Dear ETR: "How can I generate an income in Rome?"

"I have decided to live in Rome. I am 60 years old, and have about $75,000 in savings. At the present conversion to the euro, that won’t go very far. I am a self-employed building contractor with good communication skills. I have a degree in construction and one in business administration.

"Any suggestion as to ways of generating an income over here without going to work as an employee?"

- Chris Hodges

Rome, Italy

Dear Chris,

Rome is a great city. One of my favorites.

You can live an amazingly rich life in Rome without spending a ton of money. The great luxuries in life – conversation, food, wine, art, and architecture – are abundant there… and very inexpensive.

But you are right about your $75,000 in savings. It won’t go far. You will need to earn a living almost immediately. With a European Community passport, getting a job is nearly impossible, even if you wanted to. So what can you do?

There are basically three choices:

1. You can earn money illegally by selling merchandise on the streets, working without papers, etc. The most obvious choice for you would be to do something in the building trade. But given the weak economy for construction in Rome now and your lack of familiarity with Italian methods (and Italian), I don’t think this is a good option.

2. You can earn an income as a freelance professional – a marketer, a copywriter, a graphic artist, a photographer, etc. There are all sorts of freelance jobs you can do for U.S. corporations while living overseas. But you need the skills.

If you are interested in this option, check out the programs that AWAI provides. It will take you a year or two to develop your new skills and get some clients, so you’ll need to support yourself till then with your savings. The good news is that you can complete the AWAI programs – and even search for clients – on the Internet. And you can do it no matter where you live.

3. You can start your own Internet business – either an information-publishing business or something else that doesn’t require a large capital investment. ETR has several very good programs to choose from. It may take you a few years to get up to full speed. But, again, you can complete and implement these programs from anywhere in the world.

What you should do now is begin to contact Americans who live in Rome. Start with the U.S. embassy in Rome, and then call or write American universities that have programs there. Ask everyone you meet to recommend you to someone else. Be friendly. Be grateful. Ask questions and stay in touch. You’ll have dozens of people a phone call away who can help you find work and enjoy yourself.

- Michael Masterson

[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]

"What is the fastest way to make money on the Internet?" I’ve been asked that question more than once by aspiring entrepreneurs.

There are thousands of ways to make money on the Internet. You can do it in a few minutes by selling stuff on eBay, Amazon, or thousands of other sites. But a lot of entrepreneurs want to know how to do it with a Web-based business. One that generates monthly income. So I’m going to show you one of the fastest ways to make money with a Web-based business – and it may surprise you.

In 1996, I built my first Web-based business. I sold it three months later for a small wad of cash. Granted, my puny business was not a billion-dollar venture like Facebook, YouTube, or HotMail. But it was profitable the first month it went live. And 12 years later, I’m still building, buying, and selling Web-based businesses – and having a blast doing it.

The problem with building a profitable Web-based business from the ground up is that it’s not always fast. Granted, it’s fairly simple to set one up – especially for information products, memberships, or continuity-type programs – but it usually takes a while to make it profitable.

An example of a "membership" site would be one that charges a monthly or annual fee to access information, a publication subscription, or a buying club (like SamsClub.com).

A "continuity" website would be one that offers products or services on a continuing basis (like a flowers-of-the-month service).

It takes some time to build a site around a proven product, let alone an unproven one. On top of that, the site needs to be tested so it "flows" (walks prospects through the sale process) as easily for you as it does for your customers. And you have to develop a landing page or sales letter that actually closes a sale – without any human interaction.

But… you can buy a Web-based business that is already making money! I’ve done it myself.

Three years ago, I acquired a small, unknown website from a struggling company for one of my clients. It featured software reviews and recommendations. It also included an opt-in subscriber list that the owners used to send monthly updates. Today, the site receives more than 100,000 page views each month, and the opt-in subscriber list has grown by more than 900 percent. In other words, the value of that Web-based business has increased significantly.

It’s never been easier to acquire a profitable Web-based business. Over the last 12 months or so, a lot of people have become strapped for cash. Real estate foreclosures, bankruptcies, and defaults are at 30-year highs (by some estimates). This situation has affected some Internet savvy Web-based business owners and entrepreneurs too. And they’re interested in selling their businesses for cold, hard cash.

But money troubles aren’t the only reason Internet business owners are selling. Some simply want to reduce the number of sites they have and downsize. Others build Web-based businesses purely with the intent to sell them. Kevin Ham, for example, an entrepreneur in Vancouver, owns more than 300,000 domain names. In a recent interview, he said he’s building businesses around some of the domains and plans to sell them this year and next.

