I then found a job with a recruiting agency. My new boss was a family friend, and as they say, familiarity doesn’t always work well in the work force. Because my new boss and I were very close, he didn’t feel compelled to teach me a whole lot. So my training involved him tossing a book at me and saying, “Here is a book of companies that all use an AS/400 as there computer system.” He then tossed a resume at me and said, “Here is a resume of a good AS/400 guy. Call the companies in that book and sell them this guy.”

“Here is a book of companies that all use an AS/400 as there computer system.”

“Here is a resume of a good AS/400 guy. Call those companies and sell them this guy.”

Most of you probably don’t understand the conversation above so let me explain further. There are certain specializations in the business world that are very difficult to find. The above mentioned AS/400 Programmer was one of those hard to find people (about 15 years ago). Companies will generally pay a recruiter 15% of an employee’s annual salary If the recruiter finds the right person.

So I picked up the book that was tossed at me and I began calling the companies listed in the book. I would then ask to speed with the I.T. Manager and my spiel went something like this:

My name is__________. I’ve got a guy that has 7 years of AS/400 programming experience and he is looking for a new situation. Do you have any interest?

Believe it or not that is how I began my consulting career. How does that relate to consulting, you ask? Well, sometimes the I.T. Managers would say yes I have an interest, but mostly they would say, “Do you have any contractors that are available for about 3 months of work?” It didn’t take long to figure out that companies needed temporary specialists more than they wanted to hire full-time people. So I began asking them what kind of hourly rates they were looking to pay for a contractor. I remember that first conversation clearly. That was the day the light bulb went on for me. The manager said he would pay between $90 and $125 per hour depending on experience. That was the day that I decided consulting was where the money was, not full-time placement.

I quickly began looking for about 10 guys that were each good AS/400 consultants. I was looking for guys that would work for about $75 per hour. By the end of that year I had 3 consultants that I was paying $75 per hour and I had them out working for various companies usually billing them out at about $95 per hour. Now because I was working for someone else I didn’t see most of that money. But I now knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to be the consultant!

Read my upcoming post… How I became a Consultant

For example I have learned the value of tracking ratio’s.  One ratio that I am becoming more and more concerned with is my Daily Revenue/Spending Ratio.

That basically means how much am I spending per day compared with how much am I earning per day.  But, before we get further into discussing the Daily Revenue/Spending Ratio, I want to talk about Daily Revenue.

Today my daily revenue is about $800.00 Dollars per day.  Two years ago it was $1,250.00 dollars per day.  The reason for this difference is the poor economy.  Billing rates for the work I provide have fallen due to the fact that there are many other consultants willing to take lower rates, because companies are not spending as much as they were two years ago, therefore, fewer consultants are needed.  Simply put, fewer jobs = lower billing rates.

Back to Daily Revenue…  My current daily revenue is $800 per day.  On the surface this is a very good number.  It is a good number because using my definition of a millionaire, I would be a millionaire at 10k per month, which is $328 dollars per day.

The first problem is that my Daily Revenue could disappear at anytime.  For example, there only about 5000 companies that use the software that I specialize in.  There are only so many companies at a time that have a need for my services and the competition is getting worse all of the time.

The second problem is that today I only earn revenue on the days I work, and I only work about 220 days per year.  If I were a real millionaire and I had 1 million dollars earning 10%, my interest would accumulate every day, not just 220 days per year.  My goal is to earn $328 Dollars per day without having to work.  Today, I don’t earn any money without working.

The point to all of this is to illustrate that there is a huge difference in the type or revenue that one can earn.  The kind of revenue I earn to day is good, don’t get me wrong, I am much better off than some, but it is still not the kind of revenue that comes from being independently wealthy.  That is exactly why I am doing my best to change the way I make decisions about my future time investments.

In the past I have picked a technology to specialize in that had good billing rates and I would go learn it.  I would then build a consulting practice centered around that technology niche.  I have now shifted to a new paradigm.  Now, I want to invest in buying or building products that will earn me at-least $33 dollars per day.  If I had 10 products all earning me $33 dollars per day, then I would be a millionaire, from a cash flow perspective.  My income would also be more diversified than it is today.

