Today, I asked my friend Cal Newport to illustrate how he completely dominates as a post-doc at MIT, author of multiple books, and popular blogger. How does he do it all?

Cal writes one of the best blogs on the Internet: Study Hacks. His guest post shows how you can take I Will Teach You To Be Rich principles — plus many others — and integrate them into a way to use your time effectively.

Below, you’ll learn:

• How to use fixed-schedule productivity — similar to the Think, Want, Do Technique — to consciously choose what you want to work on and ignore worthless busywork
• When to say no — and how to do it
• How a $60,000-a-speech professional manages his time
• Case study: How to use email for maximum time productivity

Read on.

From Cal:

I recently conducted a simple experiment: I recorded the timestamps of the last 50 e-mails in my sent messages folder. These timestamps covered one week of my e-mail behavior, starting on Thursday, October 22nd and ending Thursday, October 29th.

My interest was to measure when during the day I spent time on e-mail. Here’s what I found:

Notice that over this week-long period, I didn’t send any e-mail after 7:00 pm, and only one e-mail after 6:00 pm. There’s a good explanation for this discipline: I end all work around 5:30 every day. No Internet. No computer. No to-do lists. Once I shutdown my day, it’s time to relax.

I must emphasize that I’m not some laid-back lifestyle entrepreneur who monitors an automated business from a hammock in Aruba. I have a normal job (I’m a postdoc) and a lot on my plate.

This past summer, for example, I completed my PhD in computer science at MIT. Simultaneous with writing my dissertation I finished the manuscript for my third book, which was handed in a month after my PhD defense and will be published by Random House in the summer of 2010. During this past year, I also managed to maintain my blog, Study Hacks, which enjoys over 50,000 unique visitors a month, and publish over a half-dozen peer-reviewed academic papers.

Put another way: I’m no slacker. But with only a few exceptions, all of this work took place between 8:30 and 5:30, only on weekdays. (My exercise, which I do every day, is also included in this block, as is an hour of dog walking. I really like my post-5:30 free time to be completely free.)

I call this approach fixed-scheduled productivity, and it’s something I’ve been following and preaching since early 2008. The idea is simple:

• Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.

The beneficial effects of this strategy on your sense of control, stress levels, and amount of important work accomplished, is profound.

The notion is not new. Tim Ferriss famously recommend strict time constraints in The 4-Hour Work Week. He argued that much of the work we do is of questionable importance and conducted at low efficiency. (He made a popular — if not somewhat dubious — appeal to Parkinson’s Law to support the point that more time does not necessarily lead to more results.) If we instead identify only the most important tasks, he said, and tackle them under severe constraints, we’d be surprised by how little time we actually require.

In this article, I want to tell the stories of real people who successfully implemented this strategy – radically improving the quality of their lives without scuttling their professional success.

Jim Collins’ Whiteboard

Jim Collins has sold over seven million copies of his canonical business guides, Good to Great and Built to Last. He attributes the success of these books to his research discipline. As he revealed in a New York Times profile from last May, he leads teams of up to a dozen undergraduates in the process of information gathering. His books require, on average, a half-decade of time and a half-million dollars of expenses to get from their initial premise to the polished ideas. When he enters his “monk” mode to covert this research into a manuscript, he produces, at best, a page a day.

In other words, Collins is a hardworking guy. You would expect, therefore, that like many hard-charging business-world types he would be a blackberry-by-the-bedside workaholic.

But he’s not.

Scrawled on a whiteboard in the conference room of Collins’ Boulder, Colorado office is a simple formula:

Creative 53%
Teaching 28%
Other 19%

Collins decided years ago that a “big goal” in his life was to spend half of his working time on creative work — thinking, researching, and writing — a third of his time on teaching, and then cram everything else into the last 20%. The numbers on the whiteboard are a snapshot of his current distribution. (He tracks his time with a stop watch and monitors his progress in a spreadsheet.)

