This is the third part of recurring income tactics series, if you have not read the previous recurring income tactics, do check out the first part and second part here. As mentioned previously, recurring income is the ultimate goal that home entrepreneur should seek after. This is the only income that provides stability and reliability for long term. So in this post, we will look at another recurring income tactics – by writing and selling your own electronic Book (aka eBook or digital book).

Why Write and Sell Your Own eBook?
eBook is very popular today due to the strong demand of self-help digital products. This is the result of the current knowledge-based economy as everyone is looking for ways to solve a problem or learn a new solution or skills. If you can package the solution, advices, tutorials and tips into an eBook, you can turn it into a long-term recurring income by introducing frequent updated version of your eBook. Furthermore, writing an eBook is one-time effort but you can enjoy being paid over and over again. This is definitely ideal for home entrepreneur like you who are pressed for time.

Unlike its traditional counterpart – Print Book, eBook takes shorter time to produce and distribute. Best of all, it does not cost you a fortune to print your own eBook like traditional print book.  Readers can download your eBook immediately online and at any time. This eliminates the waiting time for the book to print and ship. Most importantly, you do not need to worry the logistics and inventory part of keeping your book.

Technology facilitates the Production of eBook
Thanks to the advancement of technology like Portable Document Format (PDF), it is so much easier to convert a document into portable format and distribute widely to the masses. Everyone who has a Adobe reader will be able to read your document from any medium. And now with the introduction of more eBook Readers like Amazon’s Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, it makes reading even more revolutionary.

The multimedia elements of such eBook readers especially Apple iPad makes reading no longer restricted to just flat surface. The multimedia elements like audio, video and 3D bring a whole new perspective for reading. A good example is a scientist – Theodore Gray’s eBook “The Elements“, check the video here and you will know that why Theodore’s eBook application has made Apple iPad a “much-have” today.

I hope Theodore’s eBook success will give you some sparks of inspiration of what you can do for your eBook. Hopefully, it will break away the conventional belief that eBook is limited to just plain text and hyperlinks. In fact, there are a lot more than that. So if you think that you need marvelous writing skills to write an eBook, you are wrong. Theodore’s eBook demonstrates that a collection of photographs can also form an eBook.

In addition, there are many types of eBook, it could be informational, instructional, case studies, research, tips or tutorials. Such eBooks do not require Shakespeare’s writing skill to impress. Most of these eBooks require direct and straightforward writing style to present a solution. Unless your eBook can bring values and benefits to your targeted readers otherwise it serves no purposes even though it is written in perfect English. At the same time, instructional and tutorial eBooks require lesser formality and pages than a print book which expedite the process of writing and publishing.

Everyone can Publish Your Own eBook
With all the good points mentioned above, there seem no reasons why you cannot write and publish your own eBook? As a mature professional, you stand a better chance of writing your own eBook because of your knowledge, experience, expertise and skills.

There are even platforms available to help you to publish and sell your eBook. Websites such as eBay, Free-eBooks, Amazon, Clickbank, Payloadz and Apple iBook Store almost give you a one-stop solution for all your eBook publishing and selling needs. These sites may require you to pay a fee to use their system but it is definitely worthwhile as they takes away the administrative and payment process for you. The fee is negligible compared to print book as you need to give away your profit to publisher, distributor and agent. Selling the eBook on such sites give you total freedom to set your own price and where to sell it.

So if you have not considered writing an eBook for making an income at home, start thinking it today. I will cover more about creating, publishing and selling eBook in future so please remember to subscribe to my RSS or email list for future posts.

At the mean time, here is an eBook guide from Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale on how to “Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as Little as 7 Days”. If you are eager to start a low-risk home business and with steady income, do check out the eBook on how to do it.

When I woke up this morning, it looked like going to be a beautiful day but within minutes, the dark gray clouds started gathering and soon swallowed the whole blue sunny sky. Strong gusty wind rattled the clothes, windows panes and slammed the doors. There was shouting and screaming as people were busily collecting their clothes, closing their windows and dragging their children to school before it was too late. There was already a storm in my house as my family members were panicky rushing to get out to work before the rain started.

Within seconds, the drizzling turned into heavy downpour. It was a 2 hours marathon rain, causing disasters everywhere. Roads were flooded, trees were uprooted, pedestrians were drenched and the public transport system was paralyzed. The siren of ambulance and police added more anxiety to the air.

