Easy Business To Start: The ForeverJobless Free Business Idea Edition


 

Business ideas are easy to come up with. Yet, so many say the opposite.

“If only I had an idea I would work so hard…”

Uhhh, no you wouldn’t. If that were true you’d already be working on something since there’s an endless amount of ideas out there for the taking. Since it isn’t gift wrapped up like a pile of money people pass over them every day.

gift

 

Business ideas are EVERYWHERE. I mean, literally everywhere. If I had to I could come up with a completely new one in the next couple minutes. But, instead I’m going to write this article for you about an easy business to start.

You’d start a business if only you had an idea, right? ‘Cool story bro’. By the end of this article you will.

easy to start business

I may start a series just giving away good business ideas to start. So, depending on the response to this article, and if people go and start the idea, there may be more to come.

I’m not just going to give you a free business idea.

“Awwww, come on Billy!”

I’m going to do better.

“Oh, phew.”

I’m going to give you my money if you do it, and do it well.

“Ahh, shit. Now I’ll need to come up with another reason why not to do it.”

Then I’m going to show you how easy it would be to market to get other customers. So, you really won’t have any excuse not to do it.

“Well, you see I don’t have money so….”

Not only is it an easy business to start, it doesn’t take any money.

canihavethatback

I’ve actually tried to give this idea away many times.

Why? Because I wish the service existed. I am a customer. I want you to take my money.

Business doesn’t have to be hard.

Step 1: find a problem someone has

Step 2: solve that problem for them

Step 3: collect money

haha

Here’s how most people operate:

guy 1: man, i wish someone would solve this for me

guy 2: love to help man but i’m too busy looking for business ideas

 

Stop following all the ‘rah rah you can do it’ blogs who’ve sent you in the wrong direction looking for random hacks. Start solving needs instead.

What business should I start?

I know you’re wondering, “okay, so what kind of business should I start?”

Here’s an easy business to start:

Article marketing.

“Ohh, that sounds simple, but someone’s probably done it so you probably can’t make much from it.”

Phenomenal limiting belief! Let’s just eliminate your learned helplessness so you can get off the sidelines and make some money.

Some of the best business ideas to start, are the simple ones. Most people have the mindset of, “if it were easy someone would have done it already.”

That is why a lot of really obvious, easy business ideas still exist. Everyone’s sitting on the sideline waiting for some super complex idea that they have to feel like a rocket scientist to solve. You’re making it hard on yourself for no f*$king reason.

There’s numerous services out there that offer to help you write new articles on sites, or get you interviewed, or a lot of similar services to help you get promotion, but I’ve yet to find a good one that is specifically geared towards getting your current articles more exposure. If you’ve read my article on how to set goals you’ll know what my goal is this year- to produce extremely high quality content for you to help you to think more optimally in business, and in life. The services that currently exist would only equate to me doing more work, which would take me away from the work of achieving my goal. Essentially, any work to promote content I’ve produced, takes me away from producing more of it for you. Thus, a service that takes that off my plate is doing me a great service. That’s valuable to me. Value = money. Money goes to the person that solves that problem.

Again, not complex at all. It’s actually a really easy business idea to execute. It’s a 100% hustle business. That’s it. You don’t need intricate skills. You don’t need to program or do any sorts of hard shit that a lot of people think you need to start a business. You just need to hustle. This is literally all you would need to do:

  1. Study what works
  2. Copy/paste proven strategies

Someone else has literally done all the hard work already. There’s plenty of guys who are good at marketing. A lot of them have already written how you could do exactly what I’m talking about. Places like SumoMe, SocialTriggersVideoFruit and Neil Patel. A lot of guys who know how to do this stuff are just doing it for their own businesses instead of turning it into a service for others.

“So, you mean I could literally just copy what others have already proven works, and people will just hand me money?”

This shit ain’t rocket science.

Don’t get me wrong, you have to actually be good at it. Shitty work won’t win you business.

Plus, if you’ve read all my articles(you’re bleeding money and life EV if you haven’t), you’d know the first two steps to starting a profitable business from this article: Cash Cow Business

Step 1: How can you create something of value in a market better than what’s currently out there?

Step 2: How can you reach your potential audience?

The thing is, if you solve step 1 in a big enough way, step 2 becomes significantly easier.

In other words, you don’t have to spend all your time trying to convince people to buy your shit. Why? Because it’s actually good and not some ‘rah rah’ nonsense you’re used to in the internet marketing world.

Most people spend all their time convincing people they need to buy their shit, rather than creating something no one would need convincing to buy.

When you create a product or service that is a need for people that hasn’t been solved, or has been solved but has no marketing at all so no one knows it’s solved, the marketing side of it is really easy.

marketingishard

Marketing is hard if you start a crappy business. Not if your product or service is good.

I posted this on twitter the other day:

Free business idea:

  1. get REALLY good at marketing articles
  2. collect my money
  3. get exposure on FJ
  4. collect more money from that exposure

If you did a good job for me, it’d be very easy to get more business. I’d be happy my problem was solved. I’d give props to the person who solved my problem. I mean, shit… if someone had solved my problem already maybe this article would be about how awesome this person was and how you should immediately sign up for their service.

theman

Truth is, you probably wouldn’t even have to pitch this.