Collins is a pristine example of fixed-schedule productivity in action. An author with his level of success could easily fall into an overwork trap: long nights spent updating twitter, signing partnerships, building elaborate web sites and launching product lines, speaking at every possible venue. But he avoids this fate.

Even though Collins demands over $60,000 per speech, for example, he gives fewer than 18 per year, and a third of these are donated for free to non-profit groups. He doesn’t do book tours. His web site is mediocre. He keeps his living expenses in check so that he’s not dependent on drumming up income (he and his wife have lived in the same California bungalow for the past 14 years), and he keeps only a small staff, preferring to bring on volunteers as needed.

“Mr. Collins…is quite practiced at saying ‘no,’” is how The Times described him. (He once wrote an article for USA Today titled: “Best New Years Resolution? A ‘Stop-Doing’ list.”)

His fixed-schedule approach to life comes from his simple conviction “to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work,” and his “willingness…to focus on what not to do as much as what to do” has made that possible.

He’s not alone in reaping the benefits of the fixed-schedule approach…

Elizabeth’s Conversion

When Elizabeth Grace Saunders started her first business, a professional copy-writing service, her schedule has “hazardous.”

“I would answer e-mails after going out with friends,” she told me, “and stay up until 2 a.m. finishing projects.”

At some point, she snapped. “I’m not a secretary,” she declared. “I’m not required to jump to respond to everything that crosses my path.”

Saunders adopted a 40-hour a week schedule. This new structure had two immediate impacts. First, she found herself focusing only on the most important tasks. With only a few hours to spare on business development, for example, she couldn’t justify wasting time with the small, ineffectual website tweaks and exploratory e-mails that used to keep her up late into the night. Instead she focused on the core activities that produced results, such as sales calls or the development of new products. The focus generated by this constraint ended up generating more results than her previous schedule, which was more expansive, but also more scattered.

The second impact was her discovery that she could teach her clients how to treat her.

“I’ll answer your e-mail within 24 hours (not 24 minutes), I need notice before starting a project, I will say ‘no’ if my schedule for the near future is already full, and I might schedule meetings up to a month in advance.”

“Choosing how and when I respond to requests has had a dramatic impact,” Saunders notes.

Friends and clients were impressed enough with Saunders’ lifestyle that she eventually left copywriting to become a “time coach” that works with other women in business to achieve similar results. (Her flagship service is called a Schedule Makeover.)

Here’s a typical day in Saunders’ life:

• She’s up at 6 and by 8:30 she’s at the computer.
• The first 1 – 2 hours of her work day are spent doing what she calls “routine processing,” which includes checking calendars, clearing e-mail inboxes, and cementing a plan to follow for the rest of the day. As Saunders describes it, this morning routine prevents her from wasting time deciding how to start, and it frees her of the “compulsion” to be checking e-mail throughout the day.
• She continues with an hour of sales calls. This is often the most dreaded activity for the solo entrepreneur. But by having a regular place in her constrained schedule, she avoids pushing it aside.
• The rest of the day follows the schedule she fixed in the morning: usually a mix of client assignments and at least one business development activity.
• By 5:30 she’s done.

Most entrepreneurs work well past 5:30 (and claim that this is absolutely unavoidable), but Saunders’ business is thriving. The reason is clear: her fixed schedule forces her to do the work that produces results (sales calls, client assignments, major business development activities) and eliminates the hours of pseudowork that many use to fill their day in an effort to feel “busy” (tweaking websites, compulsive e-mail checking, chasing down small business development opportunities).

Saunders is not the only young entrepreneur I’ve met who was surprised to discover that doing less helped the bottom line…

The Baby Factor

Michael Simmons, a good friend of mine, reported a similar story. His company, the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation, expanded quickly in the years following college graduation. Around the time I was reading The 4-Hour Work Week, I started to discuss the possibility that Simmons tone down the hours. It was his company, I argued, so why not take advantage of this fact to craft an awesome life.

Among the specific topics we discussed, I remember suggesting that Simmons cut down the time spent on e-mail and social networks.

