Sometimes, don't you just feel like giving up?

The wife has been working on her online business for three weeks. When sales has stopped coming in, it gets very stressful for her. In her mind, she starts to think about getting a job as it pays her better and the income is more stable. She can think of so many reasons to support the idea of getting a salary job. This all comes down to one thing and one thing only. She is not determined and focused enough to build her own business.

I still remember that she used to complain about her old job almost every other day, e.g. long working hours, too few holidays and too little pay. The list goes on and on. This might sound familiar to you. But what is interesting is that after they quit a job they hate, the first thing they do is to jump into another job.

I had a couple of jobs before and I really hated it. I hated it so much so that I told myself that I would do whatever it takes to have my own business and never ever have to work for anyone again. For my wife, the pain of having to work for someone else is just not strong enough. Over time, the pain she once felt about having a job dissipates. When you don't feel the pain, it is easy for you to fall back into the same trap again.

To help her become focused in her online business, I drew her a timeline with quantifiable goals for every month for the next one year. To do that, we first worked out her ultimate goal which is to have 10k per month after one year. Then we broke it down into smaller monthly income targets and even daily sales target. That way, she will not feel lost or feel her ultimate goal is unattainable.

Human psychology is a very interesting thing. When we set a five year plan for ourselves, we always think there is still a lot of time left. Also the goal itself appears very intimidating and unrealistic. Let say, we aim to achieve a sales target of 1 million in 3 years time. 1 million is a very big number for us. I have never seen this kind of money before, let alone churning out 1 million revenue. It is unimaginable for me. However, if you break it down by year, quarter and month ( you can even try breaking it down into weekly targets), it all seems manageable and achievable all of a sudden.

Hope you find this post useful!

Good night, my lovely wife!

Dave
http://www.extra1kincome.com

Oh, Traffic!

It has been slightly more than two weeks since my wife started her online business. Here is just an update on her progress. So far, the wife has successfully made 3 sales (Kudos to the wife). She has been basically juggling between finding new clients and serving the existing clients. There is not much problem when it comes to meeting the demands of the existing clients. Now she is facing the classic problem that so many business owners have experienced or are experiencing now. Yes, that is driving traffic to your business.

I still remember the wife was so excited when I explained to her that getting 2 new clients every day would generate a monthly income of $3000. Doing the maths is easy, but turning it into reality requires some hard work on her part.

At the moment, the wife gets her clients only by posting free advertisements everywhere. What I find amusing is that the wife will go refresh her email almost every 5 seconds to check if there is anyone replying to her ads. I told her that checking your emails so frequently is such a waste of time. She should spend most of her time on income generating activities such as getting new clients.

I can't emphasize the importance of time management enough. Every day we get distracted very easily by phone calls, emails, meetings and etc. Just take a moment and think about how much time of a day you actually spend on generating income for your business.

Now imagine if we can just focus on income generating activity for a full hour more every day without any distraction, can you imagine what impact it will have on our business growth? You will be shocked by the results after you practise this for 3 months or 6 months consistently.

Back to my wife's case study, she has not brought in any new client for the past 7 days. That translates into 3 sales in two weeks. With $120 of profit for 2 weeks, that means $240 per month. What a huge contrast with the $3000 per month income we calculated earlier!! That is less than 10% of what we wanted to make in a month. So it all comes down to getting sales and getting sales consistently.

How do we achieve that? Here are some of the tips I gave the wife:

• Increase the frequency she posts advertisement on free classfied websites
• Advertise on more free classfied websites across more countries
• Expand the range of the services
• Explore new ways of letting more people know of her services (eg, social media platforms)
• Brainstorm where her potential clients always hang out and then get into contact with them

Did you notice that all of the above methods are free methods to get new clients? It is a bit tedious and requires a lot of hard work. There is also paid traffic which can be very effective if you use it correctly. The wife and I will look into that the next time.

Hope you enjoy this post. We will talk next time.

Good night, my lovely wife!

Dave

http://www.extra1kincome.com

How I Got My Wife To Start Her Online Business

Before I get to what I would like to talk about today, I want to share with you a little bit information about my wife. She has a bachelor's degree in science and economics from a local university. After graduation, she worked in the finance industry for a few years.

From young, the wife has always admired successful businessman and businesswomen and wished she could one day build her own business. Many years have passed without taking any action to start her own business. The wife also realized that she only talks about wanting to have her own business and being her own boss but she never takes the first step to do it.

Recently, the wife left the previous company. Initially she wanted to look for another job, but I convinced her to give a try at starting her own business. After all, that is what she has ever dreamed about doing. Now she finally got the opportunity to start her own business, but she was feeling a little worried about failing the business and losing money. I cannot blame her. She has become so accustomed to the security and stability that a job can bring.