People talk.

Just overdeliver.

 

The value of your service IS your marketing if you overdeliver. People will talk about it and word will spread.

People get confused about this because they’re usually offering shitty products or services so they falsely assume marketing is hard. Again, it is hard if your offering sucks.

cantfindpeople

 

Neville writes good, high quality blog posts. I bet he’d want more exposure.

Ben Greenfield knows more on health/fitness than almost anyone on the planet. I’m sure he’d like more people to read what he writes.

Jeff Rose isn’t just known for his good looks, he writes a massive amount of content that has helped grow his business.

Noah the master of marketing himself writes articles. Nothing this guy likes more than tacos and marketing, He’d eat that shit up.

Joel Runyon writes good stuff.

Bryan writes good articles.

Steve Chou made $700k each last year, in large part due to writing articles. If he’s not too busy counting his money he might have a few bucks laying around to try a service like that.

Richard writes epic articles on e-commerce.

Victor’s site runs on the no nonsense articles he writes.

Glen was one of the initial guys who focused on high quality content.

Paula writes some monster posts.

Charles Ngo puts out good stuff.

When Derek isn’t yelling at people on video, he’s yelling at them through his writing.

If your service is good and you make it +EV for them, these are examples of people who produce real content and would be potential customers.

I mean… shit. You don’t even have to pitch that. Here’s your marketing pitch, “pay me”.

I’m sure Neville could help you with the copy but that’s pretty close to all you’d need.

Business does NOT have to be hard.

I’m not saying all these guys will buy your service. I didn’t ask them. Maybe they won’t like you.

But it took me like two minutes to think of examples of people that might be interested in a service like this.

An easy way to start something like this would be to absolutely crush it for one person, and then just show your results.

Some people enjoy talking about what they will do.

That won’t make someone buy.

If you’re trying to sell an action taker, they’re going to buy on results, not talk.

No one cares what you’re going to theoretically do at some point in the future. Except maybe your mom and dad but unless they’re giving you money you should probably just take action and stop waiting for a magic pile of money to fall in your lap.

goingtobeamillionair

Once you have the results, you don’t have to talk anymore.

What’s here in this article might get you motivated to work on this for a couple days, or a couple weeks. That’s how it usually goes. The excitement wears off and you go back to looking for the easy million waiting right around the corner somewhere.

lookingformoney

To avoid the non action that’s likely to pop up once you lose your initial motivation, I’m going to take this further for you. See, the bag of money around the corner is never wrapped up like a bag of money. It’s often a road filled with limiting beliefs, self doubt and roadblocks which makes you stop before the opportunity turns into the bag of money that it is. So, I want to eliminate these for you.

One major roadblock that may come up is customers.

“But Billy, I thought you said it would likely be easy to get customers if we offered great value.”

This is true. However, the interpretation of great value is going to differ per person. You may have one idea of “great value”, and someone else may have another.

I want to show you what an entrepreneur will be thinking about.

Let’s say you became an absolute beast at article marketing. Great. Now let’s say you go around pitching people $5k/month for your article marketing service. Okay. Well, an entrepreneur is going to want to know what their ROI is. So, if you are awesome at marketing articles and increase someone’s income $3k/month, it’s still not a +EV(expected value) service since you’re trying to charge $5k/month. Now, if you charged that person $1k/month, that might be a good deal. $500/month, a great deal.

I want you to think about this for a minute: Whatever you’re selling, you are not actually selling that. You are selling the results from it. So, if you’re offering someone $3k/month for $5k/month, that’s stupid and you won’t get customers and you’ll complain this doesn’t work. Example of a limiting belief, followed by self doubt, and a barrier that’s likely to put you back on the sideline waiting for that bag of money to appear around the corner. If someone started an article marketing service and claimed people didn’t want article marketing, you’re doing it wrong.

You are NOT selling article marketing. You are selling increased profits for their business. So, if you can’t increase profits, that’s a problem with your offering, not that no one wants the service.

People could give a shit about you marketing their articles. People give a shit about you marketing their articles in a way that it increases the profits of their business after paying you for your service.

I’m not saying short change yourself and charge $50/month or something. You must create win-wins. It should be +EV for you, and +EV for the client. Understand, that you’ll sometimes have to sacrifice short term income for long term EV as an entrepreneur. That is often how successful businesses are built. Everyone looks at something and says, “meh, I don’t want to work hard marketing articles, that’s not the greatest pay.” It won’t be while you’re proving yourself out. When you start crushing results for people your rate will increase. Once you get systems in place your EV will increase since you can take on more customers while spending the same time. Once systems are in place you can then leverage having other people execute the systems you’ve put in place, increasing your EV even more.

So many people are stuck in the ‘I want to get rich overnight’ mindset that they fail to realize that the reason a lot of simple business ideas still exist is because they take work in the beginning, and people don’t like work. So, people either never start them, or they stop during one of the lower paying steps, when the high paying steps were right around the corner if done correctly. Note: done correctly is important, and what most people in this ‘industry’ aren’t teaching you. Rah rah ‘you can do it’ shit that people are putting out is not helping you, and you’ll never achieve your dreams if you are following that nonsense. You must learn how to think. This is the difference between people who achieve success, and people who just talk about achieving success so that you’ll buy their info products and click on their affiliate links. 

