I have just finished reading Timothy Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich Expanded and Updated" and on first read some of the most valuable information available in this book for you cheese finders can be found between pages 174 and 178. These pages contain links to websites that cheese finders should sniff and consider nibbling. The links Chris and I are probably most interested in are the ones beginning at the bottom of page 174 and taking up most of page 175 found under the heading "Finding Products to Resell or Manufacturing."
The first subcategory on this head is "Affiliate Networks." The three sites recommended in Ferriss' Expanded and Updated 4-Hour Workweek are:
- Clickbank (www.clickbank.com)
- Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
- Amazon Associates (www.amazon.com/associates)
I have only tried out two of these sites, Commission Junction and Amazon Associates. When I tried out an affiliation with Commission Junction I had a brief run with a blogger blogsite call Great Getaways that was devoted to Travel. I ran several affiliate ads with big names like Travelocity and Priceline and the affiliate terms were really good in my opinion. Commission Junction was easy to use, requiring almost no technical skills, and CJ represents some big names in almost any market that might interest you. However, I did not make a single penny as a Commission Junction affiliate. Homestly, I think it was probably all my fault. Chris will tell you that he can't even get me to fly out to San Francisco for the weekend. So I am probably not the guy to run a travel blogsite. More importantly I had almost no plan for driving traffic to my site and the net is loaded with solid travel sites. (Tripadvisor.com is my fav) I am currently still trying to figure out how to make solid money as an Amazon Associate. Amazon is really easy to use and considering that you are only picking things that you think might interest people visiting your site, the percentages are OK. You start off with a 4% cut of all sales generated from your site that graduates quickly to 7% and then 10%. I have learn more about generating traffic to my site and have sold some stuff as an Amazon Affiliate but, I am still not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination. In addition to what Tim Ferriss recommends in this part of The 4-Hour Workweek, I would suggest adding Google Adsense ads to you site.
Three sites/links that are recommended in The 4-Hour Workweek that I plan on looking into are:
- Alibaba (www.alibaba.com)
Tim Ferriss has this to say about Alibaba: "Based in China, Alibaba is the world's largest business-to-business marketplace. From MP3 players for $9 each to red wine for $2 per bottle, this site is the source. If someone here doesn't make it, it probably can't be made.
2. Worldwide Brands (
www.worldwidebrands.com)
In the Expanded and Update 4-Hour Workweek Ferris explains that the Worldwide Brands site offers an extensive how-to guide for finding drop ship manufacturers.
Ferriss also recommends Shopster (
www.shopster.com) for those cheese finders interested in drop shippers.
For those of you not familiar with the term "drop shipping" - Drop Shipping is when a manufacturer will send a product directly to your customer instead of making you wharehouse products. This is idea for most of us because who has a wharehouse for storing product?
There is a lot more in Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Workweek" (expanded and updated edition). I may provide some thoughts on more of this book later but if you would like to purchase a copy here is the opportunity:
