Perhaps the most powerful advantage of using the Internet as a tool for self employment is the cost of acquiring the skills necessary for employment. Unlike traditional educational institutions such as colleges or universities, the Internet gives users access to all types of information, and the only cost that you often pay is the price of your monthly Internet access. For instance, when I was in college, the text books where extremely expensive, a student often spent hundreds of dollars just to buy all the books required for a single semester, and this didn't include the classes.
With the Internet, it is possible for you to get much of the same information for free. In the next chapter, we will go over this in more detail, but there are places online where books can be acquired for either free, or a very low cost, a fraction of what you would pay for a college text book. With the knowledge contained in these books, you can teach yourself the skills which are necessary for you to thrive in your field of choice. The Internet is a godsend for those individuals who are self taught, and who enjoy teaching themselves skills.
Instead of paying college instructors thousands of dollars a semester to teach you skills, with the power of the Internet, you can get the knowledge necessary to learn these skills for rock bottom prices, and through the power of discipline, you can teach yourself these skills. One of the best examples of this is the field of computer graphics and animation. For those who are interested in becoming freelancers in this field, there are a variety of different websites available that often showcase tutorials which give you step-by-step instructions on how to achieve the visual results you need to finish a project, and many of these tutorials are available free of charge.
Instead of going to your local bookstore to pay more than $30 for a graphics text book, with the power of the Internet, you can get this information for free. It has often been said that knowledge is power, but this statement is not entirely accurate. A more accurate statement would be to say that “knowledge is potential power.” It doesn't truly become power until you use it. The good news is that once you have access to the Internet, all the knowledge you need to build wealth is available at your fingertips. In fact, everything, including the clients, software, and other digital tools, are available to you, but you must go out and find them.
Most importantly, you must have the discipline to use them. Many people fail to succeed as self employed freelancers, not because they don't have access to the right tools, but because they don't have the right mindset. All the best tools in the world mean absolutely nothing if one doesn't have the discipline to use them in order to achieve desirable results. Discipline is a critical component in either your success or failure in this arena, as well as any other arena of life that is valuable.
The one thing I love about working over the Internet as a freelancer is that you can live virtually anywhere, without having to worry about commuting to a regular job. In the past, before the advent of the Internet, if you wanted to make a high salary, you often had to move to a big city. Even those that graduated from colleges in a small town would often relocate to larger cities after graduation in order to find employment.
The main problem with doing this is that even though you do make more when working in larger cities, you also get a higher cost of living as a result. Major cities around the world, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, have jobs which offer very high salaries, but these high salaries are often neutralized by the high cost of living which you will experience when living there. Tokyo is currently in the top ten most expensive cities in the world, and it is said that a cup of coffee and newspaper there will set you back $8. In New York City, it is said that you need to make at least $123,000 per year to be considered “middle class.” To understand how high this salary is, keep in mind that the typical American middle class family makes about $42,000 per year.
It is for this reason that many of the high paid employees that live in major cities around the world are not as wealthy as they should be. Even though their annual salaries tend to be much higher than average, they also live in cities where the cost of living is higher than average. In the end, they tend to be in financial situations that are just as bad as those who make much lower incomes. However, by working as a freelancer over the Internet, you completely neutralize this dynamic. The reason for this is because you can earn a high salary over the web while simultaneously living in a location where the cost of living is low.
In fact, not only do some Internet freelancers live in areas where the cost of living is much lower than the average, others relocate to entire countries altogether. Imagine living in a country where the cost of living is dirt cheap, where food and other local services are a fraction of the cost you would pay in your native country, and yet, you earn a salary which is much higher than the local average? This is the newest game in town, and it is being played by those who live in the Information Age, not the Industrial Age.
For instance, I know of online freelancers who live in places such as Costa Rica, and even though the cost of living there is low, it doesn't matter to these individuals simply because their income is earned in cyberspace. What this clearly means is that these individuals enjoy a quality of life that is much higher than not only those who live in the local area where they live, but also in their countries of origin. By moving off-shore while earning a five, six, or seven figure salary over the web, you can amass an enormous amount of wealth within a short period of time.
Perhaps one of the best examples of this is a man by the name of Calvin Ayre. If you haven't heard of him, Ayre is the CEO of Bodog, one of the most popular gambling networks on the web. Despite the fact that online gambling was outlawed in the United States in 2006, Calvin Ayre moved off-shore, setting up a corporation in Costa Rica while simultaneously living on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Because his corporation is not based in the U.S., Ayre continues to earn revenues from American consumers while bypassing U.S. gambling laws.
Because he doesn't live in the Continental United States, the government here can't touch him. Ayre has given his method the name “jurisdictional arbitrage,” and it is just one of the many Information Age techniques that is allowing an enlightened few to build massive amounts of wealth. Calvin Ayre has become a billionaire, and he lives an opulent life of extravagance. If this is the type of life style you desire, this book is the road map that can show you how to get there. Only through the Internet is this type of life style possible; while it can be achieved without the Internet, it is very difficult, and perhaps even dangerous. Men like Calvin Ayre are the future, and as I said at the beginning of this chapter, they are in the positions they are in financially because unlike the general public, they actually understand the “age” they live in, and are using it in a manner which has allowed them to become rich. While the general public is worried about their jobs, and whether or not they can weather the current financial storm, those who are enlightened see this as a time of opportunity, rather than peril.
At this point, you must make the decision of whether or not you want to continue living in the Industrial Age, or live the life of your dreams by living in the Information Age. The Industrial Age had its time, like the dinosaurs, there was a period of time where playing the game by Industrial Age rules was smart. But that time has long passed. For those of us who are Generation Y, we cannot afford to play by Industrial Age rules. Those who play by these old fashioned rules will be decimated by those individuals that play by Information Age rules.
The Internet is a global phenomenon, and it is a key piece of technology which will set the stage for humanity to enter the next age. Making money in cyberspace is infinitely superior to making money in physical space, for unlike physical space, which is finite, cyberspace is infinite. To give you a deeper understanding of this, always keep in mind that the most powerful things in the universe are things which cannot be seen. Think about it. Black holes, wind, and atoms are not visible to the human eye, and yet, there is little doubt as to their existence. The Internet is cyberspace, and cyberspace is just as invisible as wind.
No one can really “see” cyberspace. Sure, if we have Internet access, we can all connect to the Internet and visit search engines like Google to look for information, but the truth of the matter is that the Internet is invisible. What this means is that the Internet has untold power, it is probably one of the most powerful pieces of technology ever to be developed. The problem with physical things is that they can be seen and easily destroyed. But when you're dealing with something that can't be seen, it is often impossible to destroy it.
For those of you who don't understand what I'm getting at, what I'm saying is that by using the Internet as a source of income, this invisible global network that has infinite possibilities, your income and financial well being will be much stronger than those people who choose to rely on physical jobs in order to generate their income, and unlike those wealthy people who derive the majority of their income from the physical world, your income and wealth will be much harder to destroy by those who would wish to see you financially harmed.
Think about it for a moment. It is easy for the government to determine that you own a piece of real estate, and should they decide they want to confiscate that real estate, regardless of whether or not it is legal for them to do so, they can. Many successful people who made their fortunes in the physical world often lost everything they worked for because they failed to pay taxes, and it was easy for the government to seize their bank accounts, real estate, and land. In contrast, the Internet is totally different. On the Internet, a freelancer could be making $5,000 per month doing a variety of different jobs, and because they don't have a physical office, piece of real estate, or other physical objects which could be confiscated, it is difficult for the government to track them. Let me point out, that I am an advocate of paying taxes and following the laws, however I believe you can see my point.
If this freelancer lives in a jurisdiction which is separate from the one in which his or her income is earned, once again, it is very difficult for the government or any enemies they have to identify their wealth or source of income. The problem with owning a physical business such as a restaurant, convenience store, or apartment complex is that because these businesses are physical, they can be seen, and this means that it is easy for your enemies to take them away from you. How many times have you heard of a local or national business becoming the target of a frivolous lawsuit? I was once at a financial seminar where a lawyer told the story of a couple who had amassed $1 million, and were ready to retire. Before they could do so, they became victims of a lawsuit filed by tenants renting a trailer they owned, and the government took every penny they worked for.
When people know you have a business, they will assume you have money, and if people assume you have money, you can be rest assured that they will try to figure out a way to get their hands on it. The problem with owning a physical business or piece of real estate is that it is impossible to conceal the fact that you do have money. In contrast, with the Internet, you can make large amounts of money, but your entire business is virtual and is essentially hidden in cyberspace, meaning it isn't readily visible to others.
You often hear about physical businesses getting sued, but you rarely, if ever, here about an Internet company getting sued. The reason for this is because of the very nature of the Internet, as I said before, what cannot be seen cannot be destroyed. When you visit any given website, you truly have no idea how much the owner of that site is making. Perhaps they are only making a few hundred dollars per month, or maybe they are making thousands of dollars per month. They could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. You also have no idea where they are based. These businesses could be based in a home next door to you, in a beach town in Costa Rica or deep in the Amazon Rainforests.
Even Internet savvy SEO and traffic experts who use tools like Alexa and others to measure the ranking of a website are still unable to determine how much the site earns, the only thing they can estimate is the amount of traffic a site gets. Because of this, and the fact that the general public is not Internet savvy, you won't hear about any frivolous lawsuits related to Internet companies anytime in the foreseeable future. In a day and age of frivolous lawsuits, high divorce rates, and increasing government regulation, you “cannot” afford to leave your financial future in the hands of some corporation. In addition to this, even relying too much on a brick and mortar business without having the proper corporate structure set in place can be dangerous to your long term financial health.
We've already established in this book that the corporations most people work for could care less about them, but in addition to this danger, you also have the danger of increased government regulation, frivolous lawsuits, excessive taxation, and things of this nature. The only answer to all these problems is to go digital, to make the decision to derive at least a portion of your income through the World Wide Web, if not all of it. This is the only way that you can protect yourself during these litigious times.
The Internet is the future, but it is also here today. It is a universe within itself, a world that is distinct from the physical one. The laws that apply to the physical world do not necessarily apply to the Internet, and it is for this reason that so many brick and mortar business owners, even those who are successful in the physical world, are totally ignorant when it comes to the web. Always remember that that Internet has a different set of rules, and in order to thrive as a freelancer, you must understand these rules.
It has often been said that space is the final frontier, but I believe that the final frontier is the Internet. Like outer space, which appears to be infinite, the Internet is also infinite, but the difference is that the costs involved with using and exploring the Internet are a lot cheaper than those associated with outer space. However, it is impossible to become a successful freelancer without having the right skills, and in the next chapter, we will teach you how to develop them, and most importantly, how to do so for cheap.