You CAN do it… if done correctly. Some questions to ask yourself, with this, or any other business you’re starting:

“Is this a great deal for the customer?”

“How can I make this more valuable for them?”

“If I offer this value to them, long term will this business have a chance of helping me achieve the results that I’d like to achieve”  – note: I’m not talking about tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. I’m talking about AFTER putting in real work for a while.

Let me give you an example of what to expect:

  1. “this is hard work, and i’m not making much money”
  2. “it’s still hard but this is getting a little easier now that i know what i’m doing, and a couple more people are paying me.”
  3. “now that i’m really good at this and people are talking about the results i’m getting them, i’m charging even more for the same work.”
  4. “i have too much work i need to bring on more people to help me grow.”

Maybe income sucks for you at level 1. Maybe it still sucks for you at level 2. Maybe it doesn’t even interest you until level 4. It depends what situation you’re in. Most people will quit at the sucky levels because they haven’t learned to think bigger picture. They still think in the 9-5 income box… “how much do I get today?”.

Broke people think about how much they can make today. Rich people think about the long term expected value.

When I was playing poker I played for pennies at first. I’m not exaggerating, literally pennies. Then as I progressed, I made more money, and eventually started printing money where I couldn’t believe how easy it was. If I expected money to come right out of the gate, I would have stopped and never reached the ‘printing money’ levels.

Poker looked something like this for me:

  1. playing for pennies (1-3 months)
  2. “hey look, you can actually make some money at this” (3-12 months)
  3. “wow, you can make real money at this” (12-36 months)
  4. printing money stage…”what do i do with all this money?” (36 months+)

I’ve had several businesses where I literally made close to $0/hr for the first many months, and then ‘wa-lah!(voila), I make 6 or 7 figures after the hard work starts coming to fruition and getting to the ‘print money’ stage.

Stop trying to get rich by tomorrow. This ain’t the lottery and this blog isn’t for stupid people.

If you put the work in, you’ll reap the rewards that follow the hard parts that everyone wants to skip.

You can look at ForeverJobless as a live example of this. As you know from this post this is the first time I’ve really focused on ForeverJobless. You know that I’m not really monetizing much, so outside of things like a private mastermind I run, I’m basically making close to $0/hr on ForeverJobless.

Over time if it was my goal, I could probably turn ForeverJobless into a cash cow just as a byproduct of putting out higher value work than what exists in the market. Traffic/subscribers will grow even with little to no marketing as a byproduct of people talking about the content, and people who read the ‘rah rah’ blogs will realize the real shit is over here, and make a +EV life choice about the content they’re consuming.

If I theoretically made $0 this year, and then overnight turned on a money faucet next year people who don’t understand would look at it as an “overnight success” as if some stroke of sheer luck caused all sorts of people to come check out my articles and purchase high value products or services.

Why would people change what they’re reading? Higher value. What sacrifice does it take to produce higher value? I don’t know for others, but personally I often spend dozens of hours per article, that I release for free. If we related articles to business, the way that most people think about business is they’d attempt to release their first article, try and sell it, and wonder why no one is buying. Then day two they’d quit claiming that “no ones interested in reading articles”. That sounds ridiculous, and it is. But that is how most people attempt to be an entrepreneur though, and why they think it is difficult. Low value + expecting overnight results or they quit.

I’m not telling you someone is going to buy your service. I’m telling you someone is going to buy your service is it’s +EV for them to do so. Your job is to make sure that it is.

“Oh, but how do I do that?”

Welcome to entrepreneurship. Your job is to solve problems.

Let’s break this shit down.

I’ve already given you the idea.

I’ve already given you examples of how easy it would be to find potential clients, and even given you examples of ideal customers(obviously don’t bother them unless you can offer them value).

You understand that you not only need to be good at it and offer high value, but need to price it in a way that makes it +EV for them too.

“Ya, but how can I make sure it’s +EV?”.

Glad you asked!

Let me give you an example:

For simplicity sake, let’s say someone has one product, that they charge $100 for. They write good articles, and they convert roughly .5% of visitors into buyers. So, every new visitor is worth roughly 50 cents to them, obviously varying per traffic source, but you get the idea. Let’s say you check out their articles and realize you could probably get them an extra 500 visitors per article. That’d equate to around 2.5 sales per article assuming the sources of traffic were as high quality as their current traffic. If they expected around 2.5 sales per article they’d expect around $250 since they charge $100 per sale.

As much as they like your article marketing service, if you wanted to charge them $300 per article, they’d kick you out the door(more likely out their inbox), since they’d be losing money. Now, we’re not factoring some things in such as the EV of traffic that turns into subscribers that buy sometime the future, and the EV of articles potentially ranking higher for specific search terms due to the marketing that was done, but again just for simplicity we’re looking at it from a high level 300 ft view perspective for someone who wants to make sure they’re getting an ROI.

If you charged them $100 per article they might give you a shot. For $50 they’d almost definitely give you a shot. So, let’s pretend you decided to charge them somewhere between $50-$100 per article. If this person publishes 8 articles/month, a good price point to charge might be in the $400-$800/month range. Maybe when you start out you charge less just to make sure you can over deliver, and knock it out of the park for them.

