Best Thing About Online Business

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Sep 182010
 

Yesterday somebody asked me how much money I make from Online Business.

I did not answer question in detail, but I did made that person aware that I make as close to as  1/3 and sometimes 3/4 from what I make at my full time job.

Not to long ago, somebody asked me if I made more money from online business than my full time job would I ever consider leaving and do only Online Business?

My answer to that is NO, because I like to be managed in some way or another, I get great benefits and why would I leave my full time job that I LOVE with passion.

So again, let’s get back to the topic…

Best Thing About Online Business

In most cases you get to be your own boss, but not only that, you actually get more freedom, because you can do it from wherever you want as long as you are not shipping something from home to your customers.

Now let me give you my big picture…

Imagine you live in New York City / Manhattan you have 1 bedroom apartment and you pay around $1500-$3000 per month just for that 1 bedroom apartment

(As you can see I did not include any other expenses)

Now Imagine you move to Des Moines, Iowa… and pay that same apartment $500 in greater suburb. Des Moines as city is nothing like New York City I know that too,  but you get to keep $1500-2500 per month in your bank savings account, that’s $18.000 or $30.000 per YEAR!

So what is it going to be?

Live in glamorous city that never sleeps or in city that you can drive through in 20 minutes?

I would chose 20 minutes city because I can visit New York anytime I want. Blogger being from New York City or from Des Moines makes no difference , the customer of yours is not interested (most likely) who you are, they are interested in your company and product or service you offer.

For a second forget about New York or Des Moines. Lets move your online business oversees!

dubrovnik

Above picture is from Dubrovnik I took, most beautiful and historical city in whole Europe. It’s city that never sleeps, has best food and restaurants and on top of that.. you can rent one bedroom apartment for less than $500 per month.

Sure you won’t speak “croatian” or “serbo-croatian” language for a while but you get to see most amazing sculptures, restaurants, food that is all organic and more…

You might ask “Joe so why did you come to America, if you like Dubrovnik so much?, Why don’t you move there?”

Well, the thing is that in USA you get more opportunities, you can become whatever you want as long as you have passion, money and education and that’s why I am here for, the land of dreams. Maybe down the road 5-10-15 years I would move to places like Dubrovnik, Croatia. Or Spain, Italy etc…but that’s another story..

Anyway, point of this whole story is that sometimes places we live in right now and have steady online business, can be transferred.So if you are starving for freedom , why don’t you stop playing games on Facebook for 2 hours, PS3, Xbox360? Stop going out every weekend.

Take that time to learn about other things that will benefit your long term goal…whether that is for your online business, life success, love… etc..

Sometimes taking that small luxury time you spend daily or weekly can be increased later on in your long term goal.

If you have an online business, can you work from anyplace on this earth? If not, why not? What’s holding you?

Ok I got to wrap things up, hope you understood the message…and I really wish that people would stop wasting their time..and focus more on goals they want to achieve.

 Posted by at 12:13 am  Tagged with: , ,

Depending On Google, Bing, Yahoo and SEO is Business Time Bomb

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Sep 172010
 

The other day I read how one guy lost $4.000.000 because Google removed him from search engine. Sorry  I forgot the name of the guy, if I find it I will update this post.

So basically what that tells you is that if your business depends on Google and other search engines to that extend its like Business ticking bomb when it will explode and ruing your business.

I recently (2 days ago) filed for LLC for my blog and I have given a though of “What if”

What if Google removes me from Google News?

What if Google marks my page as “Malware” because some hacker decided to place malicious code on my blog?

After so many “What if’s” I was not one bit terrified because I experienced that all in past 7 years of blogging. And I know how to deal with it. 

If your business depends so much on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo start thinking about how much money, audience and customers would you lose if your business is not listed for certain keywords or not listed at all.

Don’t think what you would do then, think as if it will happen in next 5 minutes.

Who would you contact?

How would you find the problem?

How will you get removed pages back on search engines?

And most important which I will write about next, How many audience or customers do you have who talks highly about your business? (Word of mouth).

Back in 2009 when I was at the verge of success with blog called LiveCrunch, reaching million point two visitors per month, some hacker decided to place malicious code into my wordpress blog just moments later Google and all other search engines including Firefox (Mozilla) marked my blog as “Spam, Malware”.

You get that big fuc***ing banner with text like …Enter this website with confidence, there is known malware on this website that can harm your computer…

My website plunged 95% down! 

The visit rate was horrifying.

