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Introduction

What is the perfect business model?

Of course that will all depend on who you ask and on your personal preferences.

But it is definitely very possible to make an especially strong argument for dropshipping. This is a business model that has huge advantages over selling your own products, over becoming an affiliate marketer and certainly over making money from adverts. It has all the strengths of each and none of the downsides of any of them.

This is a business model that allows you to work from home and earn passive income, while at the same time building a big brand for yourself and selling real physical products.

So why isn’t everyone getting involved in dropshipping already? Why do so many people still choose to make money as an affiliate marketer instead?

The answer is simple: a lot of people still don’t know what dropshipping is, or how to get involved in it. Of course this book is going to change all that and help you to understand what dropshipping is, why it’s so beneficial and how to get started with it.

By the end, you will be running your own dropshipping business – making money by selling products with your branding on and without having to spend any money upfront or take any form of financial risk.
Didn’t I say it was the perfect business model?

Chapter 1: What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is technically a ‘fulfilment model’. Fulfilment in a business term of course means delivery, so in this sense, drophipping is the manner in which orders are delivered to customers.

Normally, selling a physical product means that you need to buy numerous items and then sell them at an inflated price. The way you would normally do this is as a reseller. Here, you would buy wholesale items (inventory bought in bulk at a discounted price) and you would then sell it on at an inflated cost and keep the difference (your profit margin).

The problem with this model is that you need to make a big investment in the stock first of all and then that you have to deliver the products to your customers. This means you’re taking a financial risk by ordering the stock in advance (if you make zero sales, then you’ll have lost out on a lot of cash). At the same time, it means you need to not only pay for the shipping but also handle all the administrative tasks. You’ll need to constantly take stock of your inventory and you’ll need to refund customers for deliveries that don’t arrive.

In short, it’s a lot to take on for an individual hoping to run a business from home in their spare time.

Dropshipping changes this because now the wholesaler is handling delivery and they don’t require you to order in bulk.

So simple: you list the items for sale in your online store just like you normally would and then, when a customer orders them, you pass that sale on directly to the wholesaler. They then send out the product on your behalf and make sure it reaches the buyer and you get the money!

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing

This might sound very similar to affiliate marketing but there are a few key differences. For starters, the amount of money you earn will tend to be higher than affiliate marketing. When you operate as a reseller, the usual pricing method is something called ‘keystone pricing’. Keystone pricing essentially means that the amount you’re selling the product for is 2x the amount you pay the manufacturers. This is one of the most common conventions for this type of business and to all extents and purposes, dropshipping businesses are resellers.

The other big benefit of dropshipping over affiliate marketing is that you don’t have mention the existence of the dropshipping business at all. In other words, the customer never knows that it’s not you who is selling the product. You’re not sending them to another website where they can checkout and sell the product – you’re just selling them the product as though it were your own and forgetting about it. This is fantastic because it means that your business looks much more professional and because you’re no longer sending visitors away from your brand in order to make the sales!

Chapter 2: The Big Advantages of Dropshipping

Hopefully, you can already see some of the big advantages of dropshipping. There are many more besides though too, which we will delve into here…

The Ability to Sell Physical Products

Working as an affiliate marketer will often mean that you have to sell digital products in order to get the big profit margins. While it’s true that you can get 75% and upward from affiliate networks like JVZoo, this will normally mean that you’re limited to selling ebooks and online courses. This can be an effective way to run a business model but it is also sometimes quite restricting. While digital products have many advantages, their appeal is not as broad as it is for physical products.

For example, if you try and sell a digital product to your grandma, you’ll probably have difficulty. The same probably goes for your Mum. And most likely your Dad.

And it also goes for most of your peers in reality! In fact, the main kind of person willing to spend lots of money on an ebook or online course is going to be someone who is already quite familiar with technology. The person most likely to buy from you of all is probably other digital marketers looking for more ways to make money online. And as you’re probably aware, these are a savvy bunch who aren’t easily going to have the wool pulled over their eyes!