Maybe you quote them at $600/month, and tell them for being one of the first three customers you’ll only charge them $300/month for the first two months to prove how much you’ll crush it for them. Now, obviously you’ve gotta back up what you say or they won’t be interested in renewing, but that would eliminate the worry of having difficulty getting customers, and might give you some more inspiration to push through one of the hard work steps knowing there’s people with money that will pay you for doing things of value for them.

barrier

Make it so good they don’t have to think about it. After I posted the idea on twitter, a number of people emailed asking how much I would pay them. It’s not the best question. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a normal and completely reasonable question, but maybe just better to call it suboptimal. It’s making someone else work to have to figure out how to make it +EV for themselves without even knowing the level of work you’re going to provide. Someone will want to pay you a lot if you make them a lot. They might pay a little if you make them a little. They won’t want to pay anything if it’s not going to make them anything.

Don’t make it hard for people to give you money. Make it easy. The fact that some guys are attempting to get paid well on the first job without ever having done article marketing is showing they aren’t thinking about it correctly. I think free work is +EV if you’re doing things right, but you don’t even have to do free work. Just charge someone an amount where it’s +EV for them and you learn shit. Your goal is not to make as much money as you can in step 1. That’s flawed thinking that keeps you on step 1, or back to step 0, thinking there’s no good ideas out there.

Now, obviously one of the things you need to be asking yourself is if it’s +EV for you as well. However, remember the important part of that. EV, not income. Your goal is not to have good income day one. Your goal is to have good EV.

So, for example let’s pretend each article takes you 10 hours to promote. So, if you land one customer that releases 8 posts/month, and you charge them a discount of $300/month so that you can prove yourself, that’s only $37.50/article. Eww, sounds yucky. Let’s figure out the hourly. Well, if each article takes you 10 hours, you’d be making $3.75 per hour. Ballin! Now, when most people figure this out, they would do one of three things.

  1. They would quit.
  2. They would raise their prices.
  3. They would do shittier work.

#1 is where most people would end up.

“$3.75 per hour! I’m worth way more than that! I’m not working for pennies.”

And they wouldn’t. They’d sit on the sideline and make $0/hr instead.

#2 is how a lot of people try to operate. They want to maximize what they think they’re worth on day 1. Maybe they even are worth that much, but if no one knows about them and they have no results yet, that’s going to be a really tough sell. So, they might get no customers because of their higher pricing, and claim people aren’t paying for their work even though it’s good. So scenario #2 often leads to #1, quitting.

#3 is another choice. Instead of working 10 hours per article they work 2-3 hours, so they can get the boost to their hourly rate that they desire. Well, like many short term income decisions, it’s a bad EV decision, because people won’t want to keep working with you if you can’t deliver the awesome results they were expecting, and are cutting corners to boost your temporary profits instead. So, clients will leave, and you’ll claim, “no one stays on, customer retention is low”. Customer retention is obviously going to decrease significantly for you if you’re putting in 1/4th of the effort.

So, let’s take the person who decides to forgo these easy outs, and actually puts in the work. Let’s say they take on 3 clients at $300/month. For simplicity we’ll say that everyone produces 8 articles/month, so in total you’d have 24 articles to promote. So, you’d work roughly 240 hours in the month. That is hard work. Straight hustle to earn $900/month. That’s not much.

Now, if you got the results you said you could get them, they’d likely renew at a higher rate. $900/month might become $1,800/month by month two or three.

Once you realized where the most +EV clients for you were and each article started taking you a bit less time as you improved, $1,800/month might become $5,400/month by month four or five.

Once word started to spread about an article marketing service that increases your profits, and you had your systems in place, you may hire a few people to help execute those systems for the new clients that wanted your help.

Maybe instead of just you, there’s three others helping you provide the service. By the end of the year the $5,400/month turns into $21,600/month. You pay $3,000/month for your employees to just follow your systems promoting the articles, so your profit is $12,600/month.

You start year two off on pace for a $150k+ year, and finally realize that getting through the hard parts to get to the payoff was totally worth it. You realize you were never working for $3.75/hour in the first stage of the game. You were being paid to learn and test a $150k+ profit business. You now realize that you’re actually happy the $3.75/hr stage exists. It’s what keeps most of your competitors out, because they don’t realize the payday is around the corner. You collect checks, while they talk about how lucky you got. You didn’t get lucky, you played the game at a level that will be hard work and likely won’t even pay you well per hour for that hard work, but playing at that level allows you to get to the next levels.

I’m not saying you should charge $3.75/hr, and I’m not saying the business is definitely going to make $150k+/yr.

My goal is to teach you how to think so that you realize what’s possible if you put in the work while doing things the right way.

You may or may not make a lot of money in the process. But I guarantee you won’t make any if you don’t try. For something that is a need that isn’t well offered right now, that doesn’t cost any money to start, if you’re someone looking for an opportunity, now you have one.

If you’re already working on a project, hopefully something in this article made you think about something you’re doing in a different way.

If you like the free business giveaway series idea, let me know. More importantly, if you’ve been looking for an idea, execute on this.

Leave a comment if you like the idea of this series.

Leave a comment if you’ll be starting this idea.

Leave a comment if you have questions about it.