When the economy turns south, the end result is thousands – in some cases, tens of thousands – of profitable Web-based businesses on the market. Sometimes you can pick up these gems at a deep discount.

You can find Web-based businesses for sale through conventional means, like business brokers, in the business-opportunity listings of large newspapers like The New York Times, or through a network of friends and collogues.

But there’s an even better way…

I’ll tell you about it in a minute. But first, keep in mind that though Web-based businesses have many advantages over brick-and-mortar businesses, you’ll still need to perform some due diligence if you’re planning to buy one. That would include looking at the business’s cash flow and expenses, the viability of its products, and the goodwill it’s generated (i.e., what people are saying about the company/products on blogs and forums).

Keep in mind, too, that the Web-based business under consideration may be specializing in a product that is outdated or no longer competitive. For example, the site may be selling an e-book of search engine optimization tricks and tactics. And though it enjoyed spectacular sales over the past several years, the competition is now squeezing it out of the market by offering better products at lower prices.

If it turns out that the business is selling a dying product, it is possible to improve it and revive the business – but only if the "essence" of the product is still viable. Let’s say the product is an e-book about making money with Google AdSense. Though the sales and market share for the product may have deteriorated, the concept still works. With a little tweaking and a better marketing strategy, you should be able to bring it back to life.

Now, let me tell you about the best place to find a Web-based business for sale: the Internet. There are hundreds of websites that feature potentially profitable Web-based businesses (and domains) where you can start your research.

Here is a list of the top 11:

• Afternic
• BuyDomains
• BuySellWebsite
• CraigsList (Any City > For Sale > Businesses)
• DNForum
• GoDaddy
• GreatDomains
• NamePros
• Sedo
• SitePoint Marketplace
• ViperBusiness

How much does a Web-based business cost?

You can purchase a Web-based business that offers a single information product for as little as $1,000. You can also purchase multi-faceted Web-based businesses that offer numerous products, services, and opt-in subscriber and customer lists for $500,000. In my experience, there is an abundance of Web businesses for sale in the $10,000-$20,000 range.

The greatest advantage to acquiring an active Web-based business is the immediate cash flow. Most profitable Web-based businesses will not require a lot of setup or training either. What’s more, a profitable Web-based business will typically have all of the "bugs" and technical problems worked out.

Once you have a successful Web-based business, you can apply the same "formula" that made it successful to test new products, services, and markets. But don’t mess with success. In other words, don’t try to add a product or service to the successful website. Launch another site instead. I have seen many entrepreneurs mess with a profitable formula and drive their Web-based businesses into the ground.

You can also "broker" Web-based business sales for extra income. For example, you can buy and sell Web-based businesses (and/or domain names) quite easily on most of the sites I listed above. When you become a Web-based business (or domain) broker, you don’t even have to run or manage an online business.

Purchasing a profitable Web-based business is one of the fastest ways to make money on the Internet. Start researching the market today – and get ready to launch your Web-based business empire in 2008!

[Ed. Note: If you’re looking to start a business but just can’t come up with the right idea, consider subscribing to Marc Charles’ weekly Profit Center Dispatch service. Marc’s reports tell you how to get started and who to market to. He also includes insider tips to accelerate your success.]

In March, I spent four hours giving two seminars at the Learning Annex in Los Angeles – and I walked away with about $2,000 in my pocket. Since I needed to be in Los Angeles anyway for other business, that money is what I would call "gravy."

It’s "gravy," because it was extra money that I picked up by speaking about subjects I’m very knowledgeable about and actually like discussing – so it only took me about an hour to prepare for both seminars. And, frankly, if I hadn’t been presenting those seminars, I would’ve just been trying to find some way to kill time before my meetings the next day. So, it was like found money.

Though I "only" made about $500 an hour for that gig at the Learning Annex, I’ve personally seen top speakers earn as much as $10,000 an hour when you combine their speaking fees with their profits from "back-end" sales – products or services they sell to people attending their presentations.

And speaking offers an additional income opportunity. In fact, as a direct result of my two Learning Annex seminars, I expect to earn an additional $15,000 this year (half of which I’ve already pocketed). This amount of money certainly isn’t a fortune, but it’s a nice piece of change that I’m picking up with little effort.

Here’s how…

One of the seminars I gave was on the art of direct-mail copywriting. This is a craft that I’ve been fortunate enough to become well schooled in as a result of completing AWAI’s basic copywriting program and masters program.  Since completing these programs, I’ve had the chance to earn a nice six-figure income in the direct-mail business over the last few years.