“This isn’t optional for me,” he explained. “Any of these contacts could turn into a important partner or sale.”

But then Simmons’ daughter, Halle, was born.

Simmons’ work schedule reduced from 10 to 12 hours days to 3 to 5 hour days. He took care of the baby in the morning, then worked in the afternoon while his wife, and company co-founder, took over the childcare responsibilities. Evenings were family together time.

Halle forced Simmons into the type of constrained schedule that he had previously declared impossible. And yet the business didn’t flounder.

“The baby turns ’shoulds’ into ‘musts’,” Simmons explained to me. “In the past I used to put off key decisions, or saying ‘no’, because I didn’t want to deal with the discomfort. Now I have no choice. I have to make the decisions because my time has been slashed in half.”

“Since out daughter was born about a year ago, our business has more than doubled.”

The Fixed-Schedule Effect

Collins, Saunders, and Simmons all share a similar discovery. When they constrained their schedule to the point where non-essential work was eliminated and colleagues and clients had to retrain their expectations, they discovered two surprising results.

First, the essentials — be it making sales calls, or focusing on the core research behind a book — are what really matter, and the non-essentials — be it random e-mail conversations, or managing an overhaul to your blog template — are more disposable than many believe.

Second, by focusing only the essentials, they’ll receive more attention than when your schedule was unbounded. The paradoxic effect, as with Collins’ bestsellers, or Saunders and Simmons’ fast-growing businesses, you achieve more results.

Living the Fixed-Scheduled Lifestyle

The steps to adopting fixed-schedule productivity are straightforward:

1. Choose a work schedule that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.
2. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.

This sounds simple. But of course it’s not. Satisfying rule 2 is non-trivial. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you’d probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal schedule.

Here’s a simple truth that you must confront when considering fixed-schedule productivity: sticking to your ideal schedule will require drastic actions. For example, you may have to:

• Dramatically cut back on the number of projects you are working on.
• Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.
• Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom.
• Stop procrastinating.

In the abstract, these are all hard goals to accomplish. But when you’re focused on a specific goal — “I refuse to work past 5:30 on weekdays!” — you’d be surprised by how much easier it becomes to deploy these strategies in your daily life.

Let’s look at one more example…

Case Study: My Schedule

My schedule from my time as a grad student provides a good case study. To reach my relatively small work hour limit, I had to be careful about how I approached my day. I saw enough bleary-eyed insomniacs around here to know how easy it is to slip into a noon to 3 a.m. routine (the infamous “MIT cycle.”)

Here are some of the techniques I regularly used to remain within the confines of my fixed schedule:

• I’m ruthlessly results oriented. What’s the ultimate goal of a graduate student? To produce good research that answers important questions. Nothing else really matters. For some of my peers, however, their answer to this metaphysical prompt was: “work really long hours to prove that you belong.” It was as if some future arbiter of their future was going to look back at their time clock punch card and declare whether they sufficiently paid their dues. Nonsense! I wanted to produce a few good papers a year. Anything that got in the way of this goal was treated with suspicion. This results-oriented vision made it easy to keep the middling crap from crowding my schedule.
• I’m ultra-clear about when to expect results from me. And it’s not always soon. If someone slips something onto my queue, I make an honest evaluation of when it will percolate to the top. I communicate this date. Then I make it happen when the time comes. You can get away with telling people to expect a result a long time in the future, if — and this is a big if — you actually deliver when promised. Long lead times allow to you to side step the pile-ups (which will bust a fixed-schedule) that accrue when you insist on an immature, “do things only when the deadline looms” attitude.
• I refuse. If my queue is too crowded for a potential project to get done in time, I turn it down.
• I drop projects and quit. If a project gets out of control and starts to sap too much time from my schedule, or strays from my results-oriented vision: I drop it. If something demonstrably more important comes along, and it conflicts with something else in my queue, I drop the less important project. Here’s a secret: no one really cares what you do on the small scale, or what things you quit. In the end you’re judged on your results. If something is hindering your production of the important results in your field, you have to ask why you’re keeping it around.
• I’m not available. I often work in hidden nooks of the various libraries on campus, or from my apartment. I check and respond to work e-mail only a couple times a day, and never at night or on weekends. People have to wait for responses from me. It’s often hard to find me. Sometimes people get upset when they send me something urgent on Friday night that need done by Saturday morning. But eventually they get over it. Just as important, I’m not a jerk about it. I don’t have sanctimonious auto-responders about my e-mail habits. I just do what I do, and people adapt.
• I batch and habitatize. Any regularly occurring work gets turned into a habit — something I do at a fixed time on a fixed date. For example, I work on my blog in the afternoon after lunch. I write first thing in the morning. When I was taking classes, I had reoccuring blocks set aside during the week for tackling their assignments. Habit-based schedules for regular work makes it easier to tackle the non-regular projects. It also prevents schedule-busting pile-ups.
• I start early. Sometimes real early. On certain projects that I know are important, I don’t tolerate procrastination. It doesn’t interest me. If I need to start something 2 or 3 weeks in advance so that my queue proceeds as needed, I do so.
• I don’t ask permission. I think it’s wrong to assume that you automatically have the right to work whatever schedule you want. It’s a valuable prize that most be earned. And results are the currency you must spend to buy it. So long as I’m actually accomplishing the big picture goals I’m paid to accomplish, I feel comfortable to handle my schedule my own way. If I was producing mediocre crap, people would have a right to demand more access.