And if you don’t have an idea to work on, and aren’t going to try this, definitely leave me a comment explaining why you aren’t.

how to set goals





82 Responses to “Easy Business To Start: The ForeverJobless Free Business Idea Edition”


  1. Silindile Mayise

    Read the whole article
    I’m interested in this free business idea and startup. No start-up capital or idea. Currently unemployed. Don’t even know where my next penny will come from. South Africa based

    Reply
  2. Tyrel J

    Awesome article! I am going to be applying the ideas shared in this to my current businesses for sure, mainly the part about making sure the customer understands the value since my businesses are B2B.

    Thanks again!

    Reply
  3. Matt

    I’ll be starting on this today!

    Reply
  4. Andrei

    Another grate article. Keep it up.
    I think you hit on a friction point for most people with the $/hr thing. I know for me it was for a while. I remember reading some of the productivity experts advising to only focus on high $/hr tasks and delegate the rest. They should also be your main focus/guiding points.

    But as you brilliantly pointed out, you might be working for very little now, but you are building equity in yourself and your business in other forms. You might be writing an article now for 3.5$/hour but that article stays relevant for years and each time someone reads it, or buys from or due to it, you are increasing that hourly rate dramatically.
    I think most people that start online forget about the snowball effect a lot of good content can have.

    Reply
    • Billy

      Yessir, snowball effect and the moving up of levels as you play the game is huge, and most people never factor it in.

      Reply
  5. Mäne

    Main reason why I’m not starting this idea: too much money to be made by playing poker.

    Reply
    • Billy

      If you’re making a significant amount of money in the games, keep banking it for sure. I’ve heard overall it’s steadily declining for people as games continue to get more difficult. True/false? Also, are you factoring in the asset value with a business vs. no asset in poker?

      Reply
  6. Austin

    Once again, stellar, man.

    The most value I receive from what you’re producing at fj is far and away the subtle mindset shifts.

    That stuff is invaluable.

    I’ve recently expanded my freelance health and fitness writing business to a freelance writing agency and you helped me see that it’s not necessarily new content that’s the most valuable to a business, but overall ROI from their content in general.

    I’ll most certainly be expanding the agency (as a result of this post) to include marketing of the articles.

    Time to learn…

    Thanks again man

    Reply
    • Billy

      Awesome! Mindset shifts are what I’m after. Thanks for letting me know.

      Agree, new content can be valuable, but is it more valuable than what’s already offered in the market, or is there a better gap to fill?

      Keep it up Austin.

      Reply
  7. Fabrizzio

    Your articles are always incredible, man. Simplicity at its finest. Thank you.

    Reply
  8. Micah

    Billy- great article with an actionable template. Thank you! BTW- it’s voila, not viola 😉

    Reply
  9. Jim

    Awesome article and great message on creating business ideas born from need in the marketplace.

    Love the series, love the idea, and I’m going to go learn me some article marketing!

    Reply
  10. Eric

    Great article, and a resource list of some outstanding online business people.

    I’m trying to offer my copywriting to fitness businesses in the same capacity, but unfortunately guys who are good at picking things up and putting them down don’t even understand the value of copywriting, lead magnets, or marketing in general.

    Educating the marketplace is difficult, but dollars make sense. Thanks for the motivation and reminding me how I need to provide value upfront… not just demand my rate before EV is established!

    Reply
    • Billy

      Are people not buying your copywriting services because they don’t understand the value of copywriting, or is it because you don’t solve a big enough need with them with your offering, or at least in how you’re pitching it to them? I think if they understand the EV with your offer and it was +EV, they’d take it. Most people don’t pitch like that though, they often expect the client guess if it’ll make them money.

      Reply
      • Eric

        Your article reminded me the right way to pitch. I’m not showing enough +EV or else my client books would be filled. I basically pitch with “your autoresponder sucks, I can help” The industry standard is just to run discounts on products that sell themselves based on ripped dudes, so educating the business that they need to educate their clients is an exhaustive process. I need to make it an easy yes by showing the ROI of optimized copy and/or better autoresponders that have made big money. It helps to have typed that out/think it out loud. Thanks!


  11. Mark Foster II

    Appreciate the post Billy! As always, I really enjoyed the content. Definitely wouldn’t mind more post in the future pertaining to business ideas and the bare bones execution on them. Just like you said in the article, business is “Problem Solving 101”.

    Reply
  12. Ed

    I know nothing about article marketing, so this might be a dumb question. At its most basic, is it any more than finding related niche communities and referring the article to them without it coming across as spam? You have to know the culture and specifics of each niche community to do it right, of course, but is that the gist of it?

    Reply
    • Billy

      There’s many different ways you can market articles. There’s a lot more to it than just messaging some niche communities. If someone follows through on the idea maybe I’ll do a follow up post on this explaining the different strategies they used.

      Reply
  13. Sam

    Interesting idea, I would 100% purchase this if it was available and executed well.

    I’ve tried similar services but always been let down.

    If anyone is interested, I’ve come across a huge business idea within my 9-5 industry.

    I have the relationships and knowledge in place but don’t have the time or focus as I’m doubling down on other pre-existing opportunities.

    If someone does have the time, I’m happy to split 50-50 if you do the work and I tell you what to do.

    100% online, UK market.

