the power of 1% and why you DON'T blog for money (2015)
a blog is a reverse business model, only a fool would pursue
Reading time: 20 minutes.
The photo is a HUGE lie, the title a small lie.
It *should* say the power of 2% but the headline title is better as is.
Three things:
how you can utilize the power of 1%
why you don’t blog for money
takeaways after ~3 years of blogging
They seem a bit unrelated but they are not.
The power of 1%, or 2% in our case, refers to the total time commitment here.
3 hours per week maximum or 2% of a week (3hrs/168hrs in a year).
In addition, the related point is why we don’t blog *for* money (will likely launch a product later at a terrible ROI) and why you shouldn’t either.
How to Utilize the Power of 1%
You can become competent at practically anything if you commit 1.6 hours a week to the task. This is the truth.
If you decide to take up drawing. Take up a new sport. Or even take up a new language… 30 minutes a day three days a week will result in massive change.
You will not become an expert (not even close) but you’ll have a baseline competency that exceeds the first standard deviation of the bell curve.
Now you’re probably wondering… How can I possibly utilize the power of 1%?! You haven’t given me anything actionable!! Well…You know that is not our style… Lets go ahead and get started.
Step 1 - Choose a Topic
Our goal is for you to live a balanced life, so let’s brain storm some quick ideas (we mentioned a couple above):
Learn a language
learn a dance
learn an art
learn how to sing
learn how to give a speech
learn how to play a sport
learn how to make a good first impression
learn how to ride a motorcycle
so on and so forth
Step 2 - Inside or Outside
Once you have determined which item you’re going to learn, you need to categorize the item.
We *strongly* suggest you have two hobbies brewing at the same time (at all times). One that is inside and one that is outside.
What is the difference? Simple…
Outside (extrovert): This is something that *requires* you to be at a specific place to improve. You have to literally block out time in your schedule to do this because you cannot practice at home. This includes:
team sports
learning how to ride a motorcycle
learning how to meet new women during the day/night
learning how to dance, etc.
Inside (introvert): This is something that you can do at work, at the airport or at home. You don’t need to be out and about to improve on your hobby. Simple examples include:
this blog
drawing
learning a language
improving your tone of voice – recordings
While some will argue that many of the outside activities can be brought inside… That misses the point.
You want at least one hobby where you are forced to go outside and interact.
Remember the world is a stage.
You need to learn how to perform even if you’re an introvert. So, you should maintain both one introvert activity and one extrovert activity.
WSPArchive: Depending on your age and where you’re at, you may want to have more extroverted activities. Especially today with Wi-Fi money, we have a real lack of extroverted interactions.
Step 3 - Set an Alert on the weekend
You need to set a specific time where you will improve. Hold yourself accountable.
Generally 45 minutes of time is ideal (2x per week, this usually means at least 1 day will be a weekend as noted in the first sentence).
If possible make it in the morning.
If you are able to do this, you will no longer be allowed to do any other activity until the extrovert activity is complete. Again hold yourself accountable.
Step 4 - PDF and Install
This means you need copies of the introvert activity in your hand at all times.
If it is a language you are learning, you have lessons/recordings on your phone 24/7.
Unlike other places, we love the introduction of smartphones because it allows you to be *significantly* more productive.
Now what do you do? Force yourself to take action. Every day when you’re done working (spend a minimum of ~60 hours a week on real work, IE: a career or a real business) you then turn to your introvert hobby *first*.
Side Note: As a fun fact, literally 90% of the posts here and even edits to the blog were made on a smartphone or tablet. That is not an exaggeration. We write and send to our main guy who hits publish (TeamViewer is an amazing and *free* resource)
Step 5 - Focus
Let’s repeat. *FOCUS*.
When you are working on your hobby you do not do anything else.
You do not watch TV in the background (throw it out if you have one).
You do not listen to music.
You do not connect to the internet to browse.
You do not allow yourself to have access to anything.
This step is excruciatingly important.
You *must* focus 100% on the activity otherwise you will gain nothing. It is only 1.6 hours a week so it is not hard to do.
Step 6 - Do this for a full year
Do this for a full year.
That will result in ~83 hours of attention. Let’s go ahead and round up to 100 hours to be safe.
100 hours is *only* 60% of one week! That is nothing!
Now go ahead and take your activity and use it.
Go to Brasil if you taught yourself basic Portuguese.
If you learned how to dance? Go take a girl out dancing (please do not take her to an actual dance lesson though, you’ll get slaughtered by the real pros)
In short, after the year is up, you’re going to be a much more interesting person.
In just five years you’re going to have *ten* different skills where you will be above average!
That is a huge accomplishment and we have no doubt that it will work for you as well.
Why? Unlike regular people you’re reading a blog for the elite.
That means you don’t need a push and you’ll be thrilled at the results by 2016.
Concluding Remarks
The power of 1% is underrated. If you follow our step by step process:
choose a topic
have an introvert and extrovert item
set alerts
send yourself the training materials
focus intensely <– most important piece
do this for a full year <– second most important piece
You will be *significantly* more interesting.
You’ll add at least one friend (we practically guarantee it) and your confidence will soar as you learn a new skill you never thought you would be any good at.