At the end of my seminar on copywriting, two attendees approached me and asked if they could possibly hire me for some copywriting projects for their businesses. While they both felt they had learned a lot from my presentation, they realized they weren’t going to be able to get the results they needed for their respective businesses just from what they learned by listening to me for a couple of hours. I gave them my contact information and invited them to get in touch whenever they were ready to do business.

Since then, both have contacted me to procure my services as a copywriter. And one of them has become a steady repeat client.

This is not the first time I’ve spoken on a subject and had people want to hire me after the presentation. After a seminar I did on screenwriting, for example, an attendee asked me to help him with his scripts. I picked up a quick $5,000 from this gentleman – something I did not expect to happen when I agreed to do the presentation.

Aside from all the money you can make, there some other really attractive reasons to get into speaking as a business:

• You can speak about a subject you love – turning just about any type of expertise into a business.
• You can start the business with virtually no capital.
• You can easily do it part-time.

To start a business that can help you find new clients in addition to earning speaking fees and profits from back-end sales, take the following steps:

1. Determine a skill you have that is in high demand in the marketplace – one that people in your audience might be interested in hiring you for in the future.

Some subjects make perfect topics for seminars or other speaking engagements – and can earn you income via speaking fees and back-end sales – but might not generate much income from people who want to hire you afterward.

For example, if you are an expert at preparing very economical and delicious family dinners, there’s an excellent chance that you could attract an audience of people who want to learn how to prepare those meals. And there is the potential for back-end sales to them with such products as recipe books or instructional videos. But it’s unlikely that people who are interested in creating economical meals would want to hire you to cook for them.

On the other hand, if you were giving a lecture on how to catch more bass in the Everglades, you could likely attract a good paying audience and also sell them various back-end products … fishing lures, videos, and maps, for example. Plus, it’s likely that some of the attendees would want to hire you to guide them on a fishing expedition. And it’s just as likely that they would be willing to pay you a lucrative fee for providing such a service.

2. Create a curriculum that will sound attractive to potential attendees and provide them with a valuable learning experience.

To market your seminar, you need to spell out exactly what the attendees will learn. And to get your attendees to want to hire you after the event, you must prove to them that you are a knowledgeable expert and have solid skills that would benefit them. So you want to make sure you provide high-quality information with real value during every speech you give.

3. Market your speaking business to people who will be interested in hiring you.

Your speaking business can go one of two ways: A third party can hire you to do the presentation or you can produce the event yourself.

Which third parties should you approach? That depends on your subject matter. A place like the Learning Annex, for example, offers hundreds of courses on business and all sorts of lifestyle subjects. So if you are an expert in something like Internet marketing or Zen meditation, the Learning Annex could be one third party you’d want to market your presentation to. But if you are an expert in urban planning and engineering, the Learning Annex won’t be for you. You might be better off contacting industry organizations or large engineering firms.

If you want to produce your own speaking events, you’ll need to get your message to prospective attendees directly. Again, the nature of your subject will determine how you’ll go about promoting it. If you want to give a seminar on how small-business owners can save on taxes, a direct mailing to a list of small-business owners in your area could be very effective. If you want to give a seminar on improving back pain through yoga, you might advertise in local general-interest publications or consider partnering with another business that has a client/customer list of likely attendees – like a chiropractor – instead.

A speaking business can be a full-time business that can generate an income as high as six or seven figures… or it can be a side business you run on weekends that brings in extra cash and additional clients for your primary business. Either way, if you have a skill or knowledge that others would be willing to pay to learn, a great new business awaits you.

[Ed. Note: Paul Lawrence is a produced screenwriter, direct-mail copywriter, and business author. He is also the creator of the Quick and Easy Microbusiness System, ETR’s program for starting a business for under $100. Learn how to make as much as $500 to $5,000 an hour just by talking about a subject you love by clicking here.]

I was so excited my hands were shaking.

It was 7:13 p.m. on August 25, 2004, and I had just completed a content-rich, 70-minute teleseminar interview with personal-development and goal-achievement guru Brian Tracy.

Three hundred forty-two participants paid the $29.95 tuition without raising an eyebrow, and 83 percent of them opted to pay $10 more (the "upsell") to get unlimited download (and replay) access to our online release of the audio files and enhanced transcripts of the interview.