That, and they’ve already had people online try to sell them just about every digital product in existence. How many times have you seen ads on Facebook for ‘make money at home’ schemes?
It’s just a very crowded market with a limited potential audience.

Clothes on the other hand are something you can sell to anyone! And then there’s all the rest: stuff like technology, toys or fitness supplements. Suddenly, you can sell things that average people really need and that makes a massive difference!

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Introduction

A product launch is the most powerful way to build a lot of excitement and anticipation for a product, as well as to guarantee a huge explosion of sales where otherwise you might have seen a slow trickle at best. When launching a product, you are creating a buzz and a build-up around your item and that will not only ensure that you gain maximum conversions when you first release your ebook, course or physical product; it will also help you to keep generating more and more income over time. It will help you to recruit affiliates, create fans and strengthen your brand. With a strong start, you can create momentum for your product that ensures it continues to grow as word of mouth spreads and the news travels. Your product launch will become an unstoppable force…

Think about the way that big brands launch vs the way that most internet marketers launch. Many of us will simply quietly release an ebook or a course on our website and hope that sales gravitate toward it. One day a link appears on our website to ‘Buy My Book!’ and pretty much everyone just keeps on web surfing right past it.

Conversely, think about the way that a company like Apple or like Microsoft will launch a product. It normally starts with rumours, leaks and whispers. Apparently Apple has a new product in the works. Apparently it’s going to be the biggest and most exciting product they’ve released yet.

Apparently it’s going to change the world!

Then a date is placed for the announcement. Normally, this will take place at an event run by the company where they’ll be talking on stage. People count down the days while news outlets speculate. And when that date comes, people will tune in to watch all around the world: often going as far as to stay up late to watch their favorite brand do their thing.

The product is then displayed in a stunning, surprising and elegant manner. People still quote Steve Jobs’ famous ‘One more thing…’ That wasn’t just a product launch, it was a moment in history and popular culture.

And during these talks, that’s also when the product launch itself is announced. And that’s when people get even more excited. That’s when the anticipation builds up to fever pitch. They’ve seen it, they’ve heard about it, they’ve been imagining it for years… and now they must have it!

Imagine if you launched like that. Imagine if you could get that kind of buzz going for your product!

What You Will Learn

In this book, that’s exactly what you’re going to learn. Now, of course you’re never going to launch quite as big as Apple. Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, it has a hugely loyal fan base and it has the eyes and ears of the world’s media. If you are a small internet marketer then you just don’t have that same kind of influence or clout.

But that’s not to say that you can’t still learn from the company. And it’s not to say that you can’t still have a big impact when you eventually do launch.

In this ultimate guide to launching a product, you’ll learn how you can make a massive splash whether you have a gigantic brand or you’re one guy working out of a dorm room. You’ll learn how to leverage and make full use of what you do have and you’ll see how to get people talking, how to get people excited and how to grow your audience and potential market as the date of your launch draws closer. If you have a mailing list of 100 people, then a good launch can be the difference between 30% of those readers making a purchase and 85% making a purchase. What’s more, if you do it right, you can easily expect to see that list double or triple in size as you draw closer to your launch.

To do all this, you will learn:

How to choose the perfect product to launch
How to make a product sound desirable before it is even complete
How to use your launch to build authority and influence
How to develop your product during the lead up to your launch
The best tools to use to spread the word and get people talking
How to work with top influencers and marketers to build massively more excitement
How to make sure your launch doesn’t fall flat
How early to start promoting your launch
How to use the launch to run special offers and deals
How to know the optimum time to launch
How to create a perfect product
How to work with products that are not your own…
How to build a sales page so your product keeps growing
How to handle the post-launch phase and use one successful product to launch another

Once you develop this often overlooked skill, you’ll be able to massively increase the number of sales for any product, build more authority and trust and generally take your marketing business to the next level…

Chapter 1: The Power of the Perfect Launch

The launch is often one of the last things that creators and marketers think about when creating their product. They spend ages thinking about the nature of the product itself (rightly so), they think about their basic marketing strategies (again, this is a good idea) and they think about things like pricing, funding etc.