I know that my wife is a smart woman and she is capable of great things, so I want to encourage her to live her dreams. One day, we were just chilling at an outdoor cafe.

I asked my wife: “ what kind of life do you want to have in 3 years time? ”

My wife said to me: “ I want to have a big house and fancy cars. I also want to have a home based business, so I will be able to stay at home with the kids. I want to be able to make enough money to let my parents retire early as well.” She was smiling while picturing the dream life she wants to have in the future.

Then I said: “ Do you think a salary job can help you achieve that? ”

Knowing that her answer will be a definite No, I just wanted to get her thinking and decide for herself that she might want to start her own business NOW and work towards her goals and dreams NOW. Do you know what is the most important resource we have? That is right. It is time. We only have a finite amount of time in this world. One day wasted is one day gone forever. A salary job is effectively selling your time for money. That is a maximum limit on how much you can make by selling your time. Having said that, I am not saying that all of us should quit our jobs and start our own business. After all, not everyone has the same goals as my wife.

Life is short. I just think that we sometimes should take a step back and really think about what we want in this life.

Good night, my lovely wife!

Dave

http://www.extra1kincome.com

The Very First Sale

Hey guys,

Did you still remember myprevious post about my wife's virgin online business? Yes, the wife started her very own online business doing service arbitrage. It has been almost 2 weeks since she started her online business. So far, she has successfully closed three sales. I would like to share with you how she made her very first three sales.

After the wife placed advertisements on the free classified ads websites, she got an email from an interested client the very next day. I still vividly remember the look on her face when she opened her email box and saw an email reply to her advertisement. She was totally thrilled and couldn't stop smiling the whole morning.

The prospective client asked a lot of questions about the services she advertised, such as costs, estimated time for completion and etc. She patiently answered all the potential client's questions, hoping that she would score her first sale very soon. Unfortunately, there was some misunderstanding between the wife and the prospective client. The prospective client just stopped replying to my wife's message and disappeared off the face of the earth. The wife seemed a bit upset and discouraged by the fact that she just unintentionally pissed her very first client off.

She said to me: “ I think I really suck at customer service.”

I said to her: “ Ya, I think so too. But I think your prospective client suck worse. You cannot possibly please every client coming your way. What is important is that you learn from this experience. Be prepared that you will be dealing with all sorts of prospective clients. You will get better with time.”

The wife felt a bit relieved afterwards. She continued to focus on getting more people to see her advertisements. Her efforts paid off when she got a young lady emailing her about the services. The young lady got a very good deal from the wife as the wife was too afraid of losing the client again. Within a few hours of email corresponse, she decided to purchase the service.

Now comes the payment part. The young lady decided to make payment through Paypal. As the wife had no clue as to how to set up Paypal payment link, I offered to show her how to do it step by step. Now she is an expert at this.

“Payment received from xxx.” My wife shouted to me, grinning ear from ear.

The wife literally just made money from thin air with very low or no risk at all.

Well done, my lovely wife!

Dave

http://www.extra1kincome.com

My wife's Virgin Online Business

I read an article a short while ago about this guy making money by doing service arbitrage. Basically, he finds people who can provide a type of service at a very low price and clients who are willing to pay this type of service at a much higher price. Then he just acts as the middle man by facilitating the transaction. When I read his story, I thought to myself that I could ask my wife to try that too. So I helped the wife find a service niche where she can easily match the service providers and the clients. Guess what happened just one week later?

Yes, She made $200 dollars in just one week by doing nothing but emailing the clients and the service providers from her laptop. The wife was literally blown away by the results she saw. This is the first time the wife started doing online business. She was completely shocked by the fact that she could make money so freaking fast, given that she had no prior experience in online business.

After her initial success, the wife got hooked to online business. She starts working harder without me having to remind her to do work. All she does now every day is posting advertisements to get new clients while coordinating between the client and the service provider. All this is done in her free time and from working at home.

However, the wife started to face her first challenge not long ago. She found that she was not getting enough clients. For each new client, she makes about 40 dollars. If she can get three new clients a day, that will be 120 dollars. At this rate, she will be able to bring in 3600 dollars a month. That can replace her full time job easily.

So, brainstorming ways to get more clients and increase sales is the wife's top priority now. I stepped in to help her with this. Below is some of the suggestions I made:

• Tracking the advertisements should help her understand which classified ads website can bring in more leads. Thus she can focus more on posting ads on these websites
• Find more websites or forums where she can advertise the services
• Take advantage of social media platforms. She can post the ads on social media websites to attract more clients
• Find more service niches where she can apply this service arbitrage technique to make money

Okay, It is late over here. We will talk next time. Hope that you enjoy reading this post. If you are interested in knowing more business tips, you can visit my website here.

Good night, my lovely wife!

Yo!

My blog is finally up! Looking forward to writing down my lovely wife's online business journey:)