordPress blog to get started.

Eventually you’ll want to get your own domain name and hosting, but don’t worry about that until you start to find some success online.

1. Start blogging at least twice a week.
2. Set a schedule and stick to it.
3. Write content that is extremely useful to people.
4. Pick a niche market as your focus.
5. Make it easy to subscribe to your blog via RSS and email.

Some people will tell you that you need all sorts of other things for your blog. Don’t worry about those things now. Just write good content. If you’re trying to escape your day job, you don’t have time to spend hours messing around with little blog widgets.

Writing good content is 80% of your blogging career, the rest is just extra. If you find yourself spending 20% of your time on content and the rest of the time checking your stats or otherwise wasting your time, stop!

Focus on content, and you’ll find blogging success.

Read Problogger and Viperchill to learn more about how to blog successfully.

If you need additional education, I highly recommend Darren Rowse’s e-book 31 Days to a Better Blog.

2. Social networking.

Sign up for two social networking services. If you have a pulse, you’re probably already on Facebook. If you’re not, join.

The second service I want you to join, if you haven’t already, is Twitter.

Why only two? Because you need to focus. If you’re on 10 social networks, you’ll never have time to be good at any one of them. If you pick only two, you will be able to be effective on at least two platforms and start to develop a significant amount of traffic to your blog from these sources.

Install tweetmeme and Facebook share buttons on your blog, and start pushing your content out to these services every time you post.

Next, start social networking with other bloggers who interest you.

The best way to do this is to retweet their posts every single time they post, this will show that you respect and admire them.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

1. Ask bloggers questions.
2. Start conversations.
3. Interview bloggers for your blog.
4. Be helpful.

Don’t spend too much time on social networking. 30 minutes a day is just enough. Social networking is 20% of your traffic, so don’t spend 80% of your time there — believe me, you will be tempted to do so. Social networking can become an infinite feedback loop — you need to do it, just don’t spend all of your time doing it.

Focus on content for your blog, and let the social networking happen naturally.

To learn more about social networking, read Chris Brogan’s blog and read Trust Agents the book wrote with Julien Smith.

Also check out Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to the Social Web for some more in-depth learning if necessary.

3. Create a movement.

Once you create a blog, the next step is creating a movement — read this free e-book by me next.

Then come back to this page in order to learn the power of selling digital products.

4. Sell someone’s product first.

Before you invest all of the hours in creating your own product, try selling someone else’s product on your blog first.

When I first started my blog, I was an affiliate for Leo Babauta’s A Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life. Selling for Leo provided a small amount of income for me while I built my business, and helped me learn how to effectively sell online. I chose this e-book because it was a huge inspiration for me. It made me think how to apply minimalism to my own life, and how to write about minimalism so that others could accomplish their ambitions in order to live happier.

Many bloggers will let you affiliate market their products for 50% commission. You can earn anywhere from $5-$200 per sale.

I only sell products on my blog that I support, and I think you should too.

Don’t sell anything you don’t believe in.

It’s much harder to sell a product when you don’t believe in it’s benefits. It may take you some time to locate your idea product, and that’s okay. Take your time and pick something you believe in.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself (51% commission)

Adam Baker’s Unautomate Your Finances (50% commission)

Glen Allsopp’s Cloud Living (51% commission)

Also, you can become an affiliate for my e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist (50% commission).

5. Create your own product.

Once you’ve sold a few copies of other people’s products, it’s time to create your own.

What is a digital product?

1. An e-book that helps people.
2. An audio recording that helps people.
3. A software program that helps people.
4. A video series that helps people.

I say ‘helps people’, because that’s one of the biggest questions you need to ask yourself when you create a product. Who is this helping? If the answer is “everyone!” your product is probably way too broad and not interesting enough for anyone to buy it.

Go niche or go broke. You need to create a product for a specific group of people. Scratch your own itch, fix your own problems, and you have a good chance of creating such a product.

Creating a product is different for everyone.

When I wrote The Art of Being Minimalist, I created the product over two weeks of intense writing. I combined this with writing I’d been working on over the last couple of months, and suddenly I had a product. This process is different for everyone.

The truth is that this was a book idea that had been floating around my head since before I’d even started my blog. It was a book idea that was set into motion from the moment that I quit my job in July of last year and jumped on a plane to Portland Oregon.

Everyone has a product idea in them, you just have to find it. A good idea will come to you naturally through the work that you do on your blog.

For more on creating digital products, check out Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.

Another good resource is Dave Navarro’s How to Launch The **** Out of Your E-Book.

6. Let people affiliate market for you.

Once you’ve finished your product, sign up for a sellers account at e-junkie for only $5 a month –this is free for the first week. This will handle all of your payments and distribution automatically, and allow your community to earn money selling your newly created product on their own blogs.