I am currently working on my first 5 products, all of them are software related and all can be downloaded for a small fee.  None of them are complete yet, but my first one is very close to being finished.  I will be launching it in February.  As these products are launched I will be writing more about my successes or failures.  In the mean time try to think of things that you could produce that would sell for $25 to $35 dollars.  Obviously, some of your ideas will probably be winners and some will be losers.  That really isn’t the point.  The point is if you can continually produce products that will be purchased at-least once per day for $25 – $35 dollars your Daily Non-Working Revenue will begin to go up.

Now lets return to the Daily Revenue/Daily Spending Ratio.  This basically means what is your daily revenue?  and what is your daily spending amount?  If I earn $800 per day and I spend $800 per day my ratio is not very good.    That means that it takes everything I earn to live my current lifestyle.  Let’s divert for minute, from having a goal of being a millionaire to having a goal of living our current life style without having to work.  Once we do that we can look at two things; our daily revenue and our daily spending requirements.

In my millionaire revenue model I have established that $328 dollars per day or 10,000 per month makes me a millionaire.  If I spend 10,000 per month right now and create the non-working revenue machine that takes me to 10,000 per month, not much is going to change.   I won’t have to work, but my life style probably wouldn’t change much.  My goal is to be free.  I want to be able to do what I want when I want, without having to work.  If I want to go explore Thailand for 3 months I want to be able to go, without having to worry about affording it.

In order to reach that goal, I have to not only work on my daily revenue, but I have to work on my daily expenses too.  So we should all have two goals.  Goal one should be to increase daily revenue (by the way you can begin doing that, by creating a simple monetized Blog).  Secondly, and even easier you can begin cutting your daily expenses.

There are two kinds of expenses, moving and non-moving.  Moving expenses are things like credit cards and entertainment, things you can cut back on, or even eliminate.  Non-moving expenses are things like car insurance and mortgage payments, your always going to have to have them.  In the next few weeks I will be writing about Non-moving versues moving expenses and how to decrease your daily spending amount.  Until then, make a list of your moving and non-moving expenses and jot down some quick ideas how to cut your daily spending amount.

“The older and more seasoned I become the less I like people that are fast talkers.  In the past I have been accused of being a fast talker myself and when I was younger, there were times I confused verbal skills with charisma.”

Now back to logging into my blog and reading my posts…  This afternoon when I began reading the comments that were left on my posts I noticed that someone had left me a spam.  They indicated that they noticed that I needed to improve my page rank with Google, and they were just the folks that could do that.  This was there comment:

My first thought after I read this was “Here we go again, another spammer”.  But then my second thought was “What a dumb ass!”.

Sorry for the language, but I’m just being honest.  The reason that I had that thought was that the post that this spammer commented on has a pretty high ranking.  Just to make sure I went out to Google and typed how to make 10K, then I typed how to earn 10K, and lastly I typed how to earn 10K per month.  On all of these key phrases my article was in either place 1, place 2 or place 3 – good enough for me.

Rank for How to Earn 10k

Rank for How to Make 10K

Rank for How to earn 10K per month

After, checking to make sure I wasn’t insane, I contemplated for a while about the “White Noise of Life”.  This spammer is a perfect example of an obviously hard working person (it takes effort to drop manual spam), that may have some skill, but in my case is now  nothing but “White Noise”.

It is my opinion that if you’re going to actively pursue business, there are smart ways to do it and dumb ways to do it.  First of all, spam is not honorable, but if you’re going to do it at-least do it in a way that makes sense.  If you’re selling Google Page rank services at-least take the time to drop a comment on a post that is way down the list on Google page ranking.  Otherwise, your just “White Noise”.

Dollars per day

As I eluded in my first post, I still believe that when you begin thinking of what $10,000.00 dollars a month really is at it’s lowest level; you first have to come up with a daily figure.  Based on your perspective the number of working days in a year may change.  Most people would consider a 5 day work week to be normal.  Some of you may have other ideas, but when I think of the modern world, especially the internet, most will agree that the opportunities are now 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  So the first revision that I want to make to my first article is this; in order to make $10,000.00 dollars per day you must earn $333 dollars per day, 7 days per week.

What is 10K per Month

Looking at the table above you will see that if your belief is that your products and services are available 24 hours per day seven days per week then you need to earn $333 dollars per day to earn $10,000 dollars.  If your products and services are only available 5 days per week then you will have to earn $476 dollars per day.  Either way, that is your number.