Since the buses and cabs could not function in the flood, people were rushing ferociously to the train station – their only hope to get to work dry and safe. The trains were already experiencing crush loads during normal day, just imagine the sudden overwhelming amount of passengers, it put even more pressure on its capacity. To rub salt against the wound, the public transport companies had just increased the transport fare despite no apparent improvement in their infrastructure and services. The daily journey to work has become a daily struggle. This morning heavy down pour just added more insult to the injury. As a result, many people were late – reaching offices exhausted, hungry and drenched.
 
…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Despite all the drama, I still managed to start work on time …. safe and dry.

No, I didn’t fly to work by private jet.

But simply because I work from home. You see, my office is my bedroom; it is just a crawl away.

No other times, I would appreciate it more than I did this morning. While my family members were rushing out to work, I was sipping my tea and eating my favorite toasts. While they were battling against the rains and struggling in the trains, I was reading newspaper and watching TV. I was cozy and warm at home while it was wet and stormy outside. I was able to empathize with them as I went through similar experiences when I was working in the corporate world.

Joy of Working at Home
My nightmare stopped when I started to work at home five years ago. It was not a pleasant experience at a start as I used to depend on my colleagues heavily whenever there was technical problem. I missed them very much for lunch or social gathering and even the juicy news from the water-cooler. Nevertheless, I managed to set up my home office and business sole handedly and never looked back at my choice.

Ever since I started working at home, I finally realized the true joy of it.

… I started to have more personal time.

… I feel more relax and peaceful as no more bosses screaming down my neck.

… I can eat, walk and breathe more slowly now.
    (My body love the slow pace. I used to have gastric problem whenever I was
stressed but it gives me lesser problem now.)

… I have more time for my family members especially, my mum.
   (She used to complain her children treat the home as a hotel).

So if you dislike the daily traveling nightmares, increased transport fares, overcrowded buses, trains and even the rain. Think of the possibility of working at home. Be it your own business or working remotely from your office, technology has made this possible now.

You’ll soon discover the joy of working from home and love it more than I do.

If you have positive experience working at home, please share at the comment box below. I would like to hear how you are doing at home as a home entrepreneur.

Many people dread the ideas of starting a business at home because of the instability and unpredictability of income. Majority prefer to keep their day jobs even though they are unhappy and disappointed with their jobs. The only reason is a guaranteed pay check is paid every month regardless rain or shine.

This is the most common misconception of starting a home business. It is, however, no longer true if you choose your home business model carefully such as affiliate marketing business model. It is probably the safest and fastest way of building home business online without the hassles of keeping inventory, billing, shipping and customer services. It allows you the total freedom of working anywhere and anytime.

Besides the benefits mentioned, the most powerful part about affiliate marketing is its ability to give you long-term and recurring income just like your day job. Most importantly, you only require to put in one-time effort of attracting customers to sign up. Once the customers sign up, you will be paid lifetime commission as long as the referred customers continuing using the merchant services. This is definitely an ideal option because you would not need to spend endless hours and efforts to continue promoting the affiliate products.

But beware not all affiliate programs in the market provide such commission structure, you must check carefully before signing up. A good place to start is MoneyToplist.com; it is an online directory which listed all the affiliate programs that provide residual and lifetime commission. These types of affiliate programs will not only pay you the first sales commission but as long as the customers who continue using the merchants’ services, you will be paid. That is how you can achieve long-term and recurring income for your home business.

How to Select a Recurring Income Affiliate Program?
Generally, the commission for recurring income affiliate programs is quite low compared to those who give one-time commission. It ranges from 5%-15% while the one-time commission can pay as high as 60%. Personally, I prefer performance-based commission, meaning the rate of commission pay to you will increase based on the overall sales volume you can refer. For example, one of the email marketing company offer their affiliate commission based on the following structure.

• Level 3  =  $250/monthly revenue earns you 15% revenue share
• Level 2  = $250 – $5000/monthly revenue earns you a 30% revenue share
• Level 1 = $5000+/monthly revenue earns you a 40% revenue share

I find this is an excellent motivator as affiliates will be motivated to work hard to get more sign up. It also act as a marvelous guide as affiliates can work out in advance how much they need to work on to get the desired income every month.

Where to find Recurring Income Affiliate Programs?
Besides the MoneyToplist.com mentioned above, the most direct and fastest way of finding recurring income affiliate program is going through the affiliate networks. Some of them include Commission Junction, Clickbank, LinkShare and ShareASale, they are good places to start. All these different affiliate networks will give you different categories and various types of products to choose from.