This is the moment when the real magic happens. If you offer your product for 50% commission, suddenly you can harness the power of others to sell your product. By offering 50% (or more) commission, people will spread your product far and wide across the Internet. Some people will sell 5 copies, others will sell 500.

Imagine if you get 500 people to sell 500 copies each of your product over the course of a year? Even if you’re only charging $10… …well, you do the math, because you won’t believe me if I just tell you.

The infinite potential of reaching people via the Internet makes this possible.

Best of luck in your endeavors!

Now you have the skills to create a small to sizable side income while you’re at your day job. With any luck, you should be able to grow this income to replace your day job, or start a new income stream from the ground up.

Then you can leave your job and start living and working from anywhere! Congratulations, you’re almost free!

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This is the second post in a series on quitting your day job in order to live and work from anywhere. The first post was on the challenge of preparing to quit your job.

Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.

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This article helped you, I’d love if you could share it with anyone you know who wants to quit their job.

Hit the retweet button, or email this to your friends, this only takes 10 seconds and it’s the single best way for people to discover my writing.

Thank you.

Predictions for your future in the information age.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

20 years ago it was incredibly difficult to create a reality that you could effect.

You had control over the people you came in contact with. You could reach out to anyone who you could look up the phone number too.

In order to build anything, you needed to pander to the established media. They thrived on this, of course, because no one had a choice but to talk to them.

Now no one needs the media, and you can see how much of an empty shell it was –reality dumbed down to fit into 20 second sound bites. A 24 news-cycle thriving on the degradation of others. I know first hand, I’ve worked for the media.

For 50 years we sat idly by and watched “Lost”, now it’s time to reclaim your time.

Television domination is over now. Anyone can publish what they believe in. It is fairly easy to gather followers who will support your cause. This blog proves this, and so does every other blog out there with a following.

There is no longer any excuse to not do what you love. Seriously, create your own movement.

There are millions of things you could be doing tonight instead of watching TV. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that you should destroy it entirely.

If you must watch something, watch TED. Ideas are far better to fill your brain with than the emptiness of the airwaves.

Here are a few of the changes that I see coming in the next five years because of this change:

Everyone will be supporting a community of minimalist businesses.

As business diversifies, so will the support. Twenty years ago big business dominated because they could buy many more television ads than the rest of us. This is why there’s a Burger King in every single town.

With the rise of social media, everyone now has a chance to find their true following.

As society moves away from that drudge and start appreciating quality hand-made work again, we will start to see consumer support move in that direction. Everyone will be the business owner, the marketer, and the consumer. We will support individual’s single-operator businesses from across the globe.

It will become much easier to rise to the top at what you’re passionate about.

It’s already so easy to Gatejump your way to success, and it will become even easier as good ideas float to the top of the cloud faster. All you have to do is create exceptional value, which isn’t actually that hard. Yes, you’ve been trained to do nothing by the TV in your living room for the last 50 years.

You need to destroy it now, and start working on your own projects every single night until an idea worth spreading appears to you.

Go on walks. Get in touch with nature. Start drawing. Get a camera. Take a dance class. Eat new foods. Write something that means something. Finger paint on your wall. Do something that will make people look at you weird, because the weird people are kicking your economic butt in it’s fluorescently lit chair.

Everyone will have to unlock their inner creativity.

Robots, computers, and outsourcing are quickly replacing cubicle drones. If you have no talents and no inspiration in your daily life, you need to up your game. The robots are coming for you.

Anything that can be done better by a computer is not a good career aspiration.

You are an individual, and it’s totally your fault if you continue to take orders and do repetitive tasks all day, and then go home and watch CSI. Make a change, start to design your freakin’ life, and get out of there. You need to become an artist, a creative, and an original thinker if you’re going to get out of the unemployment line.

A college education is quickly becoming less needed.

20 years ago, the only way to access information was through teachers at a school. This is no longer the case. Many universities are at a major disadvantage in the chain of information distribution, because they’re a bottleneck. They contain numerous teachers who haven’t seen the light of day since 1982.

The world has changed a lot since many of the teachers got to these schools, it also moves a lot faster. The real time information available on the net and through recently published books far exceeds the educational ability of larger institutions.

School teaches you to be good at school.

It’s not to say you won’t learn something there, and I did go, but is it worth $150,000? You have to ask that question.

Don’t go to business school, get a Personal MBA. Read business books, like Jason Fried’s Rework.

You will have to figure out what you’re passionate about.

If you’re stumbling around wondering what you’re actually interested in, that’s okay for a bit. Eventually you need to start doing something though. Sit yourself down and contemplate: what do I really enjoy doing?

If you don’t have an answer, here’s another solution: Stop doing everything you hate doing and see what you’re left with.

The silence of emptiness can be a huge motivator to finding your true calling. Stop running around, start silently contemplating what you want to do for the rest of your life. Once you find that sweet spot, you’ll actually be happy.