But who spends a considerable amount of time thinking about the launch and the build-up to the launch?

The truth is that many marketers simply aren’t fully aware of just how important this is. All too many marketers think of their launch as being the boring and straightforward bit that comes once they’ve done all of the important parts. But this is a massive mistake…

Why Your Launch is Hugely Important

We already talking in the introduction a little about why it is so important to have a big product launch. To recap, this allows you to build more excitement and buzz around your product, ensuring that the people who visit your website regularly don’t miss the fact that you’ve launched your product and making it seem that much more important and exciting to them.

The simple fact that someone has to wait for a product is enough to ensure that it is going to seem more important, more exciting and more newsworthy. The fact that you’re dedicating so much time to it, demonstrates that this isn’t just another boring ebook or course that you created as a second thought. It becomes an exciting event and that means that people are instantly going to want to get involved. More to the point, this gives your product more time to become desirable in the minds of your audience. As soon as your audience can’t have the product that you’re promoting, you’re going to find that they want it considerably more. As soon as your audience is made to wait, they’re going to build up the product in their minds and make it seem a thousand times more exciting.

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Chapter 6: Making Passive Income From a Blog or Other Content

Those last three chapters have given you an insight to what are some of the most popular methods of generating passive income. Of course many people will also create a blog to help back-up their products and to strengthen their brand but you don’t even need that – just a landing page, an affiliate link and the right advertising campaign.

But what if you don’t want to sell a product at all? Can you make completely passive income from a website or blog alone?

The answer is: yes and no.

Over time, if you build a website up to be big enough and to provide a huge amount of free information, if you can rank at the top of Google and if you can build an active community, then in theory, you can get a massive flow of traffic that will be self-sustaining for several years, even without you having to have any consistent input.

If you then place advertising on this website, then you can potentially earn up to a few hundred dollars daily and profit. But this will take a lot of time and a lot of luck.

Therefore, most of the best ways to make money from a blog are going to involve regular input on your behalf, which will mean writing new blog posts and running a social media page. One way to get around this is to find a write (or several) and pay them to write content for your site. Make sure it is good though.

Another way to get around this is to buy a website that already comes with a big audience and a big community + plenty of content. To get this, you’re going to have to spend a large amount of money but this can be a good investment if you can make that up-front expense. Browse marketing forums and webmaster forums where you’ll be able to find people selling sites and try contact big sites directly. A good strategy is to contact people who have a massive audience but haven’t maximized their earning potential yet with ads and affiliate links – it’s likely that they’re not going to know just how valuable their site is just yet and that means they might accept a good deal.

Another strategy is to use insider information and to target a website that’s in a niche that you think is about to become more in-demand. In other words, if you have a tip-off that a big brand is about to take the world by storm and you can buy a website about that brand before that happens, you can stand to profit in a BIG way!

If you can buy a website that is already getting a lot of visits, then theoretically you can simply add some adverts to it or some affiliate links and start profiting immediately!

Content Marketing and Branding

But that said, there’s nothing wrong with running a blog the old fashioned way. This might involve a little more effort than a truly passive income model but it’s still passive in as much as you aren’t trading time for money. And if it’s a subject you love, then you shouldn’t mind writing about it regularly.

The key to being successful with this kind of business is again to get inside the heads of your visitors and to offer something really different. That means creating a brand that once again will appeal to a very specific type of person rather than trying to appeal to everyone possible. You need to think about branding your site so that people will instantly know what your site is all about and whether it is for them and you need to be very consistent in delivering quality content that is also going to offer something a bit different from the competition.

Don’t think that you can make a lot of money by populating a generic site with generic content like ‘How to Get a Six Pack’ (500 words). If you want to be the next Tim Ferriss, then you need to write about things that sound exciting and that no one has read before. That might mean a new training technique, or it might mean a challenging intellectual expose on a particular aspect of training. It means writing in a way that is entertaining and engaging and it means writing in a way that is in-depth and provides links to useful resources.