Conclusion

You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work. Between e-mail, and crucial web surfing, and to-do lists that, in the age of David Allen, grow to lengths that rival the bible, there is always something you could be doing. At some point, however, you have to put a stake in the ground and say: I know I have a never-ending stream of work, but this is when I’m going to face it. If you don’t, you’ll let this work push you around like a bully. It will force you into tiring, inefficient schedules, and you’ll end up more stressed and no more accomplished.

Fix the schedule you want. Then make everything else fit around your needs. Be flexible. Be efficient. If you can’t make it fit: change your work. But in the end, don’t compromise.

Cal Newport is an MIT postdoc, author, and founder of Study Hacks, the Internet’s most popular student advice blog.

1. Get proven, tactical tips on saving money. Check out my premium program, Scrooge Strategy, and get detailed tips to save hundreds of dollars each month.

2. Get more in-depth productivity tips. Cal and I recorded a 1+ hour interview together where we cover extremely detailed optimization and productivity strategies.

To get access — as well as select time-management and productivity tips — sign up below.

• Negotiate an $8,000 salary increase + 50% more equity
• Save tens of thousands of dollars
• Learn more using entrepreneurship
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• Automate their money so they don’t worry about day-to-day finances

Today I’m announcing the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp to take ACTION.

The Manifest Destiny Problem: “More is Better”
Have you noticed how lots of people always want more and more information, but rarely implement what they already have? A couple years ago, I started realizing how lots of personal-finance readers were constantly asking for more and more information — more blog posts, more book reviews, more financial magazines — but would often just READ, not take action.

To put it bluntly, I have lots of friends who read blog post after blog post, but have STILL not automated their money, started investing, or even put together an aggressive plan to pay off debt.

I’ve done the same with fitness books and SAT books, so I know that the solution isn’t “more,” but actually using what you have.

And it takes acknowledging that there are profound barriers between reading and DOING. The Boot Camp is designed to crush those barriers and force you to take action on your finances in just 6 weeks.

For example, I have a very successful friend who’s been overpaying for health insurance by a few hundred dollars for months. Why? Because he has to fax in one form….and he doesn’t have a fax machine. It’s a barrier that’s costed him thousands of unnecessary dollars. And while it’s easy to dismiss him as lazy — which he’s not — look inwards: There are things we “know” you need to do, but we still don’t do them.

Hit the gym? Clean the garage. Automate finances.

Instead, we look for more and more information as if that’ll solve it. This is the Manifest Destiny problem that we all have. “What’s the newest tip? Did that blog update? What are the 21 Ways I Should ____???”