Anyway, I took immediate actions: Cleaned Code from WP, Contacted all parties that marked my blog as spam. My site was operational 16 hours later.

The next day and almost month later my site of 1.2 million pageviews dropped to 700.000 because after they removed my site, keywords I ranked high for, ware taken by others.

Let me not bore you too much with my real life examples…

The message here is to you that you shall be prepared. You should not always count on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Search Engines to drive your traffic.

Word of mouth can’t be killed if you do good! It spreads like virus… and that is exactly what I am doing lately.

Fu** the SE’s I want to connect with my audience because they either chose to love me or hate me. But it’s our responsibility to be loved and gain that word of mouth confidence.

Your homework for business:

  • If your business depends on Search Engines how would you minimize the workload and who you would contact for help?
  • Gain more word of mouth in positive way of speaking

 

My name is Joe Hobot and I approve this message :)

 Posted by at 2:12 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Live Your Life While You Can

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Sep 112010
 

I heard few times sentence like “I hate my life” and what aggravates me the most is that person does not know, how lucky they are to have one at all.

The other day I was just thinking about Life in general but most of the time I am thinking about how lucky I am to have one and here is why…

To be honest this is my 3rd life on earth, yes I was clinically dead twice! No I have not seen God or bright light but what I have seen is how dramatically realization of death can change your life forever.

First time when I was clinically dead I wasn’t even born, that cord (Umbilical Cord) that feeds us throughout the pregnancy was strapped around my neck and when the doc was pulling me he noticed that my whole body skin was blue-green (my mom explained…) . Not only that but they noticed that I had no pulse, and docs immediately gave me some shot in my tongue. And that saved my life but that’s not the point of this story/article/post…

Second time when I was clinically dead was much serious and I was at age 7. As kid I was very curious, so I went to this electric transformer that feeds electricity to 5 story building because it was open and I thought that nobody will find me if I hide in there. We were playing hide and seek, remember this was 80’s we didn’t have cell phones!

So I touched one of the wires that was 380 volts and in split second my lower arm got burned and thanks to one guy, he pulled me out of electric transformer with the carton board.

At that time I was really lucky…

  1. The wire next to it was 15.000 volts
  2. I survived death by 15 seconds
  3. Guy showed up at the right place and right time
  4. Electricity was going around my lower end of my arm and bones did not allow it to go my heart. Otherwise I would be dead within 0.5 seconds

So that’s the short story of what happen to me, now lets go back to that original topic… “Enjoy your life while you can”

After being 4 years in hospital and have 24 surgeries I am still alive and healthy. At first I did not realize what life means, because I was only 10 years old at that time. But by the age of 14 I started to notice a lot of changes and difficulties which I faced in my life. And all I really had to do is go back 7 years (now 23 years) to remember f how loosing your life can take only 0.5 second.

Ladies and Gentlemen I can not describe you how powerful that moment is, you get that feeling that you could move Mountain Everest by just blowing at it. And that my friends is just what I feel.

I think everyone in their life can feel that way: Nothing can stop You. There is almost nothing in this world that can not be achieved, it can be achieved but you must find the right way and will to do it. As far as people that say “I hate my life” try pulling trigger at your head and see how that feels ?

Compare it to the feeling of “I hate my life” …

Anyway, I started rambling here and probably not making much sense.

Well I just wanted to let you know that no matter how financially broken you are, no matter how much love hurts, no matter in what trouble you are, one thing you should  remember is that you are still alive!

Treat your life as you are testing it in this world.

Here is another quick story of mine…

I came to united states 10 years ago with $60 legally! I have been given $300 in food stamps, a small apartment and rent paid in full for 2 months. In those two months I had to find job, speak English, and pay rent for the 3rd month…

I found a job within 10 days as paper or plastic boy, placing groceries for people in bags.  Year later I worked as Security Guard for Wells Fargo and year after that is where I looked at my life back at age 7 and said enough is enough… How many years do I have to spend doing what I am not happy about?

That same year I quit job, I applied for Associate Degree and land job as Tech Support I in cable company. In 2004 I became Tier 2 , in year 2005 I became Network Analyst / Engineer!

I love technology!

I quit that job and landed best job I could have that makes me happy every day but not just that, I am investing in startups, I buy and sell domain names, I build blogs that had/have over 1.000.000 pageviews per month…

So really, nobody can tell me at least that life is hard, boring etc.. because I had bit taste what death is.