What else can you remove to free yourself further?

Once you know what you care about, you have to go further. What ballast do you need to throw overboard to get to the next level? The more junk you remove from your life, the more time you will have to pursue your goals. You will reclaim your dreams. As you remove each task that you hate doing, you will free yourself to make positive choices towards creating great work.

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What predictions do you have for the future of the information age?

What steps are you taking to take advantage of the changes?

If this made you think, share it with 5 people. Thank you.

How adopting a minimalist approach of unautomating your finances can get you out of debt.

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Adam Baker and his daughter Milligan

If anyone can teach you the skills to get yourself out of debt, it’s Adam Baker of the blog Man Vs. Debt.

Over the last year, Baker, his wife Courtney, and their daughter Milligan, paid off all of their consumer debt, sold all of their ‘crap’, and traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Now they’re back in Indiana, and Baker has written an amazing and simple e-book on taking control of your financial situation.

I don’t talk much about finances her on my blog, usually my advice is quite simple: stop buying stupid stuff, start living your life.

Luckily, Baker goes into a great deal more depth in his new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money.

I’ve been a huge fan of Baker’s, before I even started writing Far Beyond The Stars. His writing on Man Vs. Debt and as a contributing writer on Get Rich Slowly helped inspire me during my own journey towards minimalism.

My favorite part of the Unautomate Your Finances is Baker’s signature 2-page minimalist budgeting system, which is the simplest method I’ve seen to force yourself to acknowledge the money you’re actually spending during every transaction.

Today, I’m honored to present this interview I did with Baker over the weekend. We discussed the benefits of Unautomation, the danger of subscriptions, and how Baker sold all his ‘crap’ and traveled the world with his family.

Everett Bogue: Your e-book is called Unautomate Your Finances, and your theory of Unautomation is heavily discussed throughout the e-book. How can Unautomation help get you out of debt?

Adam Baker: Unautomation is simply any time you are willing to trade convenience in for increased consciousness (basically the opposite of what we do when we automate). It can help people get out debt in many ways!

First, it raises awareness of our situations. This is often the first obstacles in coming to grips with just how destructive debt can be in our lives. Unautomation also encourages us to focus on one goal at a time. Often, we never pay off our debt, because we are juggling so many of our “expected” responsibilities. We may be expected to live a certain life, save a certain amount, or do a certain set of things.

By ramping up and honing in our focus, we can start to really chew away at our debt.

Everett: What is one powerful way to Unautomate your finances?

Baker: In the guide I cover at least 27 “core action steps”. However, one of my favorites is adopting a simple budget.

Courtney and I primarily budget by hand, using two sheets of paper and a very straight forward system. It’s worked wonders for us and budgeting this way is not only easy, but it raises our awareness more than any other method!

Everett: I love your approach to stuff (sell your crap) in UYS. How can a healthy relationship with stuff help you get out of debt?

Baker: Excess stuff creates all sorts of burdens. Clutter begets more clutter. And excess stuff takes space to store and money to maintain. It trains us to want more and more. Look, there’s nothing wrong with having possessions, but like you pointed out we’ve crossed the healthy point as a society.

As a bonus, most of us can generate up several hundred dollars (or even more) when we go to actually purge our possessions. This can be used to aggressively attack our other goals!

Everett: What are some of the things that you got rid of when you were downsizing?

Baker: Oh gosh… Well, we really got rid of everything! We started with big obvious things… excess furniture, electronics, a television, and even one of our cars. But we kept going! Eventually we took what was an apartment full of crap and turned it into two backpacks to start our travels.

We’ve accumulated some more stuff since coming back home, but we’re desperately trying to fend off our urges to consume.

Everett: You talk in your e-book about how subscriptions can take an unnoticed toll on our finances. What are some of the unnecessary subscriptions that we sign up for?

Baker: Cell phone contracts, cable services, rental leases, magazines, newspapers, online apps, widgets, bells, whistles, monitoring services, etc…

Let me be very clear, though. There are plenty of cases where subscriptions are necessary and/or desirable! My suggestion is to mentally purge your subscriptions and start from scratch. Examine them all and figure out which ones you really want/need.

Also, be sure to look for creative solutions and/or alternatives to avoid them (this is sometimes not hard at all). Be careful of signing long-term contracts on anything. 2-3 months from now your “necessary” expense could quickly become not so important!

Everett: Leo Babauta discusses in the forward of Unautomate Your Finances about how he used many Unautomation techniques to get himself out of debt, but now he’s back to automation. At what point do you think it’s acceptable, or even advantageous, to go back to automating your finances?

Baker: I think automation is extremely powerful when applied to healthy, sustainable finances habits and when it is reevaluated on a regular basis. But we have to be careful of looking at automation as a solution to our problems or financial issues. It’s not a solution. It can be a powerful tool, but it only magnifies the existing habits we have!