    Sam

    Reply
    • Billy

      I’ve had several messages from people who’ve said they would purchase if someone did this and was good. Pile of money waiting to be had. Everything’s been done for the person who follows through, except the hustle.

      Reply
    • Sean D

      HI Sam, I’m looking for more baskets to put my eggs in (sorry). If you’d like to message me so we can discuss what it is you are proposing I certainly have the time to do many other things as well as what I currently do now. Thanks

      Reply
    • Joel

      Hi Sam, am as well interested. I look forward to hearing from you so we can get into discussions concerning the opportunity.

      Reply
    • Vic

      Hey Sam, if you’re still looking for people, I’m in. Send me an e-mail!

      Reply
  14. John

    Great content! I think I will be giving this a shot. Recently unemployed and have been wanting to start an online business for a while now but just haven’t had the proper motivation I guess…. I like your articles because they are always a great shot of motivation while you still keep it real and not the “rah rah” stuff.

    This series is a great idea. While not everyone will take the exact idea you put out there, it has a lot of potential to spark new ideas.

    Thanks Billy!!!

    Reply
  15. Brittany

    “Broke people think about how much they can make today. Rich people think about the long term expected value.”

    Boom! Mindset shifted. Thank you.

    Reply
  16. Dave Starr

    Eye opening to say the least. Particularly for guys lie me who have a thousand-article blog currently living up to about 1/1000th of its true potential. If there ever was a “case study” waiting to be “studied”, this is it.

    Keep up the awesome flow, your articles are like crack for me … without the bad things LoL.

    Reply
    • Billy

      I hope someone follows through so I can turn this into a case study!

      More crack articles on the way Dave.

      Reply
  17. Andrew

    This is timely. I just forced my wife to start a blog (as in stole her credit card and registered a domain name for her) as a first step in building a consulting business, so I already have my first (non-paying) customer…

    Of course, I have my day job of building a software business too, but, you know… 🙂

    Reply
  18. Chris Sacchetti

    Hey Billy !

    Saying this is an incredible article, wouldn’t even come close to describing it. For me this is putting all of my awful exuses right out on the table and showing the childish “logic” for what it is.

    What i need to do is get out of my own way and get to the work! I’m in the beginning stages of my first project with a great idea and this is the boost i needed to really set my sights on providing awesome value with it.

    Love the series idea, love the article. Keep it up brother !

    -Chris

    Reply
    • Billy

      Boom! Get it Chris. When you get to the hard parts(they’ll be coming), realize that’s when everyone else stops. That’s when you keep going.

      Reply
  19. Marius

    Well, you nailed it again Billy 🙂
    Funny is I got a business idea out of it, I heard recently about, but never thought it could be something, that can be scaled into a business. It’s even in the same niche as your idea and is basically also helping people to promote their content in a better way. Sadly don’t know if I have enough time currently to pursue it.

    So here is the Idea for free to pursue:
    It’s basically a service to help content writers delete or change content, that is inaccurate, outdated, not relevant anymore.
    I heard that one guy did it for his blog and had a ROI of around 30% from it and now Pat Flynn is doing the same, so there must be quite some value doing it.

    Reply
    • Billy

      I’ve heard of the strategy- I’ve never looked into it, but all sorts of niches like that out there for the taking.

      Reply
      • Marius

        Yeah a lot, btw did you already made a sole article about short term and long term +EV? That would be also an interesting topic to go more in depth.


      • Billy

        Send me an email with your specific questions on that, and I’ll put it together.


  20. Hazel

    Thanks Billy! I am going to turn your idea into a service with a twist. Instead of promoting articles, I am going to help authors promote their books because this is what I am already doing. I build ebooks for indie authors, and they often ask me what to do next after I have done the work. Then, I realised if I want to build a sustainable profitable business (from freelancing to agency), rather than remaining as a commodity (just another cover designer), I have to learn solve this problem or continue solving problems along this line for my clients.

    Before this article I feel afraid and guilty of what I am going to try. I mean, there are successful authors write content about promoting ebooks on their blogs (just like Neil Patel write about content marketing), and the information is all out there for free. Is it ethical to take someone’s knowledge, make it into a service and charge people for that? But it seems like I am on the right track.

    “A lot of guys who know how to do this stuff are just doing it for their own businesses instead of turning it into a service for others.”

    This is what happen in ebook marketing too. Been around in this niche for a while I know what methods generate real results, and what are just purely waste of time. I learn this from reading articles successful authors write on their sites, or investing in paid products.

    Right now I am trying to formulate a simple package to help authors promote their ebooks (like selling your first 100 copies), and am looking for authors to try out for getting real results.

    It’s not easy. I am still at that stage 1. I have a day job, and busy/ struggle to get new clients and do work as a freelancer at the same time I am trying this.

    Your article just reassure me I am on the right path. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Billy

      Tons of opportunity to do it in that space. Everyone wants to sell the info, instead of creating the service, so lots of gaps in the service space for things like that.

      My suggestion would be to start with a specific niche, absolutely crush that niche, and then just market your results. Should be easy after that. Make it easy on yourself by hand picking good books. Like, don’t take clients with mediocre books- pick ones that have great content that should be shared. More value for everyone, plus makes your job cake.

      Reply
  21. Nimai

    Great article Billy. +EV. I would love to read more articles like this and am willing to have a go with a new business idea.