Anyway, that’s about it…for now, leave comments tell me what motivates you?

 Posted by at 6:25 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Books That Can Motivate You In Any Business

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Aug 312010
 

Lately I have been listening to audio books that are quite motivational and inspire me to do more things. Not because I need to be more motivated or inspired, but because sometimes you just need that little step-up to understand this world differently.

I get motivated by different things and not just money, like some people do. Earning 6 figures and working 80 hours per week is something I would say NO to on any given day because I like to be more open-minded and freed up for things I want to do or things I care about.

Enough of jibber, jabber lets get to those books that I think might help most people who are entrepreneurs, business owners or just somebody that wants to do something different in their life…

Book Names:

  • 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • 4 hour work week
  • Drive
  • LinchPin

I will write and lay these four books in a way that  I think they should be read.

Drive by Daniel Pink

I am still listening to that book and I pretty much know what is init even though I have 3 chapters left out of 8 total. This book explains in detail what motivates us, it gives lots of examples why people get motivated and inspired in certain moments. Book talks about mostly from business stand point of view but in the beginning first two chapters at least also explain how we think and what triggers that motivation within us.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

This book goes into different areas on how people think, how do we resolve problems whether at work, home or with people you meet on daily basis. It gives you good explanation on understanding how people react to certain things. How to be understood and how to understand people (how to listen to people). I am one of those guys that few years back couldn’t stop talking about them self, I still do but am very careful on how I use the word “I”. It’s really good book for everyone not just for entrepreneurs.

LinchPin by Seth Godin

I think Linchpin gives you motivation to be successful, it provides good reading material on how to become irreplaceable at work, home or in this world. I mean, why would you work something you don’t really like…or how do you advance in what you are currently working on. Overall it’s good book…

4 hour work week by Timothy Ferriss

This book is very valuable to people that have tight schedule (me, duh!) When I listened to this book it gave me so much ideas on how I could maximize my time with what I care about and still enjoy same thing what I have been doing for past 15 years (IT stuff). For example: I had trouble blogging every day (my main income source) and could not keep up with things because I was remodeling my whole kitchen, basement and bathrooms. I noticed my income dropped for 20% and due to that my sleeping time dropped from 6 hours to 3-4 hours a day. After reading that book I hired 10 people to do things for me, I make 5% more income, I sleep 6-8 hours and I have Saturday and Sunday off like I should have for years now. Out of all books above this book is a must read in my opinion.

Well my dear audience, I hope some books above will help you achieve goals that you are after.

Remember that no book in this world can provide you material that will guide you through the life to be happy, successful and enjoy the life you want to.

It’s all you…It’s all about how much you care for about your life and life of others.

This is my 3rd life in this world and I understand how valuable life is. No, I am not kidding! I was clinically dead 2 times..but that’s something I will write about probably in few days…

PS: I don’t link to sites where you can buy books, if you found this blog I am sure you know how to copy paste and find sites like audible, Amazon or Barns and Noble :)

 Posted by at 9:54 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

How To Find Motivation

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Aug 232010
 

Inspiration, Motivation, Feeling Happy and things like that is how our life gets that insulin and drive to keep things going or done.

Today I felt like writing about how motivation and inspiration effects me and also how I get motivated to do things, which might give you that Aha! moment.

You don’t need self-help books or motivational speakers like Tony Robbins or even reading blog posts like this one. All you need is heart and brain, oh wait! Isn’t that few billions of people in this world?

Sometimes people get stuck with questions like How am I going to do that? or This is my goal but I don’t know where to start.

Well, you started already by asking questions and that’s a good start!

I don’t want to give you yet another speech of successful stories because that’s pretty much a quick fix (patch) in your brain that will fade out in few minutes, hours or a day.

So here is how I motivate and inspire my self in certain things…

To be honest, I never liked reading books. I haven’t done that in high school or college, even though I finished my association degree with honors at 3.75GPA.

But my internal feeling and passion told me differently. I wanted to read books, yet I just didn’t have that drive or push… like for example… Joe read the 50 page book god damn it! it’s just 50 pages, you can do it!

One day I was thinking about reading a good book, recommended by many but I did not have the guts to do it (I hate reading hard cover books, magazines…) so I was bit brainstorming… “Why do I read 50-100 blog posts each day which end up with 10.000 – 50.000 words per day , yet I can’t read one damn book?”

I got that Aha! moment….

I read stuff online, I don’t have to flip pages, I don’t get distracted because I do read usually in my free time ….so there must be a way that I can read books.