Installing the empowering habits in the first place often takes the opposite of automation!

Everett: Thanks so much for this opportunity Baker. Good luck with your e-book launch!

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Adam Baker’s new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money is available now for only $17.

Because I’m a huge supporter of Adam Baker’s work, I’ve decided to become an affiliate for his work. 50% of the sale price goes to support my work here at Far Beyond The Stars.

If this interview helped you, I’d love if you could share it with anyone you know who’s having trouble with their finances.

Thank you.

Special Launch-day Bonus (March 9th ONLY!): I’ve just been informed that the first 100 people to purchase the e-book get access to UStream with Baker himself, where he will discuss any questions you have about the e-book and finances in general. Don’t miss out!

Did you know you can save $8,000 a year by not having a car?

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

If you don’t know Tammy Strobel already, you should get to meet her. Tammy blogs about social change through simple living at her blog Rowdy Kittens. She is also a photographer, and gives away all of her photos under an Uncopyright license.

Tammy and I first met months ago, when I was living in Portland and she in Sacramento. It was my first week publishing Far Beyond The Stars, and she emailed me and basically said: “your blog is awesome!”. I emailed her back and said “no! your blog is awesome!” Since then we’ve kept in touch almost every day over Twitter.

Truth be told, this blog wouldn’t be anywhere without Tammy; the inbound links from her blog drive almost as much traffic as a guest post on Zen Habits. Why? Because she only delivers remarkable ideas.

I’m happy to announce the release of Tammy’s first-ever e-book, Simply Car-free: How to Pedal Toward Financial Freedom and a Healthier Life.

Tammy sent me a preview copy last week, and I’ve read the entire book cover-to-cover. It’s one of the best resources on quitting the car-addiction and discovering the liberation of riding a bike.

There’s also a guest chapter by me! I wrote a little lifehack on how to rent a bike in any city for free, based on my experiences buying and selling a bike in Portland. Tammy included it in her book, and on her blog, which is just awesome!

I made the decision to ditch the idea of ever having a car and moved to New York City almost 7 years ago, so I had no idea that I was saving around $8,000 a year by not having one! It’s true though, cars are expensive. I never want to have one.

Well, anyway, enough of my fawning over Tammy’s awesomeness, and onto the interview:

Tammy Strobel on how going car-free allowed her to quit her job, start her business, and gain financial freedom:

Everett Bogue: Tammy, going car free was a big decision for you. What inspired you to make this choice?

Tammy Strobel: Dee Williams’ tiny house and the idea of a simpler life inspired us to try something new. Simple living challenged us to eliminate our unnecessary stuff and to prioritize our life goals.

Selling the cars was a big decision for us because we were afraid that our dependence on cars was actually an essential need. By going car-free we realized we didn’t need to depend on cars and we were able to save money, improve our health, and gain the freedom to pursue our life goals.

Everett: By going car-free, you saved a huge hunk of money. How much do you estimate you save by not having a car?

Tammy: By selling both of our cars we save, on average, about $15,000 a year. It’s amazing how much money and time cars suck up. You have to deal with car payments, insurance, fluctuating gas prices, maintenance issues, parking or speeding tickets and the list goes on and on.

We also saved a lot of emotional and financial strain. Owning two cars resulted in strain because we were always short on cash after we were paid. We couldn’t figure out where all our money was going and didn’t realize it was being poured into our cars. Owning a car was something we felt like we “needed.” It turned out we didn’t “need” a car and we wasted an incredible amount of money on non-essential assets that depreciated over time.

Thanks to selling our cars we were able to pay off all our debt, which added up to $30,000. If I still had 2 cars, I don’t think we would have paid off our debt or saved any money. The average American spends $8,000 a year on one car. Imagine what folks could be doing with that money instead of spending it on a car!

Everett: How has that enabled you to do other things with your life?

Tammy: I have the money and freedom to focus on my dreams. I don’t say this lightly. We exchange time and life-energy for money. Time and energy is non-renewable resource in our limited life-span. It’s something we never get back.

I’m using my extra time to volunteer and connect with friends and family members. Also, I was able to start my own small business, a dream that I thought would never come true. I believe going car-free is one way to find freedom from the burden of debt, poor health, and transition to a new career. I’m extremely grateful for the time I’ve spent doing non-profit work, but I knew I had to escape my cubicle. I wanted freedom. Freedom to focus on my writing and photography full time.

I have also improved my health. I used to spend a lot of time in the gym, but wanted to get outside more. Even with all the time spent in the gym, my waist line kept getting a little larger. Spending time sitting all day, then driving home from work and sitting more didn’t help. An hour or two a day at the gym wasn’t cutting it. By selling the car, I’ve literally pedaled toward good health and lost about 15 pounds too.