Besides the affiliate networks, there are other independent affiliate programs available in the market but not listed anywhere. You can do a search in Google and approach the affiliate manager directly. If you can prove to them you can be their good promoter, they have no reason to reject you.

What are the Most Popular Recurring Income Affiliate Programs?
The most popular recurring income affiliate programs come mainly from software subscription services or digital products. For example, website hosting services, email marketing services, traffic analytics services, keyword research services, search engine optimization services and ecommerce hosting services. Digital products include home-study courses, video courses, how-to eBook and membership training courses are equally popular.

I hope you can see that it is possible to build a recurring and long-term income at the comfort of your home. A stable and predictable income does not necessary has to come from a day job.

If you think otherwise, please leave your comments below.

Do you want a financial breakthrough for your home business?

Do you miss the regular and recurring income from your previous day job?

Do you want to work once and get residual income forever?

If all of your answers are yes then read this carefully. You are going to learn how a successful guru – Yaro Starack who have built a five-figure membership site and now enjoying consistent and recurring income delivering to his bank account every month.

Yaro first started as a blogger but was struggling for a few years before he found his secret of success. By starting a membership site, Yaro has seen an exponential growth for his online home business and eventually led to his financial breakthrough. His only regret is he was not able to start it earlier due to lack of knowledge and technical know-how. He hopes others will not make the same mistake and thus decide to share his knowledge, experience and successful tactics with everyone. He offers a free report below for those who are interested. The free report -  The Membership Site Masterplan: How to Make $250,000 by Launching Your Own Membership Site give you an excellent overview of how to build a five-figure membership site right from scratch.

Action to Achieve Recurring Income

If you are serious of achieving financial breakthrough and recurring income for your business then don’t miss out Yaro’s membership program. His program – “Membership Site Mastermind” is a 6 weeks course and is opening for registration now. Here is a great chance you can learn to replicate his success and make a five-figure membership site. The course is packed with step-by-step tutorials, audio, video and exclusive membership forum. The best part of the course is he walks you through the steps he used to build up his five-figure membership site. Studying a real-life membership site faciliates one to learn faster and better. Yaro also highlight pitfalls you need to avoid which can save you learning curve and time. In short, it is value for money as it highlights the real-life challenges, requirements and satisfaction of setting up and running a membership site.

His course is broken down into the following modules:

Module 1: Topic Selection and Preeminence

Module 2: Traffic Generation

Module 3: Human Resources and Technology

Module 4: Content and Pricing

Module 5: The Launch Process

Module 6: Post Launch

If you want more details of the above modules, you can check it out at the Membership Site Mastermind. Yaro is offering a special bonus for those who join his program by Tuesday the 16^th of March, you will get his new book – Definitive Guide to SEO for Bloggers for free. This is a great book that teaches you all the great tips of optimizing your membership site so grab a copy while you can.

The Membership Site Mastermind program is open only twice or less per year so don’t miss out this great opportunity otherwise you would have to wait for the next round.

If you are looking for recurring income stream or want to achieve massive financial breakthrough for your online business, this might be your life-changing chance!

This is a post that reminds us that most business empires today start from a humble beginning. In this time of bad economic, a great story like this will give us hopes and inspire us to achieve our dreams regardless where we start. Below is a list of 20 business empires who have started their businesses either from a apartment, bedroom, dorm room or garage but have outgrown their businesses from a humble place into an empire.

Alibaba.com

Founder:  Jack Ma
Where it was started: In his apartment at Hangzhou, China

Jack Ma (Ma Yun) founded Alibaba.com in 1999; China-based business to business marketplace site that now serves 40 million users.

Having failed his college entrance exam twice yet becoming an English teacher in the same university and having learned the internet by himself, Ma was the first man to put China in the worldwide web. With no money, no technology and little knowledge of the internet, Ma gathered 18 people in his apartment and talked for two hours of his vision which raised him $60,000 as initial capital that started today’s biggest business to business online trading company.

His success in his local shores has paved way for another venture, Taobao.com, a top consumer-auction website that is so successful that made E-Bay China to close down.

Apple Computers

Founder:  Steve Jobs 
Where it was started: His bedroom then moved to their garage in California.

Steve Jobs together with his buddy Steven Wozniak, who are both high school drop-outs, created Apple computer on April 1, 1976. The buddies agreed to form a company to market the new computer, which eventually took off in 1977 with the Apple II.