Then it means building up that brand visibility on social media, getting follows and getting people to repost and re-share.

It means being consistently brilliant and on-point in other words and having a clear mission statement that lets people feel like they’re part of a ‘movement’ just by following you. Again, it’s about their identity and knowing the psychology of your audience.

But meanwhile, there are also a number of useful growth hacks you can use to get surges of hits for your site. One is to write a post that will be particularly irresistible for a certain audience and then finding a route to market again – in this case that might perhaps mean a community on Google Plus or Facebook. Post there and if you’re fortunate, this can lead to hundreds of thousands of hits overnight!

Better yet is ‘influencer marketing’. This means finding a big influencer in the niche and getting them to promote your site. Of course that means you need to offer something else in return, whether that means you also link to them or it means that you provide them with free content. To be successful with this, the best strategy is to start with those smaller influencers that are around your level and then to slowly ‘climb the ladder’. Each time you get a shout-out from one of them, you’ll gain more new followers and you’ll be able to approach someone even bigger next time!

The best way to get influencer marketing and make big money from a blog quickly? Network in person with someone who happens to own a massive website. It’s not easy but it is possible!

More Strategies for Earning Passive Income From a Website

There are other ways you can earn even more truly passive income from a website too if you so wish. One is to use a subscription model. There are plenty of WordPress plugins that will allow you to do this easily and completely for free and if you content is compelling enough, you might find people are willing to sign up – creating a recurring income that is much more stable and reliable than you may get from ads! Even donations can work as a model! Or what about having a ‘pay wall’ for your very best content? This works particularly well for those ‘static websites’ that act like large repositories for information – and that kind of business model is most effective when you target a niche that relies on lots of information. Targeting specific careers and industries can work very well for example, as can providing a resource for people studying a particular topic!

Another option is to create a ‘SAS’ or ‘Software As a Service’. This might mean making an online calculator, a tool that organizes people by providing to-do lists, a CMS or a dating website. Then you charge for membership. This will require a little coding skill but you can either handle that yourself, or outsource it to a coder through a site like UpWork or Elance, as long as you have the good idea to
start with. (Quick-but-very-important-tip: not every idea needs to be ‘unique’ to be very profitable! Sometimes it’s best to copy what is working for someone else!)

Chapter 7: Service Arbitrage

The problem with a lot of the ideas that we’ve gone over so far, is that they may seem somewhat abstract or even quite confusing. If you’re someone who has never created a website and who would never read a PDF on their computer, then you might struggle to get into the correct mindset of someone who would buy these kinds of products. Therefore, you might struggle to make a business like this work.
So how about we simplify things for a moment and go back to basics: selling a service.

The good news is that there are a number of ways you can make money from selling a service and turn that into a passive source of income. One example was to create the ‘SAS’ or ‘Software As Service’, which basically means automating a service you provide. The best example of this comes from Matt Mullenweg, best known as the creator of WordPress. WordPress is a brilliant example of a service being ‘productised’ where Matt actually took his website creation business and turned it into a simple tool that would cut out the middle man. There were countless ways that WordPress could have been monetized but one option would simply be to charge people to create the site. Similarly, you could easily charge someone for a piece of software that might fix broken video files, or you could charge them to use a piece of software that would churn out images that could be used as stock photos. Another great example of this is ‘CopyScape’. CopyScape provides a service by checking to see if there are any duplicate copies of content on the web. This is something that might previously have been handled manually but with CopyScape, it’s possible to check countless articles for a few cents.

But if you’re not into making software, then this might still seem like a business model that is out of reach. Fortunately, we have another trick up our sleeves…

Reselling Services

Service arbitrage literally means that you are buying something and then selling it on for more. Arbitrage normally refers to the process of buying and selling securities or currency and selling them off simultaneously in different markets for a profit.

