How much £?

[bodklb]

Can you please help me settle something.
I say that the 4hww is possible with a very low level of income, one that leaves you with almost no disposable income. I reckon you can build from there to the point where you create finance through your muse and create opportunities to achieve your dreamlines.

My brother disagrees. He reckons that the 4hww is for people who have some cash to spare and some level of disposable income.

I really hope thats not the case and it is possible to start with nothing and gain everything
?
opinions

[MattInglot]

In the beginning, especially if you are building a muse, you really don't need money, it just helps. Being an entrepreneur means being resourceful, and the less start-up capital you have, the more resourceful you need to be. Money is a luxury that helps you build bigger and better things, and to do so while spending less of your time in the process, but you absolutely can boot strap it all.

Proof?

Let's look at the things that you will typically need:

Graphic Design Services
I started my first company in highschool. I got a free logo from a friend who was just really awesome. In my laser focus to get the business up, I actually barged into his class and interrupted his teacher so I could get my logo off him in time to get the cards printed that night. Teacher hated me, but I got my logo (not that I recommend being a jerk, I was just really niave and excited). In fact Tilted Pixel's logo was done by a friend as well, for a beer and very little cash. When you need something, lean on friends first, you would be surprised at the exchange rate that beer and food command. This can be applied to so many things.

Web Hosting & Web Development
Free and cheap web hosting abounds. It's not necessarily high quality, but it's free/cheap. Various site builder tools come with free options that also include hosting. Google Sites is an example (if not necessarily the best for muse building). Or you could lean on the friends principle. Lots of people run little hosting reselling businesses on the side, maybe one can help you out? You can build the site with some of the aforementioned website builder tools, some have lots of free plugins specifically oriented to internet marketers (Wordpress can be a nice platform). If you have the money, hiring a professional can lead to more effective results and shortcut through a lot of difficult learning, but the lesson here is you can bootstrap it.

Marketing
This is probably the toughest to bootstrap, but again, endless opportunities for free promotion abound. But hey, let's say you really want to do Adwords or take out a magazine ad cheap like 4HWW suggests. You do need capital for this, but not much. Start with a free $100 Adwords credit. Tonnes of web hosting and other services offer a free Adwords credit to join. They get those from Google, which Google happily supplies to attract new customers. Your $100 richer already, but that's not enough to seriously run experiments on Adwords, so if you are going to use this tool it's time to actually get some cash. I'd say $1000-$2000 spent carefully might be enough to kick-start things. $5000 is a nice sum of money to start up cheap. How do you get $1000 or $2000 or $5000? If you're living in a 1st world country, it is not that hard if you're willing to be patient and wait a few months:

1) Cut back on your expenses for a few months. The easiest for many people is to cut your food budget in half. For some this can be achieved just by not eating out for a few months. Buy only non-packaged food at the grocery store (in most giant grocery stores this means shopping by circling around the outer parameter, but not entering the shelves, except for certain canned foods and other clear bargains). Done right you can end up eating healthier as a nice bonus! If you are in a hurry to start your muse, you can cut out your cable tv, reduce your cell phone plan, etc. If you own a car, walk, bike, take public transit, and save on gas. You don't need to live in poverty, just cut out some of life's excesses. Viola, you're several hundred dollars richer each month.

2) Increase your income. Freelance work is great for extra cash. You can also do odd jobs for hire, or just take on a second job. Let the cash build-up for a few months. Now you have starter income.

3) Ask Friends/family for a loan. This is not as preferable to 1 & 2 because you are creating financial or at least favor debt, or you're giving up equity. For the relatively small money muses require I would really avoid this unless you need to.

Product Development
Do it yourself. Leverage your existing skillsets. eBooks seem to be a popular muse. Software/web applications can work nicely too, if you are a programmer. Promote someone else's products. All of these are free options.

Practical Example that's 100% Free
Build a highly profitable blog like Yaro Starak with his Entrepreneur's Journey blog. It's free to start a blog on Wordpress, it's free to post ads (even better you get paid for it), it's free to join affiliate programs, and it's free (if time consuming) to write blog posts. In my opinion blogs are some of the easiest things to promote 100% for free. Yaro has some nice articles on how he did, including his Blog Profits Blueprint giveaway ebook for joining his newsletter. Note quite automated like Tim advocates, but Yaro claims to have a lot of free time and if all he has to do is write posts and maintain affiliate relationships (the rest can be outsourced), then surely the 10-15HWW is accomplishable. Then you have people that have even outsourced the post writing.


Notice how the only area above I mentioned money in is marketing, even though you could easily use the methods above to aquire capital for accomplishing other parts of your business too? Start-up business owners have a nasty habit of spending their start-up cash on absolutely everything except marketing. $100/month for a separate phone line isn't a problem, or $20/month for really nice hosting, or $100/year on 10 domain name variants, but the same person won't splurge $100 on an ad. The psychology behind it probably has something to do with risk avoidance (the ad may not work and I will get nothing for my money) and the lack of a tangible service. But stop it! If you are trying to start-up and have no money, spend all of the cash I just explained how to make on marketing. The only exception is to buy your own domain name rather than taking a domain for free. There are too many strings attached to free domain names, and a domain is $10/year. Make sure you own your domain.

[bodklb]

Thank you so much.
That was remarkable helpful. I really want to make a massive change in my life and reading Tim's book is the first step.

[Frank]

I sell on ebay occasionally. For an experiment I took a birthday gift of $25 cash and decided to see how quickly I could build it to good money.

I went to some yard sales and found a Pentax K1000 camera being sold for $25 - so that was my buy-in item.

I flipped the camera for $75 on ebay within a week.

I took the $75 and hit some more yard sales. I found a set of Starrett Micrometers for $75 - so that was my next item. Within a week I sold it for $325.

This is where I stopped keeping track. But you can see that it doesn't take long if you have an eye for buying and selling.

Of course, not everyone is good at ebay. It's certainly not a Four Hour Work Week.

But, the overall point is that you can start very small and build quickly if you find the right method.

Good luck.

[run.away]

on a more serious note, i wouldnt sell it if i were you. as youve said, youve got an immaculate car. how often do you come across one as clean as yours? probably not very often. you might be able to sell it for a good price, but youll be giving up what is probably something you will never get another chance to own, in such a condition, that is.

just something to think about.

[run.away]

my boyfriend has had felony charges dropped and reduced to misdemeanor accessory after the fact... what is the maximum time he can be sentenced to, or what is the usual minimum that people charged with this receive?

[tukrumunu]

For free marketing, you can use EzineArticles.com, Facebook Fan pages, Twitter etc.