Page 73 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

can be downloaded by buyers.
4. Create an offer. What exactly are you selling, and why should people

take action on it? Learn more about offers in Chapter 7.
5. Decide on a fair, value-based price for your offer. For pricing guidelines,

see Chapters 10 and 11.
6. Find a way to get paid. PayPal.com is the most ubiquitous method, with

the ability to accept payment from users in more than 180 countries.
Other options are available if you want more flexibility.*
7. Publish the offer and get the word out. For an overview of hustling, see
Chapter 9.
8. Cash in and head to the beach! (This step may require further effort.)

*You can find a review of several different payment options in the online
resources at 100startup.com.

Alas, like any trend or business model, not every story of independent
publishing is a success. Many aspiring publishers operate on an “if you build it,
they will come” model. Later in the book, we’ll rename it the “if you build it,
they might come” model—sometimes it works, but many times it doesn’t, and
there’s no guarantee of instant riches. For every online course that becomes a
Mondo Beyondo-size success, many others flounder on with five participants.
For every $120,000 e-book like Brett’s, many others sell two copies (one to the
writer’s grandmother and one to a friend of the family) before fizzling out.

Some of the failures relate to unrealistic expectations. Put simply, some people
want the sun and the fun (or the $300 a day) without the work. Partly as a result
of the allure of working from anywhere, many aspiring entrepreneurs focus
much more on the “anywhere” part than they do the “work” part. Since the work
part is what sustains everything else, it’s better to focus on it from the beginning.
After all, the best thing about a location-independent business is possibility. The
fact that you can head off to Argentina or Thailand on a whim doesn’t
necessarily mean that you actually will.

The classic image of a roaming entrepreneur usually involves a guy or girl
sitting on the beach in a swimsuit, drink nearby, with a laptop propped up against
the backdrop of a sunset. My limited attempts at replicating such a scene usually
involve worrying about the laptop (Will it get stolen? Will I get sand in the
keyboard?) and straining to see the screen against the glare of the sun.