Moving on…
We’re going to give you an example of the power of 1% (or 2%) since you’re staring right at it.
Comment: Reading Example
💬 Zoloo says
February 18, 2015 at 8:59 am
Love this post.
I wanted to develop my knowledge of economics, and found a book with 700 pages. For a five days a week, or sometimes everyday after waking up I read for half an hour.
At the beginning it was difficult to read in professional language( I learned English in the school, never been to English speaking country), but after a two month of persistence and looking up for new words in the dictionary, reading become easier and fun.
Dividing for a chunks makes things easier, but only if you put systematic work.
After one successful effort, you start gaining confidence and power to do other things, like a spillover.
💬 Wall Street Playboys says
February 18, 2015 at 1:22 pm
Fantastic routine.
Reading about a topic is the easiest way to utilize the power of 1%!
Just focus and turn off all distractions and within a year you are in good shape.
— link here —
Why You Should Never Blog For Money
As usual… What is everyone else doing? Do the opposite.
Everyone and their mom is apparently ready to become a professional blogger and leave the “declining west” (whatever that means).
The problem is really two fold:
are you trying to make money?
are you ~25 or younger?
If you answered yes to either of those… Stop. Don’t even bother getting started. We will explain exactly why it won’t work and what you should do instead.
Finally, to avoid appearing pessimistic (that is not the intention) we will also give solid reasons *for* blogging and how we completely f***** up a lot of the basics.
Why You Don’t Start a Blog for Money
This one is the easiest since we have experience in making some money.
Here is how a blog works:
You are old enough to give advice (or successful enough). You then decide to start a blog.
Here is how the business model operates:
start posting
gain audience
continue to add large amounts of value for free
gain more and more followers
deal with haters and idiots who try to scam you for money or raid your comments with dumb questions
repeat steps 3, 4 and 5… over and over and over again!
after adding tremendous value and gaining *trust* from your audience over a period of years… You sell a product that is even *better* than your free and valuable content.
“Profit”. (profit in quotes…)
Based on our research, a solid blog makes about $5-15K a month. Nothing to laugh at but definitely not a good use of time if you’re trying to make money.
Here is how a business works:
You spend many months/years studying a multitude of industries. You find a product hole/gap. It is small but enough for you to make a nice profit… Here is how the business model operates:
check to make sure there is demand
create a product that is of high value and has a decent margin profile
create the full and *professional* look for the site
buy tons of traffic from that specific niche
make money for as long as you can
wait for competitors to come in and start invading your space
compete aggressively with them.
Once step 7 in the process is in full force, you will either become the market leader, sell your company or get priced out of the market (someone did it better than you) and simply let it die.
What is the real takeaway here?
A blog is a reverse business model. A blog builds an audience first then sells a product. A solid business niche, one that solves a legitimate pain point, just needs to be marketed. That is an enormous difference. That needs to be repeated. That is an enormous difference.
If you are trying to make money, building an audience is going to take a lot more *time* than buying the audience, correct? Correct.
So if you want to make money then your risk reward is heavily skewed towards solving a market/demand issue.
You just buy the audience if you know where the demand for your product is. There is a reason why major companies have huge sales teams, correct? Again… Correct.
Do You Have Enough Experience?
No matter how many times you try to replicate the work of someone else… It will NEVER work.
It is sad.
We have even found blogs that are trying to replicate our content and we don’t even make money (insert laughter).
Why does it matter? The audience can tell if you are legitimate.
Our blog is only growing because the content here is impossible to fake. Why? It is impossible to reflect the realities of Wall Street without working on Wall Street!
That is enough of that. While the above looks like a diatribe, that is not the intent. The point is this. If you do not have relevant and valuable experience to share no one will read your blog.
That is our point and it should be repeated.
If you do not have any interesting views or opinions and you are just out there trying to make a few thousand bucks a month, you’re going to miss by a country mile.
Reality check. If you start a blog without enough life experience you are doing immense harm to you and your future. You are going to waste a lot of time writing and writing and no one is going to come back to your blog because they will know that you have nothing interesting to say. You can rip, regurgitate and repeat consensus information… No one is going to come back. That is the reality.
We do not care if you ignore this advice.
Why? Time is the most valuable resource in the world and you are wasting your own time by blogging without anything interesting to say.
Concluding Remarks
If you want to make money, your risk reward is significantly better if you start an actual business.
A blog is essentially a reverse business where you build an audience then sell.
A business sells a product and then buys the audience through advertising/marketing/sales team.
If you do not have a unique voice, opinion or viewpoint, you’re not going to build a meaningful audience and worst of all you will hurt yourself by losing valuable time.
With the ugly part of the post done with, we’ll end on a positive note.
As our readers know, being positive and happy is a necessity to success (section two appears quite dreary!) so let’s explain why you *should* start a blog if you want to…
The Main Things We Have Learned After ~3 Years of Blogging
Lets say you pass part two of the test. You don’t want to make money, you simply want to spread the truth and you have a unique opinion. You are likely a good candidate for a blog.
As cheesy as it sounds, your “heart needs to be in the right place”. Your audience can tell if you care about them or not within your first 5-10 posts.
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