    Reply
  22. Jack

    Great post as always Billy.
    However, your post isn’t about the business idea. Sorry, your ‘shit’ on how to build a copy-writing career. Writing isn’t a business if you do it yourself for someone else. This is a freelance job. Just my opinion.

    Reply
    • Billy

      Jack, I’d recommend re-reading. It wasn’t about copywriting and it explains how to get past the freelance level.

      Reply
  23. Valentin Van Nhut

    Awesome article thanks Billy! I love this idea series it sparks new ideas for my business. Cheers

    Reply
  24. Ryan M Hall

    Love the series.

    Love seeing the nuts and bolts of the hustle, not just fist pumping…don’t get me wrong, I like journey songs and am always open to a solid 80’s ballad style fist pumping, but this is some real shit.

    Reply
  25. Dave Howard

    Just launching this but your article gave me a great idea about how I can add value to the service I will be providing…directly helping the folks I encourage to get started online with one of the things they will find daunting – promoting what they are doing/writing etc. It will take a while to get this going to everyone’s EV benefit, but definitely see it as a win/win.

    Reply
  26. Chris

    If you can get around 200 article writers I can get you guys in front of up to around 500,000 people once a month beginning May 4th. I’ve already got the system ready to go. It’s beautiful. Email me if you want to make this happen

    Reply
    • Billy

      Not sure I understand?

      Reply
      • Jerry

        Hey Billy,

        Great stuff man. Question though, did this guy ever reach out to you? The only reason I say that is because I always feel like my biggest barrier I put for myself is, “Oh, the market is already too saturated”. Example, I read this article on 5/10/16 and see people March saying, “I’m on it!”. I think my brain then just says, “Oh, nevermind, I’m late to the game”. Your thoughts?


  27. Alex

    Great Article!

    It would become even a greater article if there was a second article in which
    the idea has been executed by a “real” person, with “real” numbers
    instead of theoretical numbers.
    Also the problems this person has experienced and how he solved those.

    An example article after execution could be something like :

    Jay needed average of 10 hr’s to promote one article.
    He was charging $320 per month for 8 articles. that is 40$ per article.
    His income was 4$ per hour in the beginning.
    Having 3 clients he was working 240 hours per month generating him
    960$ per month.
    After he proved his worth those clients begin to pay him 640$ a month.
    His monthly income become 1920$ a month.

    He tried to make things very efficient, now he could promote an article
    in 8 hours instead of 10 hours. He realized 3 times more efficient assumption in the first article was too positive.

    now he can earn 2400$ per month.
    He wanted other employees to help him grow his business but he can not
    afford to pay them 3000$ per month because he only generates 2400$ per month for himself while working 240 hours per month.
    So he decided to hire employees from philippines for 800$ per month for 240
    hours work to make it possible for him to grow his business etc etc etc……

    An article like that would help this person to get more business.

    It would also help preventing you becoming another
    ‘rah rah you can do it’ blog 🙂

    Cheers

    Alex

    Reply
  28. Heath C.

    Billy. Awesome post. I vote that you keep doing this series.

    It’s funny you call this business opp “article marketing” because that had a whole different definition just a few years ago. Ah, visions of placing crappy articles and getting links great links from Ezine Articles. Dammit Google updates.

    Anyway, a few questions to clarify what you’re looking for.

    You mention that existing services require you to do more work, which isn’t appealing to you. I’m assuming you mean these types of promotions:

    – Linking from your social accounts.
    – Writing a related article to guest post on a big site with a link back to your article.
    – Producing a video that gives a synopsis of the article and offers a link in the Youtube annotation, and the video description.
    – Nurturing a profile on related forums and linking to your latest piece in your bio.
    – Being interviewed on a podcast.

    These are definitely go to content marketing tactics. But, would require your time.

    What about advertising on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Outbrain, Twitter, Etc. You didn’t mention ad budget when you were talking numbers for this business. So, I’m guessing that’s out as well.

    I feel since you put so much work into your content and brand that you wouldn’t be comfortable having someone else post on your social profiles, or write guest blog posts on your behalf. It would be very difficult to match the quality, voice, and tone of your stuff. So that’s out.

    I don’t have my own high powered social accounts to promote the stuff to my own vast audience, so that would be of little use.

    There is certainly other work I could do to get your articles more traffic, but I wanted to make sure I was reading you correctly about what you’re definitely not looking for.

    I want to zero in on the answer to how to “create something of value in a market better than what’s currently out there.”

    Thanks again. Your stuff is always thought provoking and ass kicking.

    Reply
    • Billy

      Thanks Heath!

      I guess I’m not sure of your question. The article marketing strategies would take some work to come up with the most optimal strategies(many are already out there), which is work I don’t currently make time for, and would be for the person who wants an opportunity that’s lacking in the market.

      Reply
      • Heath C.

        Oops. Missed this reply.

        Sorry my question wasn’t clear. I guess I’m trying to hone in on what SME’s like yourself would be willing to do as part of the strategy. I listed a bunch of options above but they either require you to produce more content, or reach out to your existing audience.

        Is this the stuff you don’t have time for?

        Also, would you be open to having someone else (your article marketer), creating content and posting on your social channels for you?