If you do the math, you’ll discover that the 70-minute teleseminar generated $13,081.50 in revenue, or $186.89 a minute. But the story doesn’t end there. Fifty-eight of the tele-participants decided to pay $30 more to acquire our "offline" release of a three-ring binder with the enhanced transcripts and an audio CD of the interview – to chalk up another $1,740. All told, we racked up nearly $15K in income for just a few hours of work!

Since 2001, I’ve trained entrepreneurs, independent professionals, and small-business owners to utilize teleseminars in combination with the Internet to boost and accelerate their business profits. Teleseminars have changed my life. Their leveraging power made it possible to turn my 2001 annual income into an hourly income in 2006… 16 times.

If you’re an entrepreneurial CEO, public speaker, author, or information marketer, you owe it to yourself, your business, and your lifestyle to take a closer look at the revenue-generating potential of teleseminars – even if you’ve never listened to one.

In my experience, teleseminars are the fastest, easiest, most economical way to increase your sales and profits without spending a single penny more on marketing or advertising costs. Best of all, you can conduct them from the comfort of your home, your office, a hotel room, or virtually anywhere else in the world. All you need is a bridge line and a telephone, and you’re good to go. (For unlimited usage of a bridge line at just $47 per month, visit InstantTeleWebcast.com.)

I should know – because, as I write this, I have over 14,100 teleseminar students from every inhabited continent on Earth. I even teach entrepreneurial CEOs an eight-module tele-training program on the subject called Teleseminar Secrets (TeleseminarSecrets.com), which commands $2K and starts on the second Monday of every December.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back-pedal a bit and analyze why the Brian Tracy teleseminar was so successful.

If you visit Brian’s website (BrianTracy.com), you’ll find that his typical audio program is available for $20. Why, then, can he and I command twice as much for a teleseminar? The answer is: greater "marketing intimacy" (in other words, live access), coupled with a 2,437-year-old technology championed by Socrates.

Secret of Socrates Rediscovered

If you follow this time-proven three-step "Socratic" method of inquiry, you too can capture more profits faster, better, and with less effort, even if you’re on a bootstrapped marketing budget.

Step 1: Ask Your Market. Most marketers create their message and then find their market to "monetize" the message. I do the opposite. I first "ask" members of my market what they want, and then ask them to pay for it.

For instance, the Brian Tracy teleseminar didn’t start on the evening of August 25, 2004. It started three weeks prior, with a worldwide survey posted online. After capturing over 860 questions that went into a special database I’ve developed, I chose the 12 most popular topics.

Step 2: Promote to Your Market. You’re not the "marketing genius" – nor am I. Your "market," collectively, is the marketing genius. Once you adopt this mindset, you’ll never engage in marketing guesswork again. That’s why, after two weeks of getting survey responses (and "opt-ins") for Brian’s teleseminar, I was ready to post an online sales letter – one that was ostensibly written not by me but by my "market."

If you visit JustAskBrian.com/teleseminar, you’ll see the actual sales letter that had a conversion rate of over 22 percent and generated over $13,000 in teleseminar tuition fees. How did I come up with a sales letter that was ostensibly written by my "market"? Simply by writing out the survey results.

I happen to know dozens of world-class copywriters who wrack their brains for days trying to come up with a winning "appeal" or "hook" to reel in more sales. I don’t do that, because it’s too stressful for me. And, frankly, I don’t like to work that hard.

Instead, I just ask the people in my market what they want most, and then I give it to them. Follow this process, and you’ll soon realize you no longer need to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with your marketing dollars, because this system eliminates guesswork.

If you’re starting to smile because you’re beginning to realize how easy teleseminar marketing can be with my no-nonsense "Socratic" selling strategy, I want you to know that Step 3 gives you an even greater advantage to almost effortlessly crush your competitors.

Step 3. Repurpose Your Content. Because teleseminars produce audio content, it makes sense to "repurpose" that content and monetize it beyond the money you make from your live event. Put the recording on a CD and sell it. Transcribe the audio and sell the transcripts. Make MP3 downloads available online so your listeners can more "intimately" listen to you on their iPods or MP3 players.

For entrepreneurial CEOs like me, repurposing is the most powerful moneymaking force in the information-publishing world.

Although the repurposing possibilities are almost endless, the single most important thing you must do to monetize your repurposed teleseminar content is make it available for purchase before it’s even published. (Or, in this instance, recorded.) In info-marketing circles, we call this the "pre-publication" release, and it’s mind-boggling how many marketers leave thousands of dollars on the table by completely ignoring this strategy.

