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Second Income / Self-Help Books
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As I'm considering taking some time towards the end of the year to visit Tokyo, I thought now may be a good time to look into an additional form of revenue aside from my 9 to 5. While I expected the self-help market to be full of these books (notable ones include '4 hour work week', 'six figure second income', 'get out while you can'), I was surprised at the almost universal praise these books gain - seemingly everyone who built a business from reading these books have all succeeded, which sounds a little off to me? I'm guessing the genesis of these books is to run a portfolio of low yield yet low maintenance websites; so while your revenue is fairly low, as it's low maintenance and across a portfolio of clients/business interests - you make money in the long-term. What bugs me is that unless these authors explicitly state your not going to be making money from the start, then the respective reviews should be all over the place, as it's just human nature to want more?
Anyone bought into these books, or running business websites alongside their own 9-5? Any books to recommend/avoid? Any general advice?
Anyone bought into these books, or running business websites alongside their own 9-5? Any books to recommend/avoid? Any general advice?
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but they're listening to every word I say
I'm fascinated by self help as a culture, so I read a lot of these.
They're good for introducing concepts. They introduce concepts slowly. 4 hour workweek, for example, isn't about literally working for four hours a week - the author's so anal retentive/add he'd blow up if he worked that little - it's more about arranging work of choice, prioritizing, delegating, and doing a lot of cost/benefit analysis on things, as well as smart price setting and smart marketing.
I liked great swaths of four hour workweek - the parts about prioritizing your life and making sure you meet personal goals in tandem with professional ones are great, as is the attitude of accessibility - the notion that you can, in fact, learn and do things at any point in life. I like his non-linear take on a lot of specific workplace things, like going on a long vacation, or arranging to telecommute. And his home business advice is fine, as far as it goes, but people read it and think the implication is that home businesses are easy. Self employment is harder than having a boss.
"These books" do not have a "genesis" involving multiple low-yield, low maintenance websites. There's no such thing. Real websites sell something. Real self employment is work. Porn? Work. Direct marketing? Work. SEO? Work.
What many of them are built around is essentially arbitrage. I have an acquaintance who made quite a bit of money aggregating public records and selling them to collections agencies, and another who made quite a bit writing quarterly publications on how and where to buy seized or obsolesced government property at auction. I know another person who started a successful quarterly coupon magazine (on of those things you get as junk mail that just has a bunch of local coupons). All of those are the type of home business these books talk about, and those three people are real humans I know personally, not amazon reviews...but...here's the kicker...they still had to work at those businesses.
The reason more people don't get rich off of the four hour workweek method is because it's work. It's clever, organized, efficient work with a high margin, but it's still work.
They don't NEED shill reviews (although some of the authors probably aren't above them) because they're very positive books, so when you read one, you usually feel pretty good.
They're like diets for your professional life, essentially - most of them are good approaches that are going to vary in efficacy based on your adherence and discipline.
I do recommend you read "Vagabonding" by Rolph Potts - it's a book about long term travel.
I also recommend "I will teach you to be rich" by Ramit Sethi. He pushes similar "life automation" concepts to Tim Ferris (the 4 hour workweek guy) but it's more geared toward personal finance. A really good grasp of personal finance changes your life no matter what your income level is. A few years ago, if something happened to my car, I had to supplicate myself to family, a credit card, or the mechanic but now I just take care of it with cash, and it's not because I have a lot more cash, it's because I'm better organized with my money flow.
In your shoes, given the time frame, I would do some serious thinking about things I could do without inventory or investment - do you speak Japanese? Consider lessons or tutoring.
I host a podcast about movies.