The truth is that while the strategies and tactics matter, the point is not reading — it’s getting off our asses and implementing them.

About the Boot Camp
The I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp is a 6-week program that will help you automate your finances, pick the right accounts, begin investing, create a bulletproof plan to crush debt, and let you automate the day-to-day so you can focus on the things you REALLY care about:

• Traveling
• Spending money, guilt-free, on the things you love
• Hanging out with friends and family
• Earning more
• Focusing on getting out of the rat race

Each week, you’ll get material on credit cards, picking the right accounts, negotiation, investing, automation, and more. You’ll get lots of material from my book, so how is this Boot Camp different than simply reading my (or any) personal-finance book?

1. Live & personal Q&A from me each week. In addition to the weekly curriculum, I’ll be doing live webcasts each week, answering your SPECIFIC questions on money, debt, automation, and more.

2. Not just money — entrepreneurship and psychology. Each week, I’ll give a mini-talk on an entrepreneurial topic like “Managing Virtual Assistants” or “Productivity for Entrepreneurs.” I’ll cover psychological techniques and barriers and show how to apply them to YOUR situation.

3. Guest speakers on entrepreneurship. I’ve invited guest speakers like Charlie Hoehn (Recession Proof Graduate author), Pamela Slim, and Penelope Trunk to talk about topics like marketing, pricing, finding your dream job, and more. You’ll get 1 hour with each of them, live, on a webcast where you can ask questions and get specific answers.

4. A community of other people who are investing in themselves. We’ve put together a private community site where you’ll be able to exchange the best techniques you’ve used, which techniques to AVOID, and how you’ve paid off debt, earned more, automated, started side businesses, and more. Imagine a close-knit group of community members where you can ask personal questions and get meaningful answers. A group where everyone wants to be there — and support each other.

The most important difference in all of this is ACTION. Not only will you read, you’ll be surrounded by hundreds of other people who believe in paying for value and investing in themselves to automate their finances.

Here’s why the Boot Camp is worth it: Beyond forcing you to take action, if you optimize even one $20/month subscription, you’ll more than pay for the program. If you discover one leak in your financial system, you’ll probably get positive ROI that very day. And if you discover one psychological technique, automation tactic, or entrepreneurial idea to apply to your finances or life, it would be well worth it. Just ONE.

Now, obviously this isn’t right for everyone. If you’ve read my book, taken the advice, fully automated your finances, cut costs, began earning more, optimized spending, and handled day-to-day finances and relationship issues, then you can probably skip this. Or if you’ve done it on your own, that’s excellent — congratulations.

But if you could use some help to take action — to get a little nudge of help, to meet other people in your situation who have invested in themselves — then the Boot Camp will help you kickstart your finances in 6 weeks. If you think you could benefit from new psychological techniques and guest speakers on entrepreneurship, I’d love to have you.

That’s because this won’t be passive. It’s ACTIVE: I’ll email you each week with course material. I’ll be on your ass to get it done. And I’ll constantly show you how others are succeeding by taking strategic shortcuts, working smart, and leveraging others’ winning techniques.

6 weeks of work for a lifetime of automation.

Three questions to ask yourself

• We spend money on movies, going out, subscriptions…when was the last time you invested in yourself?
• If you knew you could try this out as a trial, would you? Good news: I offer a 30-day money-back guarantee
• It’s OK if this Boot Camp isn’t the right fit for you, but I encourage you to make a plan to meaningfully take your finances to the next level before the end of the year. Whether it’s this or something else, please get it done and start 2010 off fresh. And you can’t just put it off: No decision is a decision

I’ve written up details, along with the specific curriculum, guest speakers, price, and an easy way to sign up here:

Join the Boot Camp: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp

Registration closes on Friday, November 6th, and since this price is for the pioneer class only, next time I run this, the price will at least double.

Below are 7 stories, straight from readers just like you, who have saved and earned thousands of dollars using I Will Teach You To Be Rich techniques. The stories include details on how they got out of debt, saved more, and earned more so they could travel, buy a house, and live a richer life.