Everett: What was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome when you first decided to give up your car?

Tammy: Fear. We kept imagining: “What if a family member gets sick? What if we get sick? What if the cats get sick? How will we do basic errands, like picking up groceries?” I could go on and on with the list of fears.

All of the “what if” scenarios we worried about never came true. In fact, the opposite has occurred. We’re living our lives with intention and awareness.

Everett: Going car free is definitely a huge decision for most Americans. How can they test the waters before they give it all up?

Tammy: Change is scary and uncomfortable, but being uncomfortable leads to growth.

If you’re on the verge of going car-free or car-lite you can do a number of things:

• Write down a list of your fears. Ask yourself, why you’re scared of being without a car. And if you went car-free, what is the worst thing that can happen?
• Don’t drive your car for a week and see how it feels. Go grocery shopping by bike, meet your friend at a coffee shop, and start taking notes on your observations.
• Connect with your local biking community in your neighborhood and online. Even if you don’t think your community has a local biking group, I’m sure they do. More and more grassroots biking organizations are popping up in towns across the country. Seek out your community and they will help you make the car-free or car-lite transition.
• If you don’t have a bike, buy or borrow one that fits. If you aren’t sure what kind of bike is right for you, ask for help from your biking community and you can always send me an email too.
• Look into alternative transportation options, like walking, riding the bus, or taking a light rail train.

Everett: I’ve lived in Portland, you’re living in Portland. It’s one of the greatest cities on earth. How does living in Portland make your car-free life easier?

Tammy: I agree! Portland is amazing! We’ve been in Portland for about a month and it is an incredible city. Free city bike maps, ample bike parking, bike lanes and accessible public transportation makes being car-free very easy. Additionally, Portland is very walkable. I’ve been walking, biking and riding public transit to all my destinations with no problems.

It’s my hope other U.S. cities will follow Portland’s lead regarding sustainability policies. If cities don’t make it easy for people to get around without cars, they will continue to drive.

Everett: If you could wish for one fundamental change to occur because of your e-book, what would that be?

Tammy: My wish is to address the fear of change on everyone’s mind. It’s so easy to be hindered by fear. I think it’s important to remember that anything is possible. When we sold our cars we didn’t get much support from friends and family members. We were told that our decision was crazy and austere.

After seeing the great outcome of our decision many of these same people have complemented us on our courage. Questioning the status-quo and what it means to live the good life is challenging. However, the end result is worth it. You’ll have extra money in your wallet and your heart will thank you. Reducing your dependence on cars yields tremendous results. With this e-book I want to share our wonderful experience with car-free living and give people a tool to help them start pursuing their life goals.

Everett: Thank you so much for talking with me Tammy, I’m so excited for people to read this e-book!

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You can preview the first three chapters of Simply Car-free: How to Pedal Toward Financial Freedom and a Healthier Life here.

Don’t forget to check out Tammy Strobel’s blog, Rowdy Kittens.

Location independence, passive income, healthy profit margins. Chris Guillebeau can teach you how to succeed in a very small way.

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Chris Guillebeau is one of the more remarkable people on earth. He’s risen to ‘overnight’ blogging fame, inked a book deal, visited over 125 countries, and he wants to teach you how to achieve world domination.

It’s not hard to see why so many people are part of his unconventional community; his ideas actually work. I was a skeptic, and then I tried it myself. You can start a Very Small Business and start producing passive income in a very short time.

Today I’m excited to present you with the interview I did with Chris as he was flying out of Manila airport to Papua New Guinea last week.

We spoke about strategies for success, and some of the common mistakes people make when launching a Very Small Business.

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Everett Bogue: Chris, you and I are both running Very Small Businesses, but can you take a moment to define what a Very Small business is for our readers?

Chris Guillebeau: I think of it as a for-profit project that exists to a) create value for happy customers and b) provide a steady income for the business owner without becoming like a job for him or her. Very Small Businesses tend to have no employees other than the other, or perhaps one or two additional employees. In other words, it’s a lifestyle business instead of a business focused primarily on growth.

I also think of the following characteristics as being part of a successful Very Small Business:

• Location Independent (can be operated from anywhere)
• Some Degree of Passive Income (don’t trade time for money)
• Healthy profit margins (don’t compete on price!)

These characteristics are optional and don’t apply to everyone, but it will be easier to get a new venture going if they are met. Another optional characteristic (but important for many of us) is connecting the business to a cause greater than itself. In my case I am working with Charity: Water on a project to raise funds for water wells in Ethiopia.

Everett: How can starting a Very Small Business help you leave your day job?

Chris: The most important thing in starting a business is reducing your dependency on the day job, whether or not you leave it. But naturally, if you can replace at least 50% of your income through a side project, you might want to think seriously about taking the leap.