This is what I was doing when I first sold the $29.95 "admission" fee to the Brian Tracy teleseminar and then offered the $10 "upsell" for the unlimited download "recordings." (In my experience, this upsell strategy outperforms selling the teleseminar for $39.95 with no upsell.)

Repurposed Teleseminars Make More Profits

Simply ask your market what it wants, promote to your market based on those results, and repurpose your teleseminar content to scoop up more profits with almost no effort.

It’s that easy. And besides Brian Tracy, I’ve done this with other "thought leaders," such as Jack Canfield, Les Brown, Mark Victor Hansen, Vic Conant, Joe Polish, Michael Masterson, Joe Vitale, Janet Attwood, Jay Abraham, Stephen Covey, Michael Gerber, Zig Ziglar, Gay and Katie Hendricks, Harv Eker, Barbara DeAngelis, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Ken Blanchard … just to name a few.

Best of all, you don’t have to be famous to become a seven-figure teleseminar marketer. Like me, you can interview famous people in your business niche and share the profits – and create many ultra-fruitful strategic alliances along the way – all from the comfort of your home office.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian, CEO of Heritage House Publishing Inc., has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients and partners via "electronic marketing" media, such as TV infomercials, online catalogs, 24-hour recorded messages, voice/fax broadcasting, teleseminars, webinars, podcasts, and Internet marketing since 1991. You can get Alex’s insights into information marketing this fall at ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp. To get free instant access to Alex Mandossian’s blog on Electronic Marketing, please visit AlexMandossian.com.]

I wanted to buy a how-to video for a partner-dance called the West Coast Swing, so I went to Google and did a search. As you’d expect, I instantly found 2,480,000 results, including quite a few sites that looked like they might have the professional-level show dancing that I was looking for.

What you wouldn’t expect was that a number of those websites were actually extension pages for YouTube.com.

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ve probably heard of YouTube. It’s a website where anyone can post a video on almost any subject and make it available for the world to view.

At one end of the YouTube spectrum, you’ll find videos posted by silly teenagers to show off their pranks and shenanigans. At the other end, you’ll find serious "audition" videos posted by folks who are hoping to break into the entertainment industry. I know of many struggling actors/dancers/singers/comics who posted a video that became wildly popular – and, as a result, wound up with a deal with a major network or studio.

Based on my own experience, I can tell you that YouTube also has the potential to turn producing instructional or specialty videos into a fun and very profitable business for you. In my first video venture (where I was a partner), we began with under $100. Now, 10 years later, that business still makes over $250,000 annually.

If you are an expert in almost any field, you can produce a video to teach others some of what you know. You can star in your own video – or, if you’re camera shy, hire someone else. One of my most profitable videos features a certified exercise trainer teaching back stretches.

Almost anything that people might be interested in – from cooking to fishing to chess – can be a possible subject for your video. All you’ve got to do is produce it, market it, and reap the profits.

That’s where YouTube comes in. This free Internet phenomenon is a perfect marketing tool for instructional videos.

When I was searching for that West Coast Swing video, I assumed I would find a site where I could buy one. But, on a lark, I decided to take a look at some of the YouTube postings.

To my surprise, I found some excellent footage of the kind of thing I was looking for. Several of the postings had links to websites where I could then buy the full-length video. And because I’d seen samples of the material, I was confident that those videos would have what I wanted, so I ordered one.

It didn’t take me more than another 10 minutes to realize that I could be using YouTube to promote some of my own videos. I have several – including a basic instructional ballroom dance video – that I market. I posted a clip from that video on YouTube and, to my pleasant surprise, it immediately started getting views… and a few sales.

I don’t expect to get an avalanche of sales from this marketing strategy, but I do believe it will continue to be a steady source of extra income for me. Sweetest of all, these sales cost me nothing. There are no pay-per-click fees or profit-sharing deals. All the profits from YouTube-driven sales are mine to keep.

If the idea of using YouTube to market instructional or specialty videos interests you, here’s how you do it:

1. Go to YouTube.com.

2. Register yourself, and create a user name and passcode.

3. Upload a clip of your video. (YouTube provides easy-to-follow instructions. I did it myself – and I’m not very Internet savvy.)

4. List some keywords or search terms that are applicable to your video.

5. On your profile, write a little something about your credentials and put in a live link to your website (so interested viewers can learn more or buy the video).

Using YouTube as a marketing tool is a fabulous way to earn some extra cash. Take a few minutes to try it out and see how it works for you.

[Ed. Note: Paul Lawrence is a produced screenwriter, direct-mail copywriter, and business author. He is also the creator of the Learn more of Paul’s video-business secrets HERE.]