Remember — tomorrow I launch the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp (early details), where I’ll unveil a 6-week course and curriculum to force you to take ACTION and automate, invest, and start thinking about entrepreneurship.

Jason Demant saved $50,000 in 2 years and is now taking a 1-year vacation

“The reason I’m writing is to thank you for your help in automating my money, getting my 401K properly allocated, and pushing me to sell my crap to make some cash. Using your step-by-step instructions and advice, my girlfriend and I have been able to save over $50,000 the past couple of years and now, in a couple weeks, we will be quitting our Silicon Valley jobs and traveling around Asia on an extremely extended vacation (1-year minimum)! I’ve been reading your site for a few years now and I’ve never properly thanked you for the help, so I decided it was time. Thank you!”

Terry Martin got off his ass and paid off thousands in debt — and earned more

“I’m writing you to let you know how much your blog has helped my wife and I take charge of our finances. I’m actually embarrassed to say this, but we were some of the people you mentioned in tip #25 of the save $1000 in a month challenge. We would complain about our financial situation, but did nothing to change it.

After I realized this, I got to work. I read all your tips and made a game plan. I saved $100 a month on cable, $20 on our cell phone bill, created several ING savings accounts, my wife got serious about cutting coupons (she has a 3 ring binder!), I sold an old camcorder on craigslist, and cut off my Sirius account (but when I called to cancel it, they gave me 3 more months free with the option to cancel it for good afterwards—who would have thought?). We cut back on eating out except we each get twice a month at lunch time. My wife got overtime at work along with a raise, I started a side job, and I will start teaching night classes soon. Not only did we cut our spending drastically, we also have more money coming in. Our debt will be cut in half by the end of the year and eliminated by the end of the next!

Update: “Right now we are just over 18,500 in debt not counting my wife’s newly added student loan which would add about another $8000 . By the end of the year, we will have paid about $14,000 off while putting at least $500 a month in savings for a down payment on a house and 50 a month into another savings. This is, of course, things keep going as planned.

But not only are we saving money, we are increasing how much we make too! I have started a side business, while its not bringing in a lot of extra money now, things are starting to pick up. I also talked my company into paying for training classes for a certification that will greatly increase my value $15 to $20K a year in the workplace. Especially helpful during these tough times. My wife is also getting her company to pay for most of her classes to get her bachelor’s degree so she can move up to a new, higher paying position. During this whole process, we have been saving for a down payment on a house and I’m happy to say we are closing on our first home July 20th.

I would personally like to thank you for website and your book. The tips were inspiration to get up and do more than just complain about our financial situation. Although we are not rich money wise, we love where we are at and what the future holds. You have truly taught us how to be rich. Thank you.”

Christopher P. is saving hundreds of dollars and earning more

“I would say i have saved: $320 from cutting my cable bill by 40 dollars last 8 months (they raised it again 2 months ago. I just called right back and got it lowered . I put $30 a week into savings accounts (960 total saved 8/months)

8 months ago i decided that i would earn more money. First I asked for a 5% raise at work and got it. (This was scary because we had just had 3 rounds of firings.) Then i sat down and figured out what interested me and I could make money doing. I was in love with the iPhone but too poor to buy one. But I taught myself to program for the iPhone anyways and just 2 months ago finally purchased one. It was slow going at first and the amount i was putting away seemed pretty insignificant. But 8 months later looking back i am really seeing the transformation that took place.

Two weeks ago I finally finished and started selling my first app. It has been such a great experience and your website gave me the kick in the pants i needed. (Thank You) I haven’t done any advertising and on my first day i sold 17 copies! Not enough to quit my job but extra income. Since then the amount of units I have sold has been slowly but steadily increasing. (It’s been rated 5 stars)

People all over the wold have purchased my app now. (Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Netherlands and United States so far) In the first two weeks after Apple’s cut i made $200. October looks like it will be a much better month!”