Everett: Have you seen any Very Small Business ideas (other than your own) take off lately?

Chris: There are so many! I recently asked for case studies for an upcoming ‘Empire Building Kit’ project, and I heard about 300 examples in a couple of days.  Among others, I like what these people are doing:

• Norris Hall Studio
• Verge Wine Cellars
• Tsilli Pines
• Soniei
• Live Adventurously
• Charlie Gilkey
• Michael Bungay Stanier

Everett: Does the Internet make all of this possible?

It certainly helps! I’ve made my living through the internet for 10+ years now. One of the best features of internet-based businesses is that you can get instant feedback on the feasibility of your business for a very small cost (sometimes even free). It also helps to keep expenses low, which is especially important when you’re starting without much capital.

Everett: What are some of the big mistakes that most people make when they launch a Very Small Business?

Chris: Here’s a short list of big mistakes — I think they’re all important:

1. Failure to consider why other people should care about what they’re offering
2. Failure to think carefully about how they’ll actually get paid
3. Failure to develop a strategy to market to existing customers (it’s much easier to sell to someone who’s already purchased something)
4. Poor follow-through or simply giving up too early

If you can avoid those four mistakes, especially #1, you’ll be off to a much better start than a lot of people.

Everett: Is there anyone in particular who inspires you right now?

Everett: Chris, thanks so much for the opportunity to speak to with you.

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If you’re interested in starting your own very small business, I highly suggest Chris’s excellent Unconventional Guide to Working For Yourself.

You can visit Chris Guillebeau at his blog The Art of Non-Conformity, and also follow him on Twitter.

Help spread the word about this post, give it a retweet before you go!

Why your start-up doesn’t need a million dollars of venture funding to succeed

This is the last post in a series on starting minimalist businesses. Previously I wrote about the art of high-impact income and the power of passive income. But it’s not over yet! Tomorrow I have an interview with The Art of Non-Conformity’s brilliant Chris Guillebeau. Don’t miss it! Sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

A number of people have come to me recently to evaluate their business plans for their online start-ups. I’m not usually a business consultant, but I decided to offer my services for free to these people, because they asked for input.

While I don’t pretend to be an expert at these things, (I was a part of Nymag.com’s blog launch and had my own start-up launch,) so one common element stood out to me in all of these cases:

All of these people thought they had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to start their business, when in reality their business could get off the ground for under $15.

That’s right, you can launch your start-up for fifteen dollars.

When you launch a start-up, everyone assumes that it’s going to be very hard. They’re going to need an investors. They’re going to need a cutting-edge team of marketing experts. They’re going to need to work 16 hours a day for the next 3 years in order to make their business succeed.

That’s all great, if you actually have a business model that is incredibly groundbreaking. But, most business plans aren’t. They’re simply offering a service and making money.

Why over-complicate things?

Make your start-up as simple as possible, and you’re way more likely to succeed.

Here are 9 ways to simplify your start-up launch for success.

1, Don’t invent your own infrastructure.

If the wheel already exists, you don’t need to reinvent it.

Your business plan has a problem if it assumes that the Internet hasn’t already been invented and companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google haven’t been innovating on it for a long time on it before you came along.

Infrastructure on the internet is serves the same purpose as it does in the real world. You wouldn’t build your own roads next to the ones that the city government already built for you, right? A lot of start-ups do this though, they build their own roads instead of using existing ones.

There are thousands of useful tools available on the Internet that you can build your business on top of, you don’t have to start from scratch.

In fact, if you do start from scratch you’re much less likely to succeed because you’ll spend a lot more money, your infrastructure will suck compared to the one that already exists, and you’ll waste a lot of time.

I know this might seem obvious, but it isn’t to a lot of start-ups.

Facebook already exists, you don’t need your own social networking platform to run under your service. The solution here is to integrate with existing social networks, because honestly, no one will join yours (Facebook already takes up enough of their time.)

Video blogging software already exists, you don’t have to code your own before you launch a video blog. Just install WordPress and upload your videos to Vimeo or Youtube. Simple, easy, you’re up and running in less than an hour in both of these cases.

2, Use the existing infrastructure.

If the infrastructure exists, by all means use it! Start-ups that ignore the existing infrastructure are going to exist in isolation. This goes for bloggers too. You are 500 times more likely to have more than 1 reader/customer if you find ways to integrate with existing infrastructure. Simply offer social media buttons for people to share your content with, and you’re way more likely to succeed.

Ignoring existing communication infrastructure is to exist in a vacuum. You’ll have to rely on word of mouth to get out the word about your start-up. That’s the equivalent of hiring a guy to pass out fliers on the street. Yes, you might get a few customers by taking that approach. But do you want 5 customers who stumbled across your site because your mom told them or 5000 because you were willing to install a Retweet button?

