Well I’m back from my vacation and I have to admit being away from the PC for a while was very enjoyable. Maybe a little too enjoyable as it has taken me an extra few days to get back to work! Lol.

Taking a quick look around some students of AlexJefferys blog’s it looks like the past couple of weeks have been very busy. I have been catching up on the webinars I missed and have listened to half of the bonus webinar with ’The Marketing Queen’, Maria Andros. Wow, what a call. This woman knows her stuff and judging by some of the great videos I have seen on YouTube, you have all been inspired to grab your cameras and go for it!

As I promised in my previous post, I did not spend my time away completely idle. One of the books I took with me to read was The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss as recommended by Alex Jeffreys. Having read the book now I can see why Alex rates it so highly, if do not have a copy of this book, get one now!

Like me, I’m sure you have all read many motivational/business books. Among those books there will be the occasional one that really strikes a cord with you and provides those aha! moments. Well, for me The 4-Hour Work Week was one of those. I am on my second read now.

We have all been told the value of outsourcing, well this guy takes this to a whole different level. Not just outsourcing some web design or article writing, no. Tim wants us to outsource our life! The aim being to allow us as much free time as possible so we can spend our lives doing what we really want to. In one experiment in outsourcing the editor of Esquire magazine even outsources an argument with his wife to be dealt with my his man in India. That’s the sort of back up I could do with, LOL.

The other main focus of the book is to discover what you really want your life to be and to build a fully automated business to provide the income to do this. This book raises some very good questions for you to answer and will have a great impact on my (still unfinished!) plan for 2009. As Alex says in one of his recent YouTube videos, too many people are quick to say their goal is to earn a million dollars. That’s fine but unless you know the WHY behind that goal, not of much use.

Now we have all had the following question asked of us in many a book:

If you had $1,000,000 what would you do?

But as I said earlier, some books speak to us more than others and give you a different take on the same subject. Tim has a planning method he calls ‘dreamlines’. This is where you will write down the things you would have and would do if you had that $1 million in the bank now. You then choose the top four of those as we are working to a 6 and 12 month plan and calculate the cost of these items and activities. This will enable you to arrive at your TMI, target monthly income and also you TDI, target daily income.

This is a worthwhile exercise as you will find the amount you need to be living the lifestyle you want will most likely be much lower than you expected. So maybe you don’t need that $1 million dollars after all! So now you have your target monthly income you just need to create an automated business to achieve that. Easy right? Well perhaps not easy, more like Alex’s says….simple, but not easy!

There is a large section of the book devoted to helping us achieve that automated business. This post is already getting way too long so I will try and summarise as best I can. What I took from this section of the book was that the best way to create this automated business really comes down to one thing.

Niche Markets!

Yes, that’s nothing new to you or me but have you really decided what your niche is going to be? really? Well, I can honestly say I haven’t and that is a big mistake. We are all striving to make money in the internet marketing niche, but man, that’s a big niche! So we have to find our niche area within that niche, a micro niche if you like. Take Maria Andros for example. Maria earned $100,000 in her first year online by excelling in video marketing, a niche area within internet marketing in general.

So deciding on niche areas will be a huge part of my plan for 2009, hopefully I will get the damn thing finished before the end of the year, LOL. I had been putting pressure on myself to get this plan finished but it’s better to take you time and have a good, detailed plan than just throw one together. This may the one of the few exceptions to ‘don’t get it right, just get it going’.

Take a look at Tim Ferriss’ site here and enter your details. You will get to see his blog and there is some great stuff in there. If you have already read the 4-hour work week, I would love to hear what you thought of it.

Right, back to that plan (again!)

Mark

So the traffic competition has reached its end, how did you do?

With the time off over Christmas and being busy working on studentsofalex.com I didn’t do as much traffic generation as I would like. But hey, you can’t do everything!

Anyway, my stats for the 2 week peroid were just a little over 900 visits. Considering my focus was not on driving traffic in that period, I’m more than happy with that. I’m sure that won’t be enough to win the $1000 but that wasn’t really the point of the exercise anyway. It was all about taking action.

I’ve seen some great traffic results on other blogs and I look forward to finding out who won. I will have to wait a bit longer than most to find out as I am going away this week. So I will miss both the webinars being held this week and I am a bit gutted about that. I planned my dates around the original webinar date of the 6th. Not a massive problem though and watching them in the members area will be one of the 1st things I do when I return.

Let’s see….so that’s two webinars to watch….that will be about 15 hours viewing time then, LOL

I have to be honest. I was tempted to sneak my laptop into my suitcase and work while away, but that wouldn’t be much of a break would it!

I won’t be completely idle while away though. I have not finished my year, 90 day and monthly plans yet so I will be completing those. The beach, sun and a cold beer to two should give me all the inspiration I need

I also want to catch up on some reading. I’m half way through Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill, my second time reading this great book. I have uploaded the book in PDF to my site and you can download it here

The other books I will be taking with me are, The 4 Hour Work Week as recommended by Alex Jeffreys and The Little Gold Book of Yes Attitude. Mike Filsaime talks about this book at the start of his 7 figure code seminar and highlights it as an essential read. That’s a good enough reason to read it for me!

Studentsofalex.com is progressing well and myself and Mark Call will be starting the interviews when I return. In the meantime we will be sending you some questions to answer. These q&a will help you and us prepare for these interviews and will give us an idea of what you would like to talk about.

The more information you can provide the better. You will receive an email with details of the questions and how to answer them very soon, so please make sure you check your inbox. We are really looking forward to doing these interviews and they are going to be a great promotional tool for us all. If you have not already signed up to be interviewed, you can do so in my last post here.

Nigel has made a few changes to his original video (thanks Nigel!) and you can see it below. if you would like to add the video to your site, use this code to embed the video:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/495ea300b3524cef/46928cc5552b8140/55cd1ad8/-cpid/4993daa1f1ee6e3f/autostart/false/widget.js”></script>

If you do add to your site, Nigel has asked that the following credits be included:

Artist: Rick Clarke - (RickVanMan )
Track: Oriental Trance 2
Link: Free Music from: http://www.Music4YourVids.co.uk

It is also on youtube here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BmgtN1wyCl8

Ok, thats it from me for a week or so. How will I survive without my daily blogging fix, lol.

Alex is starting another competition this week, $4000 this time!! As I’m not here, I guess my chances will be slim of catching up so good luck to you all!

Who do you think the special guest speaker will be?

Let me know what I miss on this thread as I’m sure to be checking in while away. What can I say…..it’s an addiction

Speak to you soon, and keep an eye out for that email!

Mark

Here’s the video: