Joe is one of the trainers from the movie, The Secret and has been featured on Larry King. Be ready for an amazing interview.
Joe is the author of way to many books to list here but I will tell you a little secret. Joe was once homeless and sleeping on the steps of the Houston post office! Wait until you read about how he now has helped several people “attract” a new car. Truly amazing!
David: Alright Joe, thanks for taking my call and doing the interview. I’m really excited about letting people hear your story because I would call it like a kind of “rags to riches” type story. When you were younger, you had so many different types of jobs like a ditch digger, so let’s start out with just like your background, for the people who are not on your list. Maybe give them some insight like where you come from, before the Internet.
Joe: Okay. Well, I’ll try and give an abbreviated form of that. I was born and raised in Ohio. I decided when I was a teenager that I wanted to be an author, but I of course was not an overnight success. I dealt with a whole lot of rejection, a whole lot of persistence, a whole lot of self-education, and always had to take a lot of jobs that I didn’t particularly like, while growing up in Ohio. My brother had been on the railroad all of his life, and he put all his family on the railroad, and when I was five years old, he was doing labor on the railroad. Building railroad tracks and maintaining them.
I did that every weekend, virtually every weekend, and every summer, growing up, going through school, and going through college, basically hating almost all of it, hating just about every moment of it.
At the same time, I was always focused on being an author. I wanted to make a difference with my writing. I wanted to help people, inspire people. I had dreams of writing some lighthearted type of work and novels. Then, one thing led to another, mostly unemployment up in Ohio, caused me to move around a bit, and I ended up in Texas, which were very hard years.
When I was first in Dallas, I was actually homeless for a while. I still remember sleeping on the steps of a post office. I don’t know which one at this point, but waiting for what I hoped would be checks. Then, I migrated to Houston where I was in poverty for many, many years, a long series of struggles. I had a poverty mindset; it was very difficult for me to break from it. I was pretty much on my own until I met somebody and got married, and then we just struggled together, which was a long time. I was a taxi driver, which I absolutely hated. I remember crying because I was so frustrated by my life and my experiences.
I was a reporter. I was a laborer. I was a temporary worker who had worked for Manpower and some of the agencies that get you these simple jobs. I ended up being hired by Exxon, in their oil and gas department, because I was sent there one time as a Temp worker, and they liked me, and they kept me on for a long time. Also, I stayed there for a long time, like five years, while writing, while beginning to speak a little bit about writing.
During that time, I got my first book published called “Zen and the Art of Writing.” A great learning experience because I did not know what marketing was, I’m not sure I knew what copywriting was, but I quickly learned that publishers did not know how to publish books. They know how to print books. I quickly became a student of copywriting and marketing and publicity, and I used it for myself. I was my own first client.
As my book became successful, I even had a letter from the publisher saying, I sold more books than anybody else. I started to hear from other people who were authors, and would-be authors, and speakers, and entrepreneurs who wanted to write, and they said, “How are you doing this?” I would explain it to them.
At that point, I was doing it free because I was just sharing. Somebody said, “You know, you can go into business doing this. You can charge an hourly rate.” So, I started charging like $25 an hour to give people consultations on how they can do marketing like I was doing marketing. Of course, I laugh now because my hourly rate is through the roof. People can see it at www.mrfire.com, under the “Hire Joe” section on the left.
So I started to do fairly well, nothing to brag about, but I got my first book out, I started to do consulting, I was still working for Exxon. I was still giving night classes and weekend classes for Leisure Learning, which is an adult education facility, a continued learning experience. I continued to do that, and I did pretty well, started to get my name known in Houston, which is where I was living. Still struggled, but was out of poverty, and certainly wasn’t homeless, but wasn’t in the best home.
It was really the Internet that blew everything up in the most positive way. I actually began as an Internet skeptic. I didn’t think you could make money on the Internet. Everybody was bragging about it in the early mid-90s. A lot of people were spamming, but we didn’t call it spam, and it was just mass e-mailing, and it was a fun thing to do, and some people would hit rich, and some people just didn’t make a dime.
Then, I started to slowly get on the Internet. I started to make relationships, and what I was doing in Houston with my writing and with my speaking, I would put online, which meant the world had the capacity to see it. I started to get hired from people in countries I’d never heard of before like Sylvania and Sylvania, that’s a country?” Yeah, it is a country, and there were other ones like that I didn’t know existed. So, the Internet was really taking me to a new level. It wasn’t until my first eBook came out that things really began to become much more lucrative. I can’t remember the exact date, but that would have been eight years, nine years ago, somewhere in there.
David: Okay.
Joe: Mark Joyner haunted me for two years. He was a fan of my work. He had listened to my program, the power about marketing, and my early books, I wrote one of the first books on Internet marketing called “Cyber Writing.” It’s out of print now, and he kept writing to me, saying, “Give me something I can turn into an eBook, anything.” I thought, “eBooks? Who’s going to read an eBook?” I love books, but I want to see the book. I don’t want an invisible book, a text file.
Finally to shut him up, I gave him one of my old books that I used to sell back in Houston, called “Hypnotic Writing.” He put up a website for it. He wrote a sales letter for it. I read the sales letter, and it was so good, I wanted to buy my own book. He put it up for sale for $30 or $29.95. Overnight, there were about 600 sales for that book. Now, you’ve got to remember that 600 times $29.95 with no printing costs, no shipping, no postage, no warehousing, no fulfillment in any way shape or form, there was almost pure profit.
Boy, I tasted blood. I wrote back, “Mark, what else do you want?” Then, I ended up writing “Advanced Hypnotic Writing,” about excelling stories, the Hypnotic Writing (swipe file); it became a whole brand. Afterward, I had numerous eBooks out there. I’ve lost count of my regularly published books as well as my eBooks. So, that began a turning point experience by just selling digital information. From there, it’s gone up, I created one of the first eClasses because I wanted a BMW sports car, a Z3.
David: Talk about that because that was awesome, I just got through reading the article again. I bet you that I’ve read it ten times it’s so amazing, but yeah, I want people to hear this.
Joe: Well, it’s an interesting story because I don’t really pursue money, I pursue dreams. I pursue my passion. As a result, I often receive money, and this is one of the secrets to making money anywhere, is you don’t pursue money itself, you pursue your passion, whatever is pumping through your veins that says, “This is exciting.”
Well, I never was a car guy, but one day, I saw this car being delivered somewhere. It was a BMW Z3, the original James Bond sports car. I fell in love with the car. I went, “Oh my God, that thing is just beautiful!” I had a lust for this hunk of metal, so I set an intention, which I talk about in my book “The Attractor Factor.” I said, “I want to get that car or one like it. “I knew what the color was. But, I wanted to generate the money from some surprising, unexpected way. I didn’t want to pull it from current savings or from the money I was currently making, I just set the bar a little high for myself.
Because I wanted to create some new way to bring that car into my life, I started to play with possibilities, there was a contest someplace in front of a store where you could win a Z3, and I filled it out, and of course, I didn’t win it, but I was doing everything that I could think of to manifest this car.
Then, I had the idea to do a seminar near Austin, Texas. I said, “Well, I’ll do a seminar in Austin. I’ll rent a hotel room. I’ll invite people to come.” I had an unpublished book at that time called “Spiritual Marketing.” I would promote it to my list, which was very small at that time, it was like 500, 600, 700 names, which is relatively small, and I thought, “I’ll just do a seminar, and I’ll charge enough, and I’ll raise enough money, and I’ll buy the car.”
Well, I also talked myself out of it. I thought, “Oh, doing a seminar’s a lot of work. I rent the hotel room and guarantee the money. Then, I have to promote it, and there’s printing costs, and there’s postage costs. Deal with all these people, I get up and speak and get some other people to come.” I just thought, “This is too much work, this isn’t the way I want do it.” So, I shelled that idea.
Because I was online so much, I was living and breathing e-mail, so I thought, “I wonder if people would sign up for a seminar, much like the one I was going to do live, but by e-mail only?” It was a pretty wild idea at the time, now this was different from an autoresponder, which even then was relatively new, a lot of people didn’t understand. I just divide up my materials using the unpublished book I had, there were five chapters to it, I’d turn them into five lessons. I’d send them out by email, so once a week. They would get a lesson by email. I would put homework on it, and if they did their homework, I would review it and give them feedback.
It was a seminar by e-mail. Now, all of this was bizarre, I thought, “Naw, it’s not going to work,” but that’s the beauty of the Internet, you can try anything. I remember, “Okay,” I remember thinking, “How do I charge for this?” Again, I’m making all of this up, which is an important lesson. I was making all of this up. I thought, “Okay, well the car, the Z3 probably costs $35,000 to $40,000, if I get it fully-loaded, brand new, everything I wanted on it. Also, I didn’t want a whole lot of students because I thought, “Well, if these people actually do their homework and return it to me. I’ll be answering all these e-mails!” So, I said, “Well I only want like 15, 16 people.” Which then, I’d have to charge like $2000 each.
So, I wrestled with that a little bit, and I thought, “You know, again. I don’t know what’s going to work. I don’t know if these people are going do it.” I wrote a sales letter. I remember sitting in front of my computer with my finger over the Send key, and I thought, “Jeez, I’m going to send out this note telling people I’m going to send them five emails, and they’ve got to pay me $2000.”
David: No cost, hardly at all. I mean, there’s no cost, really.
Joe: There was no cost at all, but it was like a preposterous idea, and I thought, “These people could write angry messages. They might all unsubscribe from my list. They might be really into the flaming, ‘destroy Joe’ mentality, who am I to charge $2000 to send five e-mails out?” But, I thought, “What if it works? What if it works?” With that question in mind, I hit send.
Well, overnight, again, this is overnight, this is the beauty of the Internet, most things are instantaneous. You find out if something’s not going to work quickly, and you find out if something is going to work quickly, the beauty of it, it’s just the beauty of it—overnight, 16 people said they were going to pay me that much money. 15 of them paid me almost instantly, one ended up backing out at the last minute. I ended up raising all the money I needed, bought the car, I still have it, it’s downstairs in the garage.
It’s still beautiful like a trophy because it’s such a beautiful car. Now, they don’t make the Z3 anymore, it’s even a collectible car. I did it all from an eClass, which was a preposterous, wild idea to send five e-mails with homework, and charge people $1500 to $2000 each for that experience.
David: For the people not totally involved in Internet marketing, it’s still to this day, as much as there’s so much about Internet marketing, having an eClass or eCourse is still fairly like obscure.
Joe: Most people talk themselves out of doing the very things that could work for them. They think, “Oh, the eClasses have been done before, or Internet marketing has been done before, or the market is saturated.” It’s ridiculous. I wrote a book called “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute.” They’re born every second. There are millions of people who don’t even know what the Internet is yet that are not online yet, and even the ones who are online are not saturated in any way, shape, or form.
David: No.
Joe: The Internet has not hit the breaking point in any way, shape, or form. It is still new. There are so many things that are still untried. I marvel at the people who are coming up with brilliant ideas and raking in money. One of my favorite stories that I’ve told at a couple recent talks is about the college student over in England who put up a blank website. The website had nothing on it, and said, “I’m selling pixel ads on this website.”
David: Yes, yep.
Joe: His friends bought ads for, I think it was $1 a pixel. You can’t even see a $1 pixel, so you have to buy at least $100 worth of pixels on a blank website. So he raised $300 or $400, he sent out a news release, which caused a lot of traffic to go and see, “What in the world was he doing? He’s selling ad space on it for $1 a pixel that you can’t see unless you buy a hundred of them?” Well, it was such a brilliant idea even I bought $100 worth of pixel ads on his website. The last I heard, he made over one million dollars selling space on a blank website, and he did the major “cherry on top,” the last ad space on that website, he put on eBay, and I think it sold for $38,000.
David: $38,000?
Joe: This is happening all the time, and it’s happening from nobodies. Over in England, the college student who was broke, who was thinking, “How do I raise money for tuition?” There are so many stories. Another one that I can tell you is Pat O’Brian, a struggling blues musician outside of Austin, Texas. He came to my first ever Spiritual Marketing Super Summit event in Austin a couple of years ago, which was his introduction to Internet marketing. He went in as a skeptic. He went into see what he could learn, and thought, “This is kind of strange, but maybe I can make a difference.” He found out that it was very easy to make money online. He could create an eBook. He could create digital music. He could sell all kinds of stuff. Within a year, he came out with 40 products.
David: 40 products?
Joe: 40 products. He was doing it because he would get an idea, and he would act on it instantly. He wouldn’t talk himself out of it. Now, keep in mind, this guy’s not nothing, he’s got no list, no experience, not a single name on a mailing list. How he’s starting as an idea for something called the “Think and Grow Rich Workbook,” now Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” has been a classic, it’s been around since the 1930s, millions of copies have been sold. Millionaires have been made from the book.
Pat read it, liked the book, and said, “You know what that book’s kind of dated, what we need is a short version of it, maybe something like a workbook.” Well a workbook’s real easy to do, it’s basically a lot of blank pages, you say, “Here’s what happened in Chapter 1,” then ask a bunch of questions that people have to answer in their workbook. So, he created a workbook, and he wanted to sell it, and came to me to see if I would help sell it. I said, “Well, you know what, you don’t have a list right now, why don’t you give it away in exchange for e-mail addresses?”
David: Hmm…
Joe: He was able to build a mailing list from nothing to almost 10,000 names by putting up a website that said, “Think and Grow Rich Workbook, yours free, all I ask is your name and e-mail address.” I sent people because I thought it was a great idea. People go there and they say, “Yeah, here’s my e-mail address, give me the book.” Well, he built a mailing list. From there, whenever he comes up with a product, he tells his list. Well, in May, he is going to do his first ever seminar in Austin.
Now, you’ve got to remember, this is another newbie, this is somebody that didn’t understand the Internet, barely knew how to get around with e-mail, now has a lot of websites, 40 products, a mailing list, and is doing his own seminar, and some people look at him as a kind of guru in the Internet marketing business. He started with nothing!
David: Well, I’ll tell you what, let’s do this. Okay, I want to get into your seven-day eBook, and then your article that you wrote about personal experiences. Before that, I want you to talk about “The Attractor Factor.” These people had intent, the college student, you did, Pat O’Brian, all these people. So, talk about that, and give some of these stories. Like Bill Hibler, talk about some of these stories, I mean these average people and talk about “The Attractor Factor” and where to get it.
Joe: Well, thank you. “The Attractor Factor” is one of my recent, most well received books. The subtitle is “Five easy steps for creating wealth or anything else from the inside out.” Now, this is very powerful because the five steps are getting you to focus on what you want, and getting yourself clear within yourself, so you can attract it and receive it. Now, a lot of people say, “Yeah, I’m clear, I want money.” Or, “I’m clear, I want to make money on the Internet,” and that’s not quite enough when it comes to your intention.
It’s much more powerful to declare exactly what you want, or exactly how much you want, or exactly what you want it for. Write down the details. When I said that I wanted that BMW Z3, I knew exactly what model. I knew exactly what color I wanted, and I knew how I wanted it. I wanted the money to come from an unexpected source, something I would end up creating. So knowing your intention is profound, and some people might get to that point. But, something else that I think is a missing secret in the world, and I talk about it in “The Attractor Factor.” You have to get clear within yourself, in order to have, do, or be the thing you say is your intention. Now, getting clear means, all of that self-sabotage, the doubt causing you to procrastinate and about how you talk yourself out of taking action.
There are people listening right now saying, “Yeah, that was good for Joe and good for Dave, or good for the college student, but it won’t work for me.” That’s talking yourself out of the very thing that could work for you. So, getting clear means, getting clear within yourself, of all of that self-sabotage type material.
Now, I have seen, by-God, miracles happen when people do get clear. They know what they want. They’re clear about receiving it. They take action for it, and they’re not attached to what happens. There’s a woman who called me one day from, I think she’s in Canada, and she told me I had to sit down. She was so excited. She was just about out of breath. She had read “The Attractor Factor,” and she wanted to earn something like $50,000. She wanted the $50,000 to pay off her debts, and to take care of her kids, etc. She also knew that there was no way on Earth that she could get that much money. That’s what was in her head.
But she did her clearing, so she thought, “Well, maybe there is a way. My ego can’t see what the way is, but the universe might be able to see what the way is. So, let’s not limit ourselves.” So, she had the intention, the very next day, she got a phone call from a child support office that said, “Are you sitting down?” and they told her that her husband, who had been on hiding for like, 10 years, owed her all kind of back support, wasn’t paying anything, wasn’t responding to e-mails or searches for him—he showed up. He owed her around $50,000. He had already written a check for like $35,000 that was waiting for her. He was good for the rest of it.
She got her money from a source that she never thought that she would get it. So, you never know what’s going to happen.
There are so many people that tell me that they’ve found the love of their life, or they healed something, or they found the money that they needed, or they created a product and it was a turning point for them, there’s lots of stories in the book itself: “The Attractor Factor.” It’s actually the third chapter is nothing but stories of people who have used this and manifested stuff.
A while back, I used “The Attractor Factor” for something specific, and I created a website called www.attractanewcar.com. What I did there was, I thought, “Let me show people how powerful “The Attractor Factor” method works: “A lot of people aren’t real clear about what they want, and I thought, “Well, if you can attract a new car, that’s pretty concrete.” You look in your driveway one day, and you don’t have a new car, and you look in there another day and there is a new car, well you just proved to yourself “The Attractor Factor” works. So, I put together a four week tele-seminar. I didn’t charge anything for it.
Now, there’s a lesson here, because I came up with the idea, and I decided to give it away. I believe in what I call Karmic marketing, you give now and you receive later. So, I put together this “Attract a New Car site.” I announced it; I said you can attend it for free, no charge to be on the call, but of course there’ll be a limited amount of people that could be on the calls because I didn’t have a giant phone line for it. I was going to record the calls, and I would sell them later. That’s how I would make money. I was guaranteed an audience by doing this.
David: Yes.
Joe: People that got on the call were fantastic. Not only did a lot of them end up getting brand new cars, including Pat O’Brian, who was very reluctant to get a new car, he was driving a beat up old pickup truck that he loved because he felt indestructible in it. So, he had to do his clearing within himself to find out, “Oh, he did deserve a new car. He can afford a new car that there’d always be more money coming in.” We don’t live in a limited universe. We live in an abundant universe. He had to do all that clearing. He ended up getting a new car. Actually, he ended up getting two new cars. He got a Mercedes, and then he ended up getting a BMW Z3, maybe because he was inspired by seeing mine, but he’s got a beautiful car, which he absolutely loves.
Another thing that happened during that whole experience, beside a lot of people attracting new cars, is I attracted a new car. I wasn’t even trying to. I had my BMW Z3, and I live at home on my estate, work from home on the Internet. I don’t need to go that many places. I’ve got UPS, FedEx coming here every day, so deliveries are made to me. But I was going through the experience of the Attract a New Car, working the five steps in “The Attractor Factor” process, and I started to play with: “Well, if I wanted a new car, what kind of car would I want?” , which began the whole playful process, which led to me discovering this BMW 645CI, which is a luxury sports car. I went looking at them and fell in love with it. I wanted a particular color that they didn’t have here, but they would make for me in Germany at the BMW plant.
Well, I ended up signing on the dotted line, and then I thought, “Well, this is a $90,000 car. How am I going to manifest this to come out of thin air?” Well, remember I was doing the whole Attract a New Car series, I did it for free. I let anybody go on it. I recorded all the call. I transcribed all the calls, and I put the website up. So when I announced that you could now buy the audio, you could now buy the transcripts; I made almost $90,000 almost instantly. Enough to pay for the brand new BMW 645CI.
David: All using your five-step formula?
Joe: All using the formula. Not talking myself out of anything. It’s so easy to do that, and this is one of the lessons. I want people to take away from this call, is that when you have an idea for something, jump. Jump on it! Ride the energy that’s right there in the birth of that idea because that’s exhilarating: money likes speed.
David: Yes.
Joe: Money likes speed. So, if you have an idea, work on it right now because money will be attracted to you. That idea is coming to you from your connection to the Universe, if I can sound a little metaphysical or spiritual for a second, and that connection is connected to the good that will come your way. But, you’ve got to act on it! If you plug that hole, the energy’s gushing through, coming to you, and you put your thumb in it and say, “I’m not going do it,” you’re blocking the flow of wealth that’s also trying to come to you. So when you get ideas, act now.
David: Joe, like, you’re so right on what you’re saying. I’ve been on the Web for several years now, and I didn’t do anything. I was terrified to build a website. I didn’t know HTML. Then now, I didn’t realize it was so simple, and I waited that literally stopped for two years. If anyone knows anything about HTML, it’s very, very simple that stopped me for two years. Even this book, the book that I’m about to put out that you’re included in. I should have done this two years ago. I should have done it two years ago, for it was sitting there. I had the contacts.
Joe: I should have done the eBooks two years before I did them. I told Mark Joyner, “no” for two years, which was money I could earned for two years. So, that’s the negative way of looking at it. The positive way of looking at it: I did finally come out with the eBooks. You did finally write the HTML. You did finally start doing these calls. You are coming out with your books. So, that’s the whole point.
David: Yes.
Joe: We didn’t do it before, but we’re doing it now. The people listening may not have done something before, that’s fine, you learn from it. Now, take action. Don’t talk yourself anymore, don’t talk yourself out of it anymore.
David: It’s so true. My goal of this book, as far as on my end, is paying off student loans. But, I told you even when I wanted you to do this interview, I want this book. I don’t want this book to sit on the shelf with somebody. I want someone to pick up, and pick one of the nine or ten stories that go in this book, and say, “I’m going to do it. I can do this.”
Joe: There are people making money online that are selling socks or selling herbs, selling magic tricks, etc. I read a book called “505 Weirdest Online Stores” and “The 505 Weirdest Online Stores.” It’s funny and weird, but you’ll find little things in there like, there’s somebody who is selling golf cart tires, which is a niche. Now, he’s not selling golf clubs. He’s not selling golf carts. He’s only selling the tires to golf carts. Niche marketing is really a great way to make a lot of money.
You find a market that needs something, and it could be really small. It can be like a tire for a golf cart, and if you can become the supplier to it, you can make money.
People listening probably have a hobby or a passion, or an interest, or maybe it’s a past experience, or past education that they can turn into an online business. I just hope nobody overlooks it because it’s too often to take our own expertise for granted.
David: Yes, right before we get into one more thing about “The Attractor Factor,” you were the first person or first author to knock Harry Potter off the list.
Joe: Oh, right! I used marketing for that, and it was all Internet-driven. But it was last April, the latest Harry Potter book at that time had not been released, it was all through pre-orders an #1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and just about everywhere else. I was releasing “The Attractor Factor” in early April while Harry Potter was #1, and the Pope had just died. I can get on a Best Seller List, but I’m certainly not going to get #1. I’ll try for it, and this is important, I still tried for it.
The very first day of the book’s release, April 5th, and I told my list. I told other lists. I had a radio show, an interview, and other promotions and the book went to #1. It sold out in 24 hours! My publisher called me up and did the most ridiculous thing. They asked me if I could turn off my marketing, it was working so well they were completely sold out of books.
David: The publisher?! Oh, man.
Joe: The publisher called me. I laughed, and said, “Man, you guys don’t know what it’s like to live in the streets. We’re not stopping the marketing, when you’ve got something that works—you keep going. Go print more books.”
David: That’s awesome. Well, cool. Now, let’s get into what you were just touching about. You wrote an article about, like, turning your personal experiences into an eBook. Can you tell me about that and then give me some examples. You’ve got several friends that are not even remotely close into the Internet marketing niche, but they took their personal experiences and stuff. Can you just elaborate on that article?
Joe: Well, I don’t have the article for today. I’ve written so many articles, and I invite people to go to www.mrfire.com, where they can read dozens of them all free. The story that comes to mind that’s probably in there is of a young woman from Austin, Texas, who came to visit us one day. She was new to the Internet. She knew how to do email, but she didn’t know how to do the website. Actually, she wasn’t even sure people could make money online. She wasn’t even sure I was really doing it, that’s how skeptical she was. But yet, she came to our estate. I visited with her.
Narissa and I talked to her. She asked me a lot of questions. Well, I took her under my wing so-to-speak, never charged her, this is my Karmic marketing. I kind of coached her, and I asked her what she was interested in doing, and she would talk about food, and she’d talk about dieting, and she’d talk about fitness, which was all-interesting. Then, along the way, she said she also taught herself how to play the guitar. I said, “Well, tell me a little bit about that.” She said, well, she taught herself how to play basic guitar in two days. I thought, “Oh man. That’s an eBook.” I said, “Can you write that down in a way that you could teach your method to others?” She drug her feet because she was kind of talking herself out of it. But I was there saying, “Come on, do it, I want to see the outline. I want to see what we can do.”
Well, she ended up writing this book on, how to play the guitar in only two days. Then she wrote a website on how to do it, and then she ended up putting the website up and selling the eBook through ClickBank. I don’t remember how much money she made right away, it wasn’t a tremendous amount, but she was making money when the woman was broke. This was the real icing on the cake, somebody who came across her eBook, who knows about Internet marketing, said, “I would like to buy your eBook outright, so I can sell it myself.” He gave her $10,000.
David: $10,000?
Joe: Now, this is the woman who was actually like a student in college, and she was broke, and she was still getting money from her parents because she was almost starving. She comes up with an eBook when doesn’t even think eBooks will sell, she’s not sure anybody will make money online. She makes some money selling it, and then somebody says, “I’ll give you $10,000 to let me take your eBook.” She thought about it for a while. She needed the money, so she sold her eBook for $10,000.
She still sells her eBook, but she’s an affiliate for her own eBook. So, she can still make money selling it, and she sees that she’s got 10 grand in the bank. Now, this is from nothing to $10,000.
David: What I want people to understand: it doesn’t take a lot of money to do this, to put up a website, to convert something to PDF files.
Joe: I’m glad you said, it took her nothing because she was already broke. The putting up the website, she either found software to help her, or she found some kind of free service online that would just change whatever she was writing into HTML. Her website was nothing much, but basically a sales letter with a picture of her holding her guitar. She’s an attractive woman, so it’s kind of an attractive picture.
As a sales letter, she used my Hypotonic Writing message: she wrote her own sales letter for it. Putting it on ClickBank, it costs $50 to open an account at ClickBank. From there on out, you only pay when you make a sale, which ClickBank deducts from your sale. So, it’s all brainless, and ClickBank sends you a check every two weeks. I love ClickBank, so many products are sold through ClickBank. I get numerous checks every two weeks from ClickBank. I look forward to it. It’s all passive income.
Once you put your product up, and you start promoting it, then you just keep promoting it. But for the most part, everything that comes in is residual money. Based on, this is the whole point, it was based on her personal experience that she was discounting.
David: Yes. Yep.
Joe: I was saying, “I learned how to play the guitar, but who cares about that? People can learn how to play the guitar from other books.” That’s not the point. She had her own method! She taught herself, and she created an eBook. People will often talk themselves out of doing an eBook saying, “Well, there’s already a fitness book, or there’s already a book on guitar-playing,” and I’ll say, “Don’t you believe there’ll be another one next week?”
For example, with cookbooks, isn’t there going to be more cookbooks? Aren’t there already enough? No! There are going to be more cookbooks next week, and in the parallel, there’ll be more diet books next week. So, don’t talk yourself out of it just because it’s been done before, because it hasn’t been done by you. You will put your own spin on it. You will bring in your own personal experiences. You will have your own stories to tell, which make it unique.
David: What is step 2? We’re talking about having that clear, like, clearing yourself. I mean, it’s so true. Like, I still work a full-time job at Sears. I’m a top salesman for fitness equipment. I was going to interview one of the mechanics to help me sell better. I was going to put a CD together. Well, this guy does not think he’s an expert, but he’s been working on treadmills and lawnmowers and things like that for 18 years! I’m not joking, Joe, he does not think he’s an expert, but he is. He’s totally an expert.
Joe: It’s so amazing. Well, one of the writers who inspired me was Rod Serling. Rod Serling created the Twilight Zone. He’d always introduce those old episodes. I met him when I was a teenager, and I asked him if he was going to write his autobiography, and he said, he wasn’t going to because nothing had ever happened to him.
David: You’re kidding me. Wow.
Joe: I thought, “Man, talk about dismissing your whole life.” He of course died when he was 50 years old. Guess what? People have written his life story. They thought it was important. He didn’t think it was important.
David: That is amazing.
Joe: So, they’ve come out with books. There’s like, biographies of Rod Serling out there, but he didn’t write his own life story because he dismissed it. So, I don’t want people to dismiss it. The people listening, you’ve got gold in your own backyard. It’s in you! It’s in your life experiences and something you love to do. It could be anything from the way you do makeup in a certain way, or you’ve got a knitting expertise, or maybe it’s a product that you’re creating. I don’t know what it is, it’s prayer beads, I’m just winging it, but whoever’s listening, you’ve got something.
It doesn’t have to be this mass appeal-type experience because the beauty of the Internet is, there are blocks of niche people, just like the guy selling just tires for golf carts. I never would have thought that would work. It’s working, you know. There’s all kinds of other ones like that. I would encourage people to get that book, “The 505 Weirdest Online Stores” because that’s inspiring. I would encourage them to get my book, “The Attractor Factor” that walks them through these steps. I want to encourage them to get a book called “The Next Millionaires” by Paul Zane Pilzer. In “The Next Millionaires,” he talks about the fact that the Internet is just coming into birth.
We’ve tried a lot of things, but we’ve certainly not tried everything, and the market is incredibly rich for new blood with new vision, and new strength, and new energy, new youth to come in and see what they can make. There is gold in cyberspace, it’s waiting right now. It’s in areas we never even thought of like the guy, the college student thinking, “Oh, let me sell a blank page and sell pixel ads on it.” It’s insane.
David: Changed his life. Yep.
Joe: Yes. He made over a million-some bucks and became famous. He’s only, like, 27. So, I would say read those books, as well as re-listen to this interview, as well as the other ones. There is gold here, there is real gold here.
David: Joe, thank you so much for doing the interview, and this is exactly what I wanted to accomplish with this interview, and say, “Look, you can do it, it’s out there,” with their personal experiences combined with your five steps for attracting wealth. It’s done. You just have to create and take action on it.
Joe: Yeah, take action. If something doesn’t work, just do the next action. Just learn from it and keep going because the beauty of the Internet: try things instantaneously, get instantaneous feedback, and just keep working. Just keep playing, it’s not even work, it’s fun! You can play.
Joe: So, David, this has been great. Thank you for including me, and Godspeed to everybody.
David: You, too. Alright, bye-bye.