My first revision to my original post is I know longer believe in the 5 day per week model.  The world as a whole never sleeps.  Daylight is shining somewhere all the time, which means if I have product for sale and it is available online, then someone can buy it.  As Gordon Gecko so profoundly says in the movie Walstreet, “Money never sleeps”.

Transactions per day

Once we resolve the dollar amount that we must earn per day to achieve 10k per month, then we have to resolve how much we want to earn for each transaction that we engage in.  In my original post, again here is the link, (How to make 10k per month without working) I suggest that I would not be willing to involve myself in any transaction that was less than $25 dollars.  Which brings us to the next perspective change that I have had since I originally wrote the article.

Since then the apple iphone has become extremely popular and along with the iphone came the app store.  Most apps are .99 cents.  One of my personal rules is that I never argue with success.  In my dream world it would be great if every single transaction that I did was greater than $25 dollars, but that is not the model the world has evolved too.  The world has evolved to a .99 cent per transaction world.  Thus I have to change my model to work with the world.  That being said, I do still believe that anything that will sale for $1 dollar will sale for $2 dollars.  Nevertheless, given the new economic model that apple has brought to the world, my newly revised minimum unit of measure is… drum role please! $2 dollars per transaction.

So based on my minimum amount per transaction I now must complete 167 transactions per day at $2 dollars per transaction.  However, I am still leaving room for more expensive transactions.  The table below indicates the number of transactions per day that must be achieved based on the number of units being sold each day.

The zerotomillion.com 10K per Month Formula

As far as products go…  I still have the exact same thoughts and I cover these topics in other posts.

1. Affiliate’s that give me money for my customers either purchasing something or signing up for something.
2. E-Books that I could write.
3. Education Modules that are paid for on-line.
4. Advertisers that pay by the month (I don’t want to sell it to them, I want them to find me).
5. Products that I am willing to sale on-line, but this means I have to handle shipping and fulfillment (need to find a way around this).
6. Software that can be downloaded.
7. Services that I am willing to provide or outsource (services are not passive income, so I would have to enjoy doing them)

I leave you with these thoughts.  If it was easy everyone would be doing it, and no one that is doing it is going to tell you how unless they get paid to tell you.  Somethings you must figure out on your own.  The hardest part is not coming up with the product.  The hardest part is creating an on-line site with enough traffic to sale your product.

My advice is to set aside a specific amount of time each week to research products or invent/produce products that you can eventually sale or remarket, but spend the bulk of your time being absolutely prolific building content for your site.  I do truly believe “If you build it, they will come”.

There was an Indian chief that was very old and very sick. He was very concerned because he knew that he was dying. He feared that because he had no children to inherit his title his village would soon be thrown into a civil battle. There were two men in the tribe that both thought they should succeed the old chief. One man was a warrior name Crazy Bear and one man was known for his fairness, his name was Smiling Wolf.

The old chief, being wise, called a meeting with both men. He asked both men if they thought they were worthy to be chief. Both men shook there head yes and both began making claims that the other was not the correct man to be the next chief. This concerned the old chief. He knew that if he chose one of the men the other would not be happy and it could lead to a rebellion.

The old chief looked at both men and asked if they would agree to a contest to see who was truly worthy of being the next chief. Both men agreed that a contest would be a great way to solve the issue. The chief then made each man promise that if they lost the contest – the looser would follow the winner, and both men agreed.

The chief then announced the rules of the contest to the entire village. Each man would be given three months to bring water from a nearby river to the village. At the end of three months the man that had the most water for the village would be the next chief. At the news the entire village immediately broke into two groups. One urged Crazy Bear to begin gathering all of the pots in the village. That way he would have all the containers that could carry water. He followed the advice of his supporters and he then began making the trek to the river. It was not long and he had gathered more water than the all of the containers could hold so he and his supporters began making larger containers.

Meanwhile, Smiling Wolf went to his tee pee. He asked his wife if she would take there two children to her mothers tee pee for a few days so he could think. He then lifted all the furs off of tee pee floor exposing the dirt and sand. And there he sat for several days, thinking and drawing in the dirt. It was not long until his supporters came to his tee pee with great concern. Crazy Bear had already filled three large cisterns of water and Smiling Wolf had not even began.

