Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 20th, 2010
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
Good News… that sounds like bad news…
(this post was updated July 25, 2010)
If you haven’t started your internet business yet, you may be too late… if you’re an average person.
Average people would like to be rich and successful – but they won’t take the kind of rigorous action getting what they want requires. 95% of people are pretty average in terms of how ambitious they are, which means they don’t have the fire in the belly entrepreneurial success requires. Most of the people you know are average in this way – and thus are poor role models for the budding entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs and business owners pay themselves, on average, about 500% what they would make with their same skills as employees. Thus a $100,000 a year skill becomes a $500,000 a year skill. Most people surveyed would like to own their own businesses, yet most lack the aggressiveness to do so and remain employees for life.
Factoid
The word “employee” incidentally, has the same Scottish root as the words “ploy” and “exploit”. That should tell you something.
But If YOU Are Tired Of Working For Average Rewards And Want To Boost 
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 8th, 2010
I have had people tell me “internet marketing is a sham” when really what they are saying is that they thought making money online would be easier and were disappointed when making money wasn’t easy for them. The information and knowledge of the basics of how to build an online income are widely available – there are no secrets but there are skills to be practiced and worked on. The rewards of mastering certain skills, such as list-building, are great – but the commitment to learn them is great
Written By Loren Woirhaye, July 21st, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
re: the myth of internet marketing
Bear with me, there’s a little back-story here, and you can skip it if you like – but I recommend you don’t because there is some valuable insight buried in it.
Ok… I am unabashed about calling myself an internet marketer and entrepreneur. I started selling stuff on eBay in 1999. In those days there was no PayPal. I didn’t have a digital camera so I shot my pictures on 35mm film and scanned them to upload to eBay. Digital cameras weren’t even close to film-quality at the time and they were silly-expensive to boot… big-boy toys really.
Even before 1999 I had been involved with the old BBS communities as a teenager. My brother and I ran a BBS on an Apple 2 computer using a phone line we put in. People who used the BBS were very supportive and sent donations, which helped cover costs (we were kids, remember, so we didn’t have much earning power ourselves).
So you could say I’ve grown-up with the internet. At 37 I remember having a rotary phone in the house…
The post author,
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 2nd, 2009
Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
I don’t know about you, but in school I got by pretty well churning out reports and written tests using big words and self-important academic grammar.
For writing about ideas those stuff can be appropriate – and in the University environment readers are accustomed to such puffery. Ideas are abstract, which is why when we write about ideas in school papers the language gets complicated.
For advertising copy, chuck the write-to-impress model and get down with the common words we all use every day. If people don’t understand the word you use, you will lose them.
Write short sentences. Break up long sentences into shorter ones. Sometime this is easy. Sometimes it is not, but simplicity in communication is worth reaching for.
Try to write in concrete terms. Not abstract terms. Objects and people are concrete. Rudolph Flesch discovered that comprehension of written text increased when people were the subject matter and when their names were used.
For example: “John drove to Mary’s house and met Mary’s parents.”
The John and Mary story is boring but you know instantly what it means. Comprehension is easy because the words are common and short.
Written By Loren Woirhaye, May 31st, 2009
Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes
Despite having only recently hung-out my own shingle as a writer-for-hire, I’ve been writing copy for my own business ventures, and learning a thing or two, since at least 1999. Even though my businesses until 2005 or were mostly local concerns (aside from selling old tools on Ebay), I still used copy in ads and promotional materials.
I also learned some hard lessons about how many balls you need to juggle to make it in the hard goods business. Finally I threw in the towel and went into marketing and selling stuff only instead of what I had done before, which was design, customize, manufacture, maintain machinery, pick-up all manner of heavy and awkward materials, advertise, kiss clients’ butts, install stuff, work long hours for low pay, market, write copy, try to sell, network, and generally run myself ragged trying to do it all by myself.
Did someone call me a fool?
Actually I learned a lot. I learned that owning a small business is a lot more complicated than doing the same thing just for pleasure, especially if your business involves working with clients AND physical labor.
Call me stupid. Somehow I thought