Doing this with services is simple. You find someone who is looking to hire a writer or a web designer for $30 an hour. Then you find a service that provides writing and web design for $20 an hour. Then you simply pass the order on from the client, straight to the service provider! This is another example of a near-perfect business model because all you have actually had to do is to refer an email that you received from the client on to the creator. This will take you barely any time, while at the same time allowing you to make a healthy profit!

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The idea of tDCS is not to cause your brain cells to fire, as there is not enough electricity being delivered to the brain for that. Instead, it is simply to potentiate them, to increase the amount of BDNF and to encourage plasticity. This has been demonstrated to be effective in countless studies and there are again no proven side effects. Pads are placed in different arrangements around the head which are known as ‘montages’ and these are designed to ensure that specific brain areas get the majority of the current. This then changes the effect of the tDCS – some montages make people more alert and focussed while others can boost the mood or improve sleep. What’s particularly interesting is that the effects seem to last about 30 minutes following use.

Just as with stronger nootropics though, it’s important to exercise a little common sense here and to realize that there’s no such thing as a ‘biological free lunch’. Apart from anything else, it’s very hard to know precisely the area of the brain that you’re stimulating just by looking at a drawing of the scalp! And if you can increase learning in one area of the brain, you could theoretically accidentally cause learning in other parts of the brain too that would be less desirable. Proceed with extreme caution then!

But with all that said, this is definitely an interesting option and especially when you consider a) that there is a huge amount of evidence suggesting that this is a safe way to get a considerable brain boost and b) that there are many commercial products now available that use this technology – and upcoming. The ‘foc.us’ headset for instance is a product that is designed to boost performance in computer games that can already be purchased online!

8 Lifestyle and Understanding the Rhythms of Your Brain

The right nutrition can make a huge difference to your brain power then and so too can dabbling in nootropics and even tDCS as long as you’re careful with it.

Then there’s the importance of using ‘natural’ brain training by stimulating yourself with lots of new experiences and challenges.

But despite all this, there is still one alternative method that is far more effective when it comes to giving you an immediate boost in your cognitive function, productivity and pretty much every aspect of your brain power.

And that is to sleep more.

If you are not getting the best night’s sleep possible, then you are not performing at your best and it’s that simple. This is because you’re still going to have a build up of adenosine in your brain slowing you down and because your brain actually strengthens connections formed throughout the day during the night. It’s also while you sleep that you replenish many of your neurotransmitters and in short, this is an absolutely crucial process for putting you back on top of your mental game. Skip it and you can expect to feel sluggish, slow, forgetful and quite possibly even depressed.

Most people overlook this absolutely crucial factor though and will continue to abuse their sleep – trying to work longer hours or wake up earlier. In the long run, this will be guaranteed to damage your productivity and your brain power… so get to sleep.

Tips for Sleeping Better

If you want to improve your sleep and thereby wake up refreshed and better able to focus on what you’re doing, then follow these tips…

Have a Hot Bath

Having a hot bath right before bed is a fantastic way to encourage sleep. This will help to relax your muscles which makes it a lot easier to sleep. Furthermore though, it will also help you to produce more sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters and even to better regulate your temperature throughout the night which also improves your ability to nap.

Have a Regular Sleep Time

Another important tip is to go to bed at the same time every night. Our bodies love routine because they are based largely on rhythms. Our sleep rhythm is called the ‘circadian rhythm’ and is based not only on what time we wake up/go to bed but also on external cues such as the sun and the weather.

If you go to bed at the same time every day, your body will start to find its natural rhythm so that it’s ready to sleep when you are and not before.

Use a Daylight Lamp

You can also help this process by giving yourself a ‘daylight lamp’. This is a light that is designed to mimic natural sunlight by producing light with a very similar wavelength. What’s more, is that a daylight lamp can be set to come on gradually in the morning to mimic the rising sun. Rather than being rudely ‘startled’ awake, you’ll instead be gradually nudged away by light – as you would have been during your evolution!