Smiling Wolf simply smiled and asked his supporters to believe in him and everything would turn out as it should. After several days Smiling Wolf emerged from his tee pee and half the village was waiting outside when he emerged. They rushed over to him, saying “What have you been doing? Crazy Bear already has five cisterns filled with water. We beg you… Please! Let us help you and maybe we can catch up.” Smiling Wolf simply smiled – saying don’t worry we have plenty of time.  Now please be patient a little longer,  I need to take a walk in the woods.

His supporters were in disbelief. Many of them began to wonder if they had misplaced there faith in Smiling Wolf.
A few hours later, Smiling Wolf returned from the woods dragging a large tree trunk. Everyone now began to think that Smiling Wolf was crazy, but because they had chosen to follow him they were resigned to the fact that they would not help Crazy Bear.

Smiling Wolf pulled the log over in front of his tee pee and began carving out the log like a canoe. Again his supporters came to him, begging him to focus on the water, this was no time to build a canoe. This time smiling Wolf addressed the entire village. “I know that everyone is concerned that I have not began carrying water to the village, but I ask each of you to believe in me, and if any man would like to help please go to the forest and drag back one log just like this one.” He then pointed to the log that he was carving. He then spoke again. “And any woman or child that believes in me – I ask that you carve the middle of these logs out just like I have done to this one.”

None of Smiling Wolfs supporters understood what he was doing, but they loved him for his fairness so they all agreed to help. The men began cutting and draging logs out of the forest and the woman and children began carving out the middle of the logs.  After several weeks of this same routine, Smiling Wolf’s supporters began grumbling again. This time the suporters approached Snow Fox, Smiling Wolf’s wife; they were very concerned, there was only one week left and Crazy bear had over twenty cisterns of water, how on earth was Smiling Wolf going to win the contest now?

At this news even Snow Fox was beginning to get nervous. She went to her husband trying to convey the concerns of his followers while at the same time being supportive. “Honey, I know that you are very smart and you know what you are doing but I just want to remind you – we only have one week left.” She said.

He nodded, “You are right it is time that I made an announcement.” he said. So he called all of his supporters together. Thank you very much for all of your hard work he said. We only have one week left and now I need your help even more. At this all of the supporters looked at him like he was crazy. He simply smiled. I promise I am not crazy and yes I still believe I can win the contest. I need everyone to begin fastening logs togeather like this.

He then pointed to two logs he had fastened togeather end to end. He pointed to a large group of what must have been thirty empty cisterns. I want to begin fastening logs togeather at this point and begin moving toward the river. Again he added, I know it is an unusaul request, but please believe in me and I promise everything will turn out as it should.

On the morning of the last day, Crazy Bear began boasting that he had won the contest, that Smiling Wolf had no water – that the contest should end. Smiling Wolf reminded everyone that he had until sunset of that day. At noon on the last day, the entire village followed Smiling Wolf to the river as he carried the last log himself. The entire village watched as Smiling Wolf drug the final log into the river and pointed the mouth of the log up river. The water began flowing into the first log and then into the next log and then into the next log.

The entire village began running along the logs watching the water run from the river all the way to the village. Smiling Wolfs cisterns began filling. By the end of the day Smiling Wolf had filled thirety cisterns of water. Everyone in the village was fascinated with the logs and even the supporters of Crazy Bear seemed to be in awe of Smiling Wolf.

At sunset the old chief came out of his tee pee and watched the villagers swarm Smiling Wolf with praise. The old chief smiled to himself. He knew now that he did not even need to make an announcement. Everyone in the village had silently agreed that Smiling Wold would be the next chief.

Also read: How to make 10K per month without working?

Consulting allows me a good life style, and I earn a better than average living, but with that earning capability comes constant change.  I am constantly looking for customers and I am the product, so earning any income on a residual basis is impossible.  There was a time when I would find my own contract and I would be billable forty hours per week and I would also hire others, taking a percentage of what they billed.  For example, in 1996 I was hired by American Express to design and develop their Stored Value Credit Card system.  I hired several other consultants to help me, and I earned about $10 dollars per hour for every hour they billed.  I had about 10 people billing besides myself.  Needless to say I had a good year that year.