        Finally, do you think SME’s are willing to pay for ad exposure on social channels?

        Thanks again.


  29. Joel

    Informative post Billy. I like the idea if you business idea series and this post is definitely a great start. About the article marketing idea, am already drafting the foundational plans for this business. I have studied Neil Patel in particular and I have a rough idea of how to go about this particular business idea. I will give you an update on how it goes once I execute it. Thanks man!

    Reply
  30. Mario

    I liked this post. The example of $3.75/HR versus $0/HR made me think about some ideas I have been waiting to pull the trigger on. Really going to focus on that +EV and build it out right!

    Reply
  31. Jack

    Step 1: find a problem someone has
    Oh, i found some dudes, their problem was, they had no business ideas.

    Step 2: solve that problem for them
    Ya, i solved their problem; I sold my business ideas to them.

    Step 3: collect money
    Of course, i collected their cash. haha.
    ————————–

    Billy, i’m sorry for my clownery, but those 3 steps won’t just work in many countries, where the corruption is inside of all things.

    Reply
    • Billy

      Your limiting beliefs don’t work in any country.

      You’re on the internet, stop lying to yourself thinking that anything but you not taking action is the problem.

      Reply
  32. Ty

    Billy! I love the post. I think you should continue doing this series on business ideas. Also, you should start a series on ideas that wouldn’t be +EV, even though all the guru’s are saying they are.

    Reply
    • Billy

      If someone starts this idea I likely will.

      If no one starts it I probably wouldn’t do more, as articles like this are meant to help people go take action. So if no one takes action it means it likely wasn’t what they needed.

      Reply
  33. Chris

    Ok Billy, I am really interested in this idea as a business. But, I do not know what you mean specifically, by the term “article marketing”. I did understand you mean this to mean article promotion. My customer would be bloggers (more likely, bloggers that make money from blogging) and that they wish to get their blog posts (articles) more exposure, and wider exposure, but I don’t understand what form this would take. I know quite a bit about SEO and PPC, and both would cost more than $500 per month to implement. So what other methods would someone promote an article that only require hustle and not money?

    Reply
  34. Andrew

    Billy, you are the man. I’m starting on this right now.

    Reply
  35. Sean

    Billy I really love this idea. I read this article a few days ago and it’s all I’ve been reading about. Like Chris, I was first clueless but after doing some research I feel like I could do something with it.

    Reply
  36. Laura

    Great advice! Thank you! Today I wasn’t feeling well but still went and helped two new clients. I felt great afterwards! They are so happy and said they have talked to many professionals but they don’t make the time to listen to them. I felt happy being able to help them. Because of that, I now have three more clients which they referred me to. ?

    Reply
  37. AJ Jones

    Please do more of these posts! This article may be my fave so far. It sounds like a great money maker but after following your goal setter tips I cannot be distracted from my primary focus(right now). I am passing it on to some future forever jobless amigos.
    I take 2 hours a day to read books and blogs like yours to keep me on track and out of a cubicle. This post was right on time.
    I am less than 6 months into building an online empire and other ventures and after barely covering bills this month, I was asking myself…WTF?!
    The time to continue to research more opportunities and learn more from FJ is priceless. Thank you for the boost and the well written loaded articles.

    AJ Aspiring FJ

    Reply
  38. Brittaney Woods

    I looked at this when you first posted it and here I am ready to take the plunge.
    1. So I’m only literally marketing articles via social media (I assume)?
    2. Do I look to bloggers and sellers of products as potential clients?
    3. Should I still attempt to market for blogs that already have a huge following?

    Reply
  39. Dmitry

    Love your blog BIliy,

    Very inspiring to think outside the box. Perhaps the community can help me brainstorm, I am a Physical therapist that does a form of hands-on work that helps you regain your natural posture, get taller and pain-free. Prefer all cash business. The treatment is short, about 15 mins, works your whole body and afterward, everything is easier; Breathing, functional movement etc, what are some interesting and unique ways to market a revolutionary yet little known holistic approach like this?
    Thanks to You All

    Reply
  40. Jenna

    So… just out of curiosity, over a year and a half later (since I just found your article – i know… gasp…) has your problem been solved? Did someone actually follow through?

    I found this article helpful in the sense that I recently sold my ‘physical’ business and am nervous about taking my entrepreneurial skills online but I realized that this is just another form of a limiting belief. I just need to get off my ass and get it started. Thanks 🙂 Definitely following your articles now 🙂

    Reply
  41. Patrick Burke

    I had an idea on how to solve this problem for you. It is relatively simple, so I thought I would share it and get some feedback. Obviously, the catch would be in the grind to a scalable implementation.

    Articles online have reached a higher quality than almost anything you’ll find in print. However, curation for exposure is usually the major issue for the blogger.

    Alternatively, print newspapers and magazines reach engaged readers but seem to suffer from lower quality.

    Basically, the idea is this: have local/regional/national newspaper publish your content. Shit, having something like this in the Wallstreet journal would be excellent. OR make your own newspaper that curates the best online articles for X-niche. Distribute newspaper for free, charge blogger for exposure. OR create an intermediary to connect newspapers for exposure to online content producers. (The 3 tiers of the concept -> outsource, build your own, intermediary connection).

    Curious for your thoughts.

    Reply

Leave a Reply