Going up in the industry is not easy for Apple. Competition is tough. To be on top of the industry, Apple developed major edge over their competitors. The main edge Apple gain is the Graphical User Interface (GUI) capability of their machines. Mac is the 1^st personal computer to use the user-friendly interface with features like the trash can, windows, drag-and-drop file moveability, and plug-in-and-play compatibility. Today, it’s not just the user-friendly interface that separates Mac from other products. The speed, productivity, and security of Mac PC are by far the best in the industry.

Auntie Anne’s

Founder:  Anne Beiler 
Where it was started:  Homemade pretzel sold on a Snack stand in a market Downingtown, Pennsylvania

On a farm in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in an Amish society best known for their simple living, plain dress and resistance to the adoption of many modern conveniences was where Anne Beiler was raised. Her family lived without the conveniences of a television, a radio, a car and electricity. It’s when her family converted to Mennonite, a conservative church that permits electricity and vehicle usage, when she was a toddler that they had the luxury of watching television or listening to the radio.

Anne’s family was poor but, having asthma, Anne could not do much hard labor outside but that didn’t stop her from helping her family survive and so she learned how to bake. She started selling homemade pies and baked goods at a food stand at age 12, learning the basics of marketing and commerce. As is typical with Amish/Mennonite children, Anne left school after eighth grade and only returned to academia to receive her GED, along with two honorary doctorates, when she was 50.

She bought a vendor stand and sold pretzels, among other goods, in a farmer’s market in Downingtown in 1988. Her Pennsylvania-Dutch style pretzels took some time to perfect but soon became a hit. This was where Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels began. She poured energy into her business, often working 17 hours a day, and applying everything she learned through experiences like customer service, which she learned while waitressing as a teen. By the following year, she opened nine stores, seven farmers’ market, market stands and two franchises.

As the progressive years pass, the concept of a mall-based shop seemed the most productive, as shoppers can smell the aroma of baking pretzels, watch bakers rolling the dough and try free samples. Auntie Anne’s pretzels are easy to eat, healthy and on the go with shopping bags in hand. They targeted mall shoppers and later expanded to train and airport terminals.

Dell, Inc.

Founder:  Michael Dell 
Where it was started: His dorm room at University of Texas (The picture below shows him revisiting the place where he started his company in 1984 together with the new occupants.)

As a freshman at the University of Texas in Austin, Michael Dell showed his heart to be a businessman. He started his business by selling personal computers in his small room in the school’s dormitory. Dell knows that buying computer parts in wholesale is a lot cheaper than buying an assembled personal computer. He would then assembled the parts that he bought into clones of IBM computers, and sold them by mail order to customers at a price lower than that of the computer stores. His business approach was very effective and soon he was earning $80,000 a month. The success pushed him to drop-out from school and pursue his business ideals.

Dell’s direct marketing strategies, print ads and superior brand quality allows them to win huge market share. Dell’s computers became the top brand name in the direct-mail market and now one of the most recognize brand in the computer industry.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP

Founder: William (Bill) Hewlett and David (Dave) Packard
Where it was started: Garage in nearby Palo Alto

In 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded HP. They started their business on a small Palo Alto garage. What started small is now one of the most powerful brands. HP’s first product was an audio oscillator—an electronic test instrument used by sound engineers. Walt Disney was the first customer of HP to try their audio oscillator. The audio oscillator was used in the movie Fantasia to develop and test innovative sound system.

To preserve the history of HP, the “HP Garage” on 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto was restored to its condition much as they were in 1939. Completion of the project was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting on December 6, 2005.

IKEA

Founder:  Ingvar Kamprad 
Where it was started: Around the neighborhood of Älmhult, Småland, Sweden riding a bicycle.
 

Who would have thought that a young boy selling matches around the rural neighborhood of Älmhult, Småland, Sweden while riding his bicycle will grow up to be a billionaire. Ingvar Kamprad is raised in poverty on a farm near the small village of Agunnaryd. At his very young age, the business mind is already there. He observed that buying items in wholesale is cheaper that buying items in retail. He then used this idea to re-sell items individually at a low price but still with a profit. A match expands to flower seeds, greeting cards, Christmas tree decorations, and later pencils and ball-point pens.

At the age of 17, Ingvar uses the money from his father to establish his own business. Ingvar named his business from his initials (I.K.) plus the first letters of Elmtaryd (E) and Agunnaryd (A), the farm and village where he grew up, thus the business name IKEA.