The problem with that was I ended up being a baby sitter, no one whines like someone making $100 per hour.  Consultants are the worst whiners in the world.  I won’t go into the details of the whining I will only say, after a year of this, it was no longer worth the trouble (at-least for me).   As I have said in other posts, I am now concentrating on “How to Earn 10K per month without working”.

Understanding the Formula

The first thing I have asked myself is what is 10k per month?  The short answer is that it is $333 Dollars per day, 30 Days per Month – or $476 Dollars per day, 5 Days per week.

What is 10K per Month

The next thing that I have done is to quantify “Money” into the smallest instrument that I would be willing to work with, in my case the smallest instrument that I want to work with is $25 Dollars.  So now I have identified the amount of “Money” that I need to earn each day, in my case $333 Dollars per day.  My belief is that the Internet never sleeps, so there is no reason to think people would not earn me money on Saturday and Sunday.  If my meter runs 7 days per week.  I have also quantified my smallest unit of measure – $25 Dollars per unit (in U.S. Dollars).

The the question becomes, how many units do I have to sell at my smallest unit of measure $25 Dollars to earn $333 Dollars per day?  The answer is that I have to make $25 Dollars 14 times each day.  So for all practical purposes, let’s round up, and say we have to sell 15 units of something at $25 Dollars each to reach our goal of making 10k per month.

The zerotomillion.com 10K per Month Formula

You can see in the table above I included alternative prices for units.  I have seen e-Books for example for sale that were priced at $2 Dollars each.  The point really isn’t the formula that you use.  The point is – there are many different ways to get to $10,000 per month.  The only comment that I will make is that anything that will sale for $1 dollar will sale for $2 Dollars, so the lowest price that you should sell anything for would be $2 Dollars (in my opinion).

Developing the Plan

I think most of us would agree that selling 15 things at $25 Dollars each is not going to happen over night.  Just like anything else it will take effort.  So if it does not happen over night when will it happen?  Well let’s try to build a 5 year plan.  In this plan let’s say that we don’t get 15 people per day to pay $25 Dollars for something.  Let’s assume it will take multiple products all priced differently.  In fact, let’s say we have 10 products, each of them giving a separate income stream.  When we talk about the number of products in the plan, 10 becomes a nice round number, that would mean we would have to launch 2 products per year for five years to meet our five year goal.

So let’s talk about products…  What is a product?  A product by my definition is anything that can be sold automatically.  That means anything that can make me money without having to work, or at-least work very little.  Here is my short list:

1. Affiliate’s that give me money for my customers either purchasing something or signing up for something.
2. E-Books that I could write.
3. Education Modules that are paid for on-line.
4. Advertisers that pay by the month (I don’t want to sell it to them, I want them to find me).
5. Products that I am willing to sale on-line, but this means I have to handle shipping and fulfillment (need to find a way around this).
6. Software that can be downloaded.
7. Services that I am willing to provide or outsource (services are not passive income, so I would have to enjoy doing them).

Just like investing, I think our portfolio’s should be diversified.  So I think a good idea would be to pick 5 of the 10 items above and implement them 2 times each.  So my plan will look something like this:

• (2) – ebooks.
• (2) – Educational movies.
• (2) – Software Products that can be downloaded.
• (2) – Products that can be sold, but I will have to figure out a way for them to be manufactured, inventoried and shipped by someone else.
• (Several) – Affiliates, two won’t get the job done.  Since I am going to spend six months on each of these efforts for five years, I will simply implement as many affiliates as I can within 6 months.

Drilling Down

eBooks

If I am selling eBooks at $2 Dollars a piece then I have to sell 34 per day.  That is $68 dollars per day if we multiply $68 dollars per day times 30 days, we get $2,040 dollars per month, that is about one fifth of the 10k per month that I am shooting for.  The first question that I have is, “Can I create enough traffic to sell 34 eBooks per day?”  If I had to make a guess, then I would guess 1 person in 1000 visitors might purchase my eBook.  If that is true, then I have to have 34,000 visitors per day to my site.  Today, my top site gets 2000 visitors in a month.  I would say I have some work to do here.  So I would give my eBook plan a low chance of hitting the numbers I am looking for.  The one thing that could change this would be if the buying percentage were more like 1 in 100 visitors bought my eBook.  If that were the case I would only need 3,400 visitors per day.  That is probably very achievable in 5 years.  I will research the actual stats and post a different article just about eBook statistics.