Five ways off the top of my head that you can use existing infrastructure for your business plan right now:

• Start a blog and publish daily.
• Use a Twitter account and help people with it.
• Use Facebook to interact with customers.
• Use Aweber for your communications with clients.
• Use e-Junkie for your checkout and affiliate marketing.

This might seem obvious, but I’ve observed people coding newsletter systems from scratch and closing transactions via emails. It’s not 1982 anymore folks, these services exist to automate and simplify those areas of your business.

3, Reduce business to the most basic element.

Figure out what your business is about before you launch it. A mission statement like “We’re going to revolutionize the way that people think about publishing.” is not a business idea, it’s an abstract idea.

Business ideas need to be simple, they need to focus on what the business actually does to help people. Simplify, simplify, simplify until a real actionable idea is present.

4, Launch immediately.

If you don’t make the mistake of building your own infrastructure, you can start working immediately.

Register the domain, install a blog, and start talking about the services you’re offering. I don’t care of the service isn’t ready yet, talk about it, gather interest. A lot of start-ups exist in lock-down mode until their product is perfect, but this is the opposite of what you should do.

Make every action you take public, and judge the reaction that people have to it. If you create a product in a vacuum, you’ll launch in a vacuum.

This means that three people will know about you when you launch, and you’ll have to spend another twelve months on marketing before anyone buys it.

5, Focus on a niche.

Many start-ups suffer from trying to tackle too much at one time. Instead of launching one product, they launch five. Instead of focusing on one area of interest, they aim for the center and end up interesting no one.

Pick one incredibly slim market to focus on.

One of the biggest offenders in this area is photography businesses –yes, photography is a business. Many photographers launch as generically as possible. “Hi, I’m jack, I’m a photographer.” The problem with this is, no one knows what you do. You use a camera, but so do the other million people with Digital Rebels and iPhones. You have to focus on a niche, or no one will seek you out.

Writers suffer from this too. I’ve been to endless blogs by people who are ‘writers’. That’s great, but what do you write about? You and every other person on this earth has the ability to write. You have to pick a niche to succeed at in any business.

6, Don’t hire people until you need to.

Most start-ups can be launched with one man and a laptop. But many start-ups insist on hiring five designers, three managers, and a secretary before they’ve even decide on what they’re selling.

No amount of new hires will make your product succeed if it sucks. Launch the product first, hire people when it becomes clear that you need them. Adding additional people to a staff just over-complicates things, making it harder to get things done.

7, Don’t rent an office.

Most people hate going to offices and chances are your business doesn’t need one at this phase. Can you do your work from a coffee shop? Can you do your work from your home? That saves you a hunk of money you didn’t need to spend if you just choose to use email and video chats to communicate with people, instead of renting.

Another bonus of not having an office is you can work with talented people who might not be in your area.

8, Offer a free component.

Freemium works for a reason. For instance, this blog provides free information constantly, and yet I’m able to pay myself a nearly livable wage. Your business has to do the same to compete. As Chris Anderson covers extensively in Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

We’re rapidly heading to a point where everything has to offer a free component.

If you don’t offer a free services, you’re missing out on a way that you can help 80% of your audience and retain potential customers for the future.

Maybe this is a version of your product that offers limited features. Maybe you just offer everything free and accept donations. It depends a lot on what you’re offering, but chances are there is a way to give away something to people.

9, Focus on your product’s value.

No amount of anything will help you succeed if your start-up doesn’t make something that people want to buy. And yet so many start-ups launch without thinking about the simple fact that they need to contribute value. Instead they spend $100,000 reinventing existing infrastructure, or hire five people to yell at each other over a table.

Before you launch, think about how your product helps people and contributes value to their lives. That is the most important element of any start-up.

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If you found this helpful, please help me spread the word by sharing this article via Twitter, Facebook, or any other way you prefer. Thank you.

Don’t forget about the interview with Chris Guillebeau tomorrow. I’m really excited about its potential, and I hope you are too. Sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS.

The internet is becoming infinitely denser, it’s your job to filter it

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Every day more people decide to start publishing. More voices enter the web, all frantically crying out for attention.

In the early days of the web, it was a simple matter to keep track of all of the information yourself. Only a few sources of information existed.

It was a simpler time.

But most of the information was boring, so it was destined to change.

Now there is infinite remarkable material, contrasted with infinite trash.

The biggest problem is finding the good stuff. This is where we all enter the equation.

Everyone adds their bit to the web, and the result is a great equalizer. The power is no longer in the hands of the media, it is no longer in the hands of the governments, it is no longer in the hands of the corporations.

The power is in your hands now.

You are the filter of your digital reality.

You decide what to consume every day. You decide what you pass on to the people who you lead every day.

The thing is, you have the choose. Every one of us is a filter of our digital reality.