Create the Best Environment

This is also why it’s so important to have thick curtains. If light comes in from outside, it can reach your brain via the thinner parts of your skull and trigger the release of cortisol to wake you up. But if you keep those curtains opaque then you’ll only have the light you set to tell your body when to wake up.

Other important tips are to create a quite space to sleep in and to make sure that your bed is as comfortable as possible.

Have a Cool Down Period

Also important is to have a ‘cool down’ period. This is a period of time during which you’re going to avoid anything that might stimulate you. That means you’re avoiding all forms of stress but also anything that just wakes you up. So no phones, no computer games and no bright lights. The best way to do this is to read something under a dim light. Reading focusses your inner monologue and thereby prevents your mind from wandering to stressful things. Meanwhile, concentrating on the text will make your eyes heavy which also makes it easier to drift off (and harder not to!).

Routines and Rhythms for Your Brain

The reason this cool down period is so important is because it puts you in a relaxed state ready for bed. This means that you’ll have more inhibitory neurotransmitters and fewer excitatory ones.
And this is an important concept to understand because ultimately, both your brain and your body are only ever in one of two states: excited or inhibited. You are always either catabolic or anabolic.
Throughout the day, we switch from being ready for bed and sleepy and alert and ready to go. When it gets dark and we’re tired at the end of the day, we have cues from the darkness, from the adenosine build-up in our brain and even from dinner (which causes a release of sugar and serotonin/melatonin in the brain). Together, all this slows our heartrate and breathing, reduces brain activity and puts us in a creative and chilled mental state.

In the morning though, bright light causes a flood of cortisol and nitric oxide in the brain which ‘boots us up’. Heading to work causes an influx of noise and bright lights to find their way into our brain and stimulate even more adrenaline/norepinephrine to wake us up further. Then comes the coffee for some more cortisol and dopamine and the work for tons of each.

And it’s by switching between these two states that the brain is generally able to always perform the right job for the task at hand.

The problem is that we’re always sending the wrong signals or trying to force ourselves to stay in one state too long. That’s what happens when we play loud video games right before bed, or when we try and force ourselves to work hard at 4pm after we’ve just eaten.

A big part of performing our best is to understand the importance of letting our brain go through its natural rhythms and trying to work with it to get the most from it.

And also important is to try and avoid excess stress. Because when you get too stressed – whether that is caused by physiological or psychological factors – this actually causes us to become so wired and focussed that our prefrontal cortex entirely shuts down. This is a state called ‘temporo-hypofrontality’. While this can be a good thing sometimes during sports, it’s actually the last thing you want during a conversation or when you’re trying to be creative!

CBT teaches us a lot of techniques we can use in order to overcome stress and put ourselves into the correct mental state for the job. These include visualizations techniques as well as challenging thoughts that might not be particularly effective. Meditation is also an incredibly useful tool to this end that you can use to address stress and put yourself in a much calmer and more relaxed state of mind as and when you need to.

The Critical Importance of Exercise

And finally, it is absolutely essential that you get lots of exercise if you want to get the most out of your brain. Remember, your brain evolved to help you adapt and survive in the environment via your physical interactions with it. The vast majority of your brain is dedicated to moving your body, so if you want to encourage plasticity then there are few things than learning a new dance or martial art.

What’s more though, is that exercise boosts your memory according to studies and stimulates the production of countless crucial neurotransmitters and hormones. Even beyond this, exercise is important to improve your circulation so that you might get more oxygen to your brain.

9 Conclusion

Congratulations on making it to the end! We covered a lot of complicated topics there and really did dive in deep with regards to the workings of the brain and how to get the most from it. But if you have made it to this point, then great news is that you now have a much better idea of how the brain works than about 99% of the population.

And hopefully you can also now see the best ways to improve your brain power through training, through diet and through your lifestyle.

Get a nutritious diet, exercise, expose yourself to novel things, learn new mental skills that you can use for thinking, play video games, get more sleep and occasionally consider using nootropics when you really need a boost.