Educational Movies

Educational Movies are fairly simple to build, believe it or not.  The learning curve on how to do this is about 1 week, and I already have a background in this area.  I also have many technical skills and a few technology specific Blogs that are well known in there given niche.  In fact, one of my eBooks will be “How to earn 6 figures by becoming  a Niche Leader and a Consultant“.  My Educational Movies will teach niche specific technical skills within the Oracle I.T. niche.  I will price these at $300 dollars per course.  In order to for me to earn my goal for this income stream of $2,400 per month, I have to sell 8 of them in a month.  So back to the real question, “If one visitor out of a thousand will by the course, can I generate 8000 visitors per day?”  Well, the good news about a niche specific topic is that the odds of a sale are increased significantly, because they are already interested in the topic or they would not be on the site.  Because of this I am changing my guess to be 1 buyer in every 200 visitors.  If that is true my niche site must generate 1600 visitors per month – very doable.

Software Products that can be Downloaded

I am currently researching software products that can be resold, and I will be writing another post specifically addressing software reselling.  Until I know what the profit would be on each piece of software all dialogue would be “Blue Sky”.  I will spare you any conjecture until I have done my research.

Products that can be Sold

My goal for products is to simply pay attention to things I am interested in that cost less than $30 dollars that I think I would be willing to buy using the Internet.  At this point I will simply take notes each day on the topic while I am working on my other topics.  Products will probably be one that I tackle at the end of the overall plan.  I will post the ideas from my notes in an upcoming article soon.

Affiliates

Each of these topics represents 1 year of my plan.  My affiliate plan will be the easiest of the 5 income streams.  I will make a list of things that interest me and I will look for affiliates that match.  My goal will be to sign up 2 affiliate partnerships per week for a year.  At the end of the year I should have 104 affiliate partners.  I am sure that some affiliates will be more profitable than others.  The question that immediately pops into my head is, “Can really earn $2,400 per month just from affiliates?”  Well if I have 104 affiliates that means that I have to earn $23 Dollars 1 time per month from each affiliate.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but as I research this I will write more posts.

I hope that if this post has done nothing else I hope it has at least made you think.  I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and ideas and I invite you to participate in the discussion by posting a comment.

Here in Colorado we have a few different grocery store chains; Safeway, Albertsons, Super Wal-mart, Super Target and our largest is King Soopers.  Several things annoy me about King Soopers; this first being that they have two prices on almost every item.  One price is for King Soopers card holders and one price is for non card holders.  So basically if I don’t have a shopping card I pay about 10% more.  It’s almost communistic, I hate having to have one more card in my wallet, just so I can shop at King Soopers, I try to keep this Blog clean, but that really pisses me off!

Because of this card, and because Wal-mart is about 25% cheaper even with the card, I for the most part, have switched to doing all of my shopping at Wal-Mart.  The problem with Wal-Mart is that there produce is terrible (now imagine Charles Barkley saying terrible).  So now, I do the bulk of my shopping at Wal-Mart and my produce shopping elsewhere, and last night the produce came from King Soopers.

Now before I go any further, I must say that anyone that is grocery shopping at 11pm is one of two things; either a night owl, or they have had an extremely busy day.  I am not a night owl, I am a morning person, I did, however, have an extremely busy day – so busy that I did not get to the grocery store until 11pm.  So by the time I got there I was ready to get my groceries and get home.  Now back to the self service lanes…

So when I walk in the store what do I see, 4 lanes open and all of them are self service lanes.  So now I am pissed off about the card and the fact that these idiots now want me to be their employee as well.  They don’t pay me to be a cashier, my labor is not free!  And, the presumption that it should be bothers me.  Right beside the 4 lanes, was one cashier, just standing there, doing nothing.  I looked at her and said – no!  I am not going to be a cashier tonight.  I was not mean (I don’t like being mean), but I was not happy either.

Seriously, do they really think they can charge me 25% more than Wal-Mart and expect me to check myself out and sack my own groceries.  I guess that may be okay with some, but I am going back to Wal-Mart, even with the bad produce…