You are probably thinking “Oh he started reading e-books” No, I did not.

I went to Amazon.com check-out the book it was recommended to me and I found out that there is an Audio book, so I said ill give it a try! I basically went though that book in two days (250 pages) with joy because:

  • Book was really good written and I learned a lot
  • I did not get distracted
  • I did not have to flip the pages and hear that noise….kschhhtt…
  • I listened to that book everywhere I could on my iPod Touch…

I am not telling you this because I want you to do the same

….think about it…

I hate something but internally I want to fix it…and to fix it I had to find another way of doing it….doing it with joy…

It’s simple as that…

I applied that method to everything nowadays. I get inspired because I found a way to fix what I have been wanting to fix for long time and I get motivated by accomplishing those goals.

You can do it too. You want to make something out of your life? You want to be rich, but for some odd reason you are still working that same job for 12 years?

Why?

I mean internally (emotionally) you want to, but you don’t know how to….

Well my friends, take 30 minutes of your 24hours without distractions and think (brainstorm) how would you change your life by enjoying things.

Start off with small things… as you get better at accomplishing small goals your desire and motivation will give you that happy feeling and inspiration to do big things.

Hope this article made sense to you.

 Posted by at 11:50 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

How Not To Let YourSelf Down

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Aug 142010
 

Whether it’s business related or relationship related don’t let yourself down.

We all experienced in lifetime that ugly feeling where somebody that is close to you or not even related to you put you down emotionally. And at the very last brain cell you don’t ever think about it as 3rd person whether that emotion has negative or positive impact on you.

I had boss few years back that put me down all the time but what kept my engine running for 4-5 years? You can say that I loved my job that much or I couldn’t afford to lose my job.

Well it was mix of three things

  • I really loved my job
  • I couldn’t afford to lose my job
  • I looked at it from 3rd person prospective at all time

Being a 3rd person while arguing, debating or just listening is not easy, it takes practice and sometimes being that 3rd person is not OK because you forget who you are what your heart wants, what your brain wants to say or do.

Reason I am writing about emotion today of “Putting Yourself Down” is because I could feel that way just through email  from person I never met, I never saw or speak before.

I am one of those “bloggers” that get’s stuff from various companies to review products and on my list I put “Samsung” , I had Samsung products sent to me before but mostly from third party contractors. So I contacted the PR’s or whatever department few days ago with pitch that I have Great blog, with lots of pageviews and diversity of audience. Thinking like I am the shit!

Well the response I got back from PR person made me feel like shit, so I thought….

He/She said

“Thank you for this information. Unfortunately, at this time we cannot accommodate your request.”

bla bla bla

…products are distributed based on past working relationships…

…e.g., audience demographic, circulation, viewership, site traffic, etc…

As you might noticed ‘they’ mentioned viewership, site traffic. So blog that I own with over 400.000 pageviews is not enough, basically what the message translates to.

If you look at it as “you” or in this case “me” I would be like “Oh ok…sorry, I guess I don’t deserve it”

But looking at it from 3rd person things change,…..

My positive reaction was this:

  1. Don’t let yourself down just because Samsung Pr does not think you are worth having their products.
  2. If I do good job as I do already. In 2 years they might ask me to review Samsung products and I will get a chance to say:… Sorry here is what I got from your PR just 2 years ago.

That is how I boost my ego and not let my brain think about stuff that are so emotionally involved especially things like the example above.

But what if you are in fight, arguing or debate with your loved ones? You can’t put that brain-ego boost can’t you?

I think it all comes or picking the right time and rationalizing things…maybe you are wrong or did something stupid….but can you make it positive state of mind (energy)? Sure you can…

Let’s say your husband or wife told you to pick up something on the way home…I don’t know: Buy eggs… So he/she can make pancakes in the morning.

You come home, leave your keys on the desk and next thing you see is your loved one: Sooooo, where are my eggs?

Oh Snap!

How are you going to make that emotionally positive? Not just for you but both of you.

I mean, you know it’s your fault because you said OK “I will get the eggs” but at the same time that person is in such expectation that they don’t want to hear excuses..

Well there are few things you can do…

Bitch Person: Why didn’t you get it, where was your head?

Bitch Slave Person: Ok babe, Ill get it , ill be back in few seconds!

