The Online Sunshine Plan

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0. Introduction

I started this out over 2 years ago – probably closer to 6, under the simple quest to learn how to market the books I had written. I simply wanted to figure out how to earn money online through my book sales.
Where it’s taken me is to every known version of online marketing, to eBay, and even to the hard-knocks school of Internet scams.

And so I’ve rewritten this book several times during this (in my head or in notes), because of these simple facts I had to stumble across and bark my shins on:

• 97% of what you find on the Internet about online marketing is bunk. It may have worked for someone under certain special situations, but it probably won’t work for most people.

• What people call marketing itself is a crock. You have to go back to the historical origins and operations of markets in order to understand why the Internet is wising up shoppers and making it nearly impossible for "college-trained marketing experts" to actually make any money online.

• If you aren’t doing what you love, and what you know will actually help people – you are doomed to failure, regardless of any fast or hard bucks you make right off the bat.

But you won’t find these facts anywhere else.  You can find out how they are true, but no one is admitting these. Because they are all part of the scene.

Look, I’ve been around the block more than a couple of times. I’ve been a lot of places and done a lot of things. And I run a farm for part of my living, which keeps me very real about living life.

So when I go through stuff and figure things out, it’s in order to really get the rock-bottom understanding of what is going on and how it actually works. Nothing less.

Who this is written for and how I found it out

I’m not writing this for corporations, but these basics could scale up to the largest corporation – if they will apply it in every single employee they have and toward every single client. (And also every single stockholder.)
I’ve written this for the individual who is starting up their own business or expanding any business online. You’ll see here some basics that you won’t see other places – because they’ve all bought into some very basic lies which have been rolling around this planet for a very, very, very long time.

For me, it’s taken being scammed more than once and fighting back to the surface – only to find that I didn’t need to fight at all. Because everything that scammers, cults, credit card companies, and governments, etc. – all that these entities use, are based on lies.  How they all keep their power is by getting you and I to buy into their ego-traps. Their ego-traps, not anything we actually believe in.

Of course, we’ve been repeating their mantras for so long, these have become ingrained in our worlds.
By working through this last scam and getting back to my preference for spiritual and personal improvement books, it finally hit me. The whole thing suddenly fell together. All our classics have been telling us this for years. But only in the last couple of centuries, and with the advent of the Internet, that such comparisons could be made. These odd ideas by a handful of radical thinkers such as Locke, Smith, and others around the time of our American Revolution set up a new experiment in government – one which has fostered more self-rule and freedom than ever before.

And now the Internet itself is spreading and reinforcing these radical ideas of personal responsibility, personal ownership, and personal freedom to all points of the globe. We may even be out-growing the idea of needing governments.

The ego-traps

But the point which brought the whole system up as false was the very ego-traps these scammers used. It was the old, classic "get rich quick" mantra – now made more luring by the easy credit of "other people’s money (OPM)". 

Problem is, this approach has never, ever worked. It’s the shell game. About 99% of the time, it works. Like spam and any "legitimate" form of advertising, it only continues because of a numbers game. Throw enough messages at someone and around 3% will buy anything. Anything.

The waste here is in that 97%. Those messages have no value. They improve no one’s life. Not one iota.
Imagine that every single communication from a company was intended to help someone improve their life. And these communications were constantly reviewed in order to see what people liked and used the most – that feedback was more important than that original communication itself. That they would just as soon be throwing away that message if it shows up as ineffective to the individual who received it.

The small company, even though this is widely poo-pooed, can actually achieve this quality of living and exchange with the people who want to exchange with them for their product or service.  Really. And you can imagine if the success of that were spread to the mega-corporations…

This is what you’re going to get in this book – and why most shouldn’t read it.

I’ve peeled back the silly, poofy nonsense and let you in on the real bottom-line of the things I mention.
There’s a warning here: the bulk of the people who read this book probably won’t really put it to use. A minority will shill about it and complain and turn it back in to get a refund. And just as large a minority will put it to use and will earn an incredible amount of money by helping people solve problems in their lives.

This book isn’t for people who aren’t going to use it. Sure, buy it and give it away as a gift if you don’t see you will ever use it. Or put it on your shelf until you’re ready for it. I don’t want to waste your time. I just want to talk right now to those people who are actually, factually going to use this stuff to really improve the quality of life on this planet – doing everything they can from here on out.

What this book consists of

Essentially, I’m taking this old book I put together earlier (over the last two years) and revisiting in light of real application. It was about 800 pages long and had a DVD full of data, programs, and material.
Out of all this compiled data, I boiled this down to just what works. By using real world tests.

During these past two years, and as I’ve found or or proved/disproved stuff, I’ve mostly blogged about it. Sometimes I’ve written essays for my own understanding and never got around to publishing them. In other cases, I’ve found articles that people have written which are very effective and true.

You can consider this a set of organized research notes, preceded by a summary for each chapter. And there are some ebook supplements, where I had a bunch of stuff collected on that specific area. Anything not immediately useful (or would take you off on a tangent), I’ve moved over to companion CD’s so you can do extra study on these to your heart’s content – if you want.

This is then a cobbled-together set of articles which add up to some very basic, very powerful data and tools that anyone who reads, understands and applied them fully will undoubtedly get all the fortune and success they really want.

When you should read this book

It follows on my online lesson series of ‘How to Roll Your own Blog’ – since people should get out and get their hands dirty (so to speak) on the web before they start to try to make any income from it.
I expect that you’ve already had a blog and built a site or two and generally fooled around and gotten your feet thoroughly wet in this Internet stuff.

Don’t try to use this before you’ve already gotten your basics going as far as how to get stuff posted on the Internet. There’s plenty of videos out there you can search for about getting started at all. But they aren’t linked in this book, because this one isn’t particularly for newbies.

This book is for hard-core, hard-working people who know they actually want to get ahead in life and get more for the time they invest – and who know there is something better for them if they will just put a little extra in. It’s been written for people who have been around the block, like me.

I just figured that I’d share what I had to find out the hard way so you don’t have to. Doesn’t mean you don’t have to work at this, but it does mean you shouldn’t have to work as hard as I did to scrape this up and boil it all down to basic laws and principles.

As I go, I’ll work to explain those to you as best I can. And also show how stupid this system is – and how easily these "gurus" make their money (by scamming people) but don’t do a damned thing to improve this planet or its cultures.

But don’t believe a word I say in this book. Prove it for yourself. Google the data yourself, run your own tests.
Because I can say this now – if you’re here just to learn how to "make money" – you’re reading the wrong book. Sure, you can "make money" if you work at the Federal Reserve where they print it. (Or at a credit card company where they invent charges for you to pay.) Everyone else earns their money by giving something valuable and getting something valuable in return.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

The first step is to weed out the people who can’t or won’t use this to improve the world around them. So I’ve already done what I can to discourage the casual reader in search of mere entertainment.

The next step is to educate you brave, loyal readers (who have stuck with me this far) on the real facts about how to earn any amount of income they want by exchanging their valuable time for a valuable exchange – but on their own terms, not because someone offered them a job. 

And you’ll only do this by tearing this book apart as you apply it.
And if I haven’t scared you off by now, congratulations. Welcome to this ride of your lifetime.
Now let me get out of your way so you can get on with it…

Dr. Robert C. Worst ell
July 17, 2009