The following is an excerpt from Think, Write & Retire, a new book by Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian. You can get your own copy here. All profits from book sales will go to the Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation. This is non-profit organization that raises funds to sponsor heart surgery for under-privileged children with congenital heart defects.
1. You need only your own experience. No extra resources are necessary.
Everything you need to be a successful infopreneur resides right between your ears, inside your brain! In this book, you’re going to learn how to extract that precious information, compile it into a product or service, and sell it to the folks who need it desperately. And they’ll be willing to pay you for sharing it with them.
These folks could live right across the street from you, or halfway across the globe!
2. Work from home, only in your available spare time.
Telecommuting is all the rage for corporate employees. But you can’t beat the lifestyle of an infopreneur. Who else can choose to work in a pinstripe suit in a plush office, or out of their bedroom in pajamas – or even both?
And as an infopreneur, you keep no time, answer to no boss, meet no deadlines, except ones you impose yourself. It’s a dream come true for many lazy entrepreneurs.
3. Low start-up cost: affordable for anyone.
Have you ever looked into the start-up costs of setting up a small business in the ‘real’ brick-and-mortar world?
Depending upon where you live, this will vary; but it’s always a sizable chunk of change. There’s office space to rent, equipment to buy or lease, employees to hire and pay, legal formalities to complete, licenses to purchase, inventory to stock, manufacturing costs to incur, and a lot more.
When you combine this with the startling statistic that over 95% of small businesses will fail within three years of launch, the low set-up cost of becoming an Internet Infopreneur begins to appear an attractive advantage.
4. Plenty of guidance available from role models and fellow infopreneurs.
Yes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Almost every facet of infopreneuring has been explored and experienced by others before you. Luckily, many of them have shown themselves able and willing to share their hard-earned lessons with others… for a price, of course. (Infopreneuring to infopreneurs!)
When I got started selling information products on the Internet, there was barely a handful of courses teaching me what to do. Today, the problem lies on the opposite end of the spectrum, with the bigger problem being how to identify the best, most reliable, valuable courses from the glut out there.
Still, that’s a better problem to have than scarcity!
5. Powerful, intuitive, easy-to-use technology available to help you.
Technology has grown by leaps and bounds. At the same time, smart entrepreneurs tweaked and adapted the tools to further their needs, in the process making them more valuable and useful to budding infopreneurs like you.
To take one quick example, look at ‘follow up email autoresponders’. This simple, yet powerful, technology lets you set up a sequence of marketing or customer follow-up messages to be delivered by email – at pre-determined intervals, AUTOMATICALLY.
You don’t need to keep track, and send them out one by one, manually. Just click a few buttons, and you have a salesperson conveying your sales message to qualified prospects on a schedule, 24/7.
It just doesn’t get much easier than that. And technology solutions exist for almost every aspect of infopreneuring today.
6. Can be set to run hands-off, on auto-pilot.
Don’t you wish you could be lying on a beach, sipping piña coladas, while your business chugs along raking in millions?
Well, maybe you won’t be carrying the green stuff to your bank in sacks just yet. But fully-automated income streams running on auto-pilot with zero effort on your part are a ‘dream come true’ for many infopreneurs – including myself.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean all you have to do is wish for it, and checks will magically start appearing in your mailbox. Of course not! You’ll need to put in some effort first: hard work, maybe. But once it’s done, you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labor for a long time – even many years.
7. Scalable: you can take it as high as you want.
Looking to make a few hundred dollars more every month? You can do it.
Want to replace your day job, and make a full-time income from your infopreneuring? That’s possible too. It’ll be a bit harder, but not very much so.
Do you plan on building your own information empire online, creating a huge fortune based on your infopreneuring? Even that is well within your reach. Just know you’ll have to do things better, in a more structured, organized, systematic way to achieve this goal.
In the ten years since I started out as an infopreneur, making many wrong turns, stumbling and groping my way past a steep learning curve, I have still managed to create a business that not only meets my needs, but also helps fund a major project needing huge cash inflows. My business helps sponsor expensive treatment for little children from underprivileged families, who are born with serious heart defects.
Your ambition as an infopreneur is only limited by your imagination!
8. No time limitations. Grow your business as fast or slow as you like.
Tired of punching a clock, turning up at the office ‘on time’, running on a treadmill that’s moving ever faster, yet going nowhere?
Infopreneuring can be your salvation. You work a schedule determined by yourself, depending upon the targets and aims you define for your enterprise. Big or small, short- term or long, there’s a method you’ll find optimal and suitable for your work as an infopreneur.
9. No geographic restrictions. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection.
It does not matter where in the world you live. It doesn’t matter where, or how often, you travel.
As long as you have access to a computer and a way to get hooked up to the Internet, you can conduct your infopreneur operations unfettered. Indeed, within a short time, you’ll learn to set things up so that you won’t even need to check on them too often: maybe once a week, once a month, or even once every year!
10. No barriers to entry, such as language, social status, physical handicaps, or anything else.
The World Wide Web is a great leveler. A one-man show can compete on its merits with a Fortune 500 corporation. That’s within limits, of course; it’s getting harder than before. But it’s still very possible – just not as easy as it once was.
You do NOT need expensive tools or equipment. You do NOT need a big marketing and advertising budget. You do NOT need an office, staff, or employees.
You can launch your information business with a story. Try one based on your own experience, education, or expertise.
11. Potential for passive income for the long term.
To me, the biggest advantage (and one that is often overlooked) is the potential to work once and get paid over and over again. Many people who read about the potential in becoming an infopreneur give up too early, thinking it sounds like too much hard work.
You write a report or book once: and yes, it can be hard work. But guess what? You get paid for that work a year later… four years later… even ten years later, or more! That’s FUN.
One of my specialty info-products was created in 2002. Seven years later, I have sold 259 copies at a price of $39.95 each – without lifting a finger, doing nothing except renewing the website domain name every 2 years! That’s over ten thousand dollars in PASSIVE income. Sweet!