Bitch Excuse Liar Person: Oh, you know I totally forgot about it, there was an accident and it totally distracted me…

Would you say that any of the responses to your listener is correct? Can you see your self saying that, I bet you do…

Well as 3rd person looking at the situation and not being put down I think best response would be…

Professional Bitch: I forgot to get it because I was distracted by many things that happened to me today. Since you are making those eggs tomorrow lets go together and buy eggs, I can also tell you what happened to me today…

In Pro B version In my opinion you make both happy. One person will get the eggs and another person gets the comfort and bonding connection with the person that wants the eggs.

Does this make any sense to you? Because if it doesn’t you might go back and read what I said:  “Being a 3rd person while arguing, debating or just listening is not easy, it takes practice”

But seriously now, don’t let yourself down intentionally…think about things from the different angle see if you can make it positive in any way and even if you can’t …try to comfort yourself with positive things.

By the way, there is really no 3rd person :) it’s all you… (No shit, Joe)

 Posted by at 5:02 am  Tagged with: , , ,

In For The Money

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Aug 142010
 

Over the past few years I met and talked to so many bloggers that nowadays I don’t even remember their names and If I do they don’t blog anymore.

Almost every one of them I met was super hyped about making money with blogging and be debt free, but when reality hits they can’t handle it.

Blogging to some is joke, to some is just a tool to write their own opinion, and to others is just like any other business. Most people read online about “How To Make Money Online” or “How To Make Money With Blog” and they read 10 articles and think they can do it too, well I am sorry it’s not working that way.

I am not saying that it’s not possible to make money and live from blogging, what I am saying is that having expertise in Social Media does not make you Blogging expert. And even if you know all about SEO, Writing, Blogging, Social Media and whatever not..you are still not going to make more than $1 per day. Trust me! I know.

Not trying to be a smart ass and say that only certain people can make living from blogging, that is so not true. Main thing in blogging is to have passion, devotion, be organized, be able to think out of the box and don’t think about crap load of money you will make.

From those I met they were blogging for lets say 1-5 months and still after 5 months they make 15c per day!

That’s horrible dude!

But do they ask them self: What the fuck am I doing wrong?

Nope! Or maybe they do but don’t have that passion to research or ask the right person.

Most people now days that I meet know that, I mastered the way to make blogging part of my living, I can pay off my car, my loans, my house and bunch of other things and when they ask me how did you do it? 

For a second I think: “Can I really tell my whole strategy that I worked on for 5-6 years in 15 minutes?” Sure I can… but how important is that to them? 15 minutes?

Now you know that blogging isn’t just those 15 minutes of reading or listening to others that are somewhat successful.

On daily basis I comment at least on 20-30 blogs, I write 5-15 blog posts,write at least 20-50 tweets, I update my Facebook page(s), manage people I hired to blog for me, tell them what to write and more

…and even now after so many years, I go back to few blogs that I read on daily basis to learn what’s new out there , how to improve my blogging skills.

Now, I don’t want to discourage you , if you are blogger and tell you to do the same…or learn about blogging for 5-6-7 years and come back, all I am trying to say is that blogging isn’t a joke…it takes practice, time and most importantly passion.

I like to help, if you have questions please do comment below…tell me that I am Jack Ass…Blog Guru…Bitch..Ignorant…Intelligent… whatever you comment, one thing you should remember. It’s going to be your opinion…and I might learn from it…

 Posted by at 1:58 am  Tagged with:

It’s Time For Me To Tell You

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Aug 142010
 

Ah my very first blog post on my own domain name! Took a while for me to do that and now here I am writing this post for 1 or 100 reader(s).

It’s magical how blogs I owned made millions and millions pageviews but I never thought of blogging about things I like, dislike in my own opinion, well now I will.

So whats are you going to find at Joe Hobot’s blog?

Well I am going to try to blog at least once a week, about things that maybe are important to you. For example I could write a topic about: Why do people get discouraged in blogging world. Or things like: Why do people really like iPhone 4? What do I hate and love about it….

Sure that might not concern you or it’s not important to you…but for sure you will not find on this blog on how to fix  your relationship. For that you might visit Tony Robbins :)

Anyway, I am running out of time here…have to go back to work. So don’t subscribe to rss feeds or anything like that because I am going to change the whole design and everything.

In mean while you can follow me on two twitter accounts @JoeHobot and @DMJoe

By the way I am no Seth Godin or Tony Robbins or even Dalai Lama … but maybe I am smarter then they are when it comes to blogging, technology and other stuff.

 Posted by at 12:48 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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