Each of us makes major decisions every day, such as:

• Where do I focus my attention?
• What do I share with the people who focus on me?
• What do I publish?

I talk to many people who are seeking popularity on the web. They want to know how to get a lot of followers, they want to know how they can be heard. There is no easy answer to these questions, but I can tell you where to start.

You need to cultivate an intelligent filter of digital reality.

If every single bit of information that flows through is valuable, people will come to you to listen to that value.

You are only as valuable as the information you choose to pass on to the people who follow you.

• If you contribute nothing, your value online is zero.
• If you contribute garbage, your value online is garbage.
• If you contribute value, you will be valuable online.

Your growth online is in direct correlation with these metrics. This is why I tell everyone who starts a blog that they must think first about how they can help people, and then think about themselves.

This isn’t about you, it’s about everyone else.

• If you contribute nothing, your growth will stagnate.
• If you contribute garbage, you lose authority and followers.
• If you contribute value, you will see measurable growth.

It doesn’t matter if you’re using Facebook, Twitter, or you’re a blogger. All of these rules apply.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a photographer, a scientist, a painter, or you roast coffee beans. All of these rules apply.

If you publish remarkable, intelligent, and useful information with every interaction with the web, you will grow on online and offline.

The secret to success online should be obvious, but it’s not.

You would think this would be obvious, but very few people understand the full potential of interacting this way. These people fling information into the ether with no regard to whether it’s useful or not, and they do it as much as they possibly can. These people believe they can maintain attention via the sheer volume of material that they send out, but it doesn’t work that way. Volume does not equal quality.

It’s your job to filter out these people. Don’t retweeet their stuff, don’t ‘Like’ their blog posts. Unsubscribe from these people. If you aren’t gaining value from something, don’t pass it on.

I follow less than 100 people on Twitter. I read less than 15 blogs on Google Reader. I’m only following 15 people on Google Buzz at this moment. My attention is finite, because if I spend all day reading nonsense, I get nothing done.

How finite is your attention?

Are you willing to bounce around all day reading stuff that doesn’t help you?

Are you spending all day reading and reacting?

Or are you creating and publishing value?

Or are you creating remarkable content that helps people?

This is the secret that every successful person online is trying to tell you. Just contribute value. That is all you need to do.

A remarkable idea naturally spreads across time and space.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This is the first part in a series of articles focusing on the key elements of being minimalist. At the end of the series I’ll be packaging the whole deal and releasing it as a free e-book.

Don’t miss out on the next one, sign up for free updates via RSS or Email.

The world has changed, we no longer need most of our stuff anymore. In fact, those who forsake their stuff entirely open themselves up to a world or opportunity.

A minimalist realizes that stuff only holds you down. When you decide to give it all up, to free yourself from the endless cycle of meaningless consumerism, you can be free to make your dreams reality.

Technology is the enabler.

Technology has given us the power to take our businesses online. We can automate and facilitate transactions that revolve around ideas. A new generation of minimalist practitioners are applying this philosophy to free themselves from the constraints of the physical world. Their businesses are thriving online, while the brick and mortar world is constrained by permanent location.

Permanent location under florescent lights.

Instead of harnessing this dream, many of us are still spending so much money on stuff we don’t use. We spend so much time and effort maintaining stuff we haven’t looked at in years, and might use someday.

It’s all understandable though. The industrial age taught us with billions of advertising dollars that we need to buy buy buy, but another piece of plastic stacked in a corner never made anyone happier.

You’re forgiven.

Now we’ll show you how to change.

It’s time to give it all up. Minimalism can free you, if you let it.

Consumerists are dodging around the truth, and meanwhile you’re the one filling up someone else’s pockets with money they didn’t need to have.

By being minimalist:

• You can quit your day job.
• You can travel the world.
• You can move anywhere you want.
• You can work from anywhere.

There are many examples of people doing this, but Colin Wright is one of the best.

He decided to ditch all of his stuff and took his sustainable design studio online. Now he moves to a new continent every four months, and since leaving has visited Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, he stopped over in New York and LA, and now he’s headed to New Zealand via Melbourne, Australia. He lives with less than 70 things, and they all fit in a backpack. His business is thriving, and he’s even found the time to write two brilliant free e-books.

I bet you wish you could be like Colin, but any number of excuses are popping up in your head.

Here’s the thing: none of those excuses matter, the only difference between you and the life he leads is the decision to not be afraid.

You are the director of your own destiny.

So why are you filling your house with junk instead of living your life? Make the choice now to rent a dumpster and destroy your attachment to the piles of useless physical things forever.

We’re living in a post-geographical society, and this has changed everything.

You can attain freedom. You just have to make the decision to free yourself. It starts with the stuff, next comes your time, eventually you’ll find that you had the power all along to thrive with only the essentials.

We all have the ability to be free, to live anywhere and work from anywhere. Being minimalist is the key.