Creating Money out of Thin Air

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Hi everybody. Today, I’ll show you how to create money out of thin air.

That is, using knowledge that you already have. And, even better, it’s using knowledge that’s unique to you, so nobody can steal your personal way of creating money out of thin air, even if they read this post too!

What is money

First a simple point. What is money?

Think about it.

Small green pieces of paper are not money. I mean sure, they ARE money, but you don’t need them to have money.

Over 90% of money today is digital. If you went a bank and asked for your money, the bank wouldn’t just go to some vault where they store YOUR money and withdraw that for you. They would simply give you a bunch of small colourful papers, which would REPRESENT the amount of money you had with them.

But you don’t need high-tech computers either. There was money around before them. There was gold, and seashells, and “IOU”s, millenia ago!

No, money is something more fundamental. Put simply:

Money is a representation of value.

You with me so far?

So, to create money, just create value for other people. You can then always find a way to turn that into money.

That’s a deep point, so you might want to pause for a bit if you haven’t considered that before. Or, if you’ve heard it a million times before, read on, because now I’ll show you how to CREATE value out of thin air.

Okay, let’s go on to the REALLY good stuff!

How to create value in one easy step

Here it comes! An EXTREMELY easy formula for creating value:

Join two unrelated fields.

Like Andria Baldovin, a case study from Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week. She knew a lot about yoga and rock-climbing, and she noticed some yoga exercises she knew were great for rock-climbers.

None of the rock-climbers knew them, because they didn’t do yoga, and no yoga folks realized the exercises would be great for rock-climbers, because they didn’t climb. Only Andria, because she knew both fields, realized how much value she could bring to rock-climbers by teaching them the simple exercises. So she created instructional DVDs, and now earns a nice living through that.

Or Brian Clark from copyblogger. He decided to join the fields of blogging and copywriting, because he noticed how useful copywriting advice could be to bloggers. He has built a massively successful blog, by teaching bloggers to create catchy headlines, and snappy interesting content, by applying copywriting principles.

In both of the above cases, the entrepreneurs managed to literally create money out of thin air. Just by joining two unrelated fields they knew about.

How you can apply this

Ok, it’s time to give you action steps to apply this!

The first step is pretty obvious. Pick two unrelated fields.

Now, you don’t need to be an absolute expert at both of them. You just need to know quite a bit about one, and have basic competence in the other.

For example, Andria didn’t need to be anywhere near a stellar rock-climber to realize the yoga exercises would be great for climbers. It takes only a few sessions to realize which muscles always end up stiff after climbing. And she just needed to know a bit about yoga to know that those exercises existed.

If you’re not sure which two fields of your expertise you could join, that’s quite natural. First grab a piece of paper. (In fact, even if you already have an idea, do this anyway.)

Then, on your piece of paper, write all the fields you’re good at. Yes, all of them. There will probably be dozens.

Then, if you want, make another list of all the fields you have basic competence at. This way you have more options

And now the next step…

What to look for – Why this works

This process works because there are always some things that are completely obvious and common in one field, but an absolute revolution in another field.

Alex Sol, an internet marketer, was once passing through Montreal. He saw a shop selling LED signs, and on a whim decided to stop there. He walked in, asked the business owner how the business had been going, and then if they have a website.

Since it was 2008, they did, but it was nowhere to be found on Google for their keywords. So Alex offered to make him a website for $1000, and have it rank in Top 5 on google for several of the main keywords.

He delivered in one week (most of which was waiting for Google to index the site), with ease that surprised even himself. It’s very easy to get ranked high on Google if your keywords include the name of the local town.

In Alex’s own words: “I made $1300 for about 2 hours of work. I was completely shocked to realize how much money there is in taking local offline businesses online”.

And the business owner? He got his investment back a week later, since he landed two new clients for a total of $3000.

The above is a great example. Basic keyword optimisation is Internet Marketing 101. Yet it’s something completely foreign and alien to most local business owners.

So what you’re looking for are skills that are completely obvious in one field, and a complete revolution in the other.

If you have your paper in front of you, and can think of some interesting connections between unrelated fields, just note them down. Within a few minutes, you should have several ideas that you can explore in more detail.

And that’s it. You can now start creating money out of thin air! Just bring your knowledge from one field to another.

Cheers!

(Image courtesy of Steve Wampler)