What started from Matches now is a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products still with very affordable prices.

JimmyBeansWool.com

Founder:  Laura Zander 
Where it was started: Her home in Reno, Nevada

The million dollar knitting business of Laura Zander all started as a way to climb up after being laid-off in her former job as an engineer. Artistic and talented Laura amazed the market with her fashionable designs and superior quality of her products. The small shop in Reno, Nevada soon got into the spotlight with the Hollywood Celebrities.

Growing competition is never a treat to Laura’s Jimmy Beans Wool. Laura sees this as a business opportunity and a way to further improve her business. In August 2002 Jimmy Bean Wool officially launch their website jimmybeanswool.com. This was the door to further expose her business and get more attention from the larger market. Customers are no longer limited to buy in her shop in Reno they can now buy her products online as well.

Nine Dragons Paper

Founder:  Zhang Yin 
Where it was started: In her and her husband apartment in Los Angeles before they went back to China

The woman who made millions from waste paper came from a soldier’s family in Heilongjiang, China. She was a former accountant Hong Kong who lost her job when the company went bankrupt. This downfall gave Zhang the power to start making money from waste paper. Hard labor is just a daily routine for Zhang. From a mere 30,000 Yuan (about $4.000) she was able to build the Nine Dragon business empire. In 1990, Zhang and her husband Lai Ming-chung moved to Pomona, California to start a paper collection company in their apartment (later became the Ameican Ching Nam, Inc.). They would buy waste paper from garbage dumps, and send it back to China to be made into packaging for China’s growing consumer-goods market. Zhang then started the Nine Dragons Paper at Pearl River Delta which later expanded into production of cardboard.

Panasonic

Founder:  Konosuke Matsushita 
Where it was started:  Two story house in the Japanese village of Wasa with only three staff.

The Panasonic brand was created from the elements “pan” meaning “all” combined with “sonic” meaning “sound”, because it was first used for audio equipment.

The company that was to become Panasonic was started on March 7, 1918, when Konosuke Matsushita moved from his tiny dwelling to a larger two-story house, and set up Matsushita House wares Devices Manufacturing Works. The staff consisted of three people: the 23-year-old Matsushita, 22-year-old Mumeno and her brother Toshio Lue, then just 15.

Converting their three-room ground floor into a workshop after installing two hand-operated presses for molding insulation, Matsushita was convinced that there was a huge, untapped market for convenient, high quality household electrical fixtures. He stayed up late refining his designs, ultimately choosing to manufacture new products. Their products became a hit because it proved of higher quality than other products on the market and were 30% to 50% cheaper. The company employed 20 people by 1918 year-end.

Products were initially sold through a single wholesale outlet but this agreement broke down when sales fell due to heavy price cutting by other manufacturers. Nevertheless, as Matsushita began dealing directly with other wholesalers, sales grew and the company found itself on firm footing.

Panasonic started off with a desire to create things of value. As hard work and dedication result in one innovative product after another, the fledgling company takes its first steps towards becoming the electronics giant of today.

ZARA

Founder:  Amancio Ortega
Where it was started:  His own living room in Coruña, Spain.

Amancio Ortega, a railway worker’s son, started as a gofer in a shirt store and started making dressing gowns and lingerie in their living room with then-wife Rosalia Mera, also now a millionaire.

They named their company Inditex, and their clothesline Zara and their business became one of the world’s most successful apparel manufacturers. Today, Inditex has more than 4000 stores in 71 countries, sales skyrocketed to $12.3B.

Inditex exported its cheap chic Zara stores to four new markets last year: South Korea, Ukraine, Montenegro and Honduras.

They also have personal investments in gas, tourism, banks and real estates. They own properties in Madrid, Paris, London, Lisbon plus a luxurious hotel and apartment complex in Miami, a horse-jumping circuit.

Amancio’s daughter, Marta, is being groomed to be his successor at Inditex.

In addition to the checklist for starting a home-based business, here is an interesting and short videos by AllBusiness.com on how to start a home-based business specially made for stay-at-home mum.

The video highlights things that stay-at-home mum needs to consider before getting started on a home-based business. Questions such as the following:

1. Who is Your Target Audience?
2. What Type of License Do You Need?
3. Do You Need a Website?
4. What Supplies Do You Need?
5. Should You Join a Trade Assocation?

Click on the video to listen more and don’t forget to check out the recommended website www.sba.gov (A small business Administration) for more details.