Brian Drolet is saving $2,880/year

“Big wins =

• Dropping cable $40/month
• $1 raise at work = $240/month extra
• Closed checkings account = $13/month extra
• Automated my cell phone bill = $7/month

I’m saving $720/year just from those 3 things and earning $2880/year extra.”

Misha has turned her savings around

“I wanted to write to you and say thank you. After reading your book I was able to get a good handle on my finances. I think the most helpful was the chart you use to show the movement of the money and the automation. Check out a snapshot of my my mint NET INCOME.”

Josh G has saved $14,000 in a few months

“I have saved 14k so far since I started May 2008 and I’m on track for 20k by the end of the year!
Fear kept me from automating my savings previously. I had bills and it seems that was all I thought about every month.

There was a blog post that you did which you mentioned using ING Direct to create sub accounts. It was in that post I decided to try the full automated savings because I could do sub accounts for future purposes.”

Michael Hagan saved hundreds from March to July of this year

“I’ve saved: $900 in savings since March, $700 towards Roth IRA since March. I started the whole thing around February/March

I would say that the things that held me back the most was a) not knowing what to do in the first place b) getting out of college saddled with massive credit card and student loan debt (working a full-time, unpaid internship in LA was expensive!) c) messing around in high school just enough to where I couldn’t qualify for scholarships and being just too middle class to get gov’t $$ for college, and finally d) trying to keep up with all my friends that had good jobs and nice things. A fool’s game!”

The difference between these people and others is they took ACTION. It’s easy to read blog post after blog post, but when you decide to take action — and you have a clear plan of which Big Wins to attack — the results can come quickly.

The Boot Camp will include a step-by-step plan to take action on your finances, automate, create a plan to pay off debt, and more. I’m including psychological techniques to use against yourself to lock the behavioral changes in. Plus, live video webcasts from me each week (where I’ll answer your questions), as well as guest speakers to cover entrepreneurship topics like marketing, pricing, and critical business mistakes to avoid.

Check back tomorrow, when I’ll open up Boot Camp registration.

1. She learned about it from a guy whom she traveled to meet. She’s an entrepreneur, so she knows about investing in herself
2. “Sticking with it” is one of those things we all claim we know, but when it comes down to it, most people flake. Knowing vs. doing are two VERY separate things
3. Erica happens to have extra credibility with me. Beyond her selling a company for over $1m at age 26, she gave me some advice less than 12 months ago that has paid off in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for me. But the key was DOING what she said, not just nodding and saying “thanks” or hanging up the phone and reading Reddit again.

Read on…

Erica: Do you know someone who’s given up?

“I was in a meeting with a multi-millionaire last week. He is a person who came from nothing; he grew up dirt-poor in the ghetto. Now he makes several million dollars a year. He runs his own business from a small office and has traveled around the world speaking to hundreds of thousands of people.

I paid him a significant amount of money to learn his story so I could replicate it. He is now one of my success coaches.

I spent a weekend with him and a small group at his second home on Lake Texoma (on the Texas/Oklahoma border.) Not only did I come out of the weekend understanding how to grow my next business to $1 million a year in sales by the time I am 30 (which has been one of my goals for years), I gained a massive amount of insight into why most people are not successful.

He used a story to illustrate: two people who set out with the same goal. Since he came from a direct sales background, he used that as an example, but the example works for any industry — including yours.

Two people set out with the same goal. Let’s call them Max and Min. And let’s say they both are selling the same product. Maybe they are both distributors for the same company, or they both run companies in the same industry.

Max and Min work together and set a goal. They are going to contact three people every day who expressed an interest in their product, and their goal is to get those people to start saying “yes”.

Max and Min both start out motivated. They each contact three people on the first day. Then they check in with each other. “How’d you do?” Min asks. Max replies, “Well, they all said no.” Min commisserates. “Mine did too.”

Neither one is ready to give up. They set out again the next day. They each contact three people, and then they check in. “Nope,” Min says. Max nods. “Same here.”

This pattern continues for weeks. They both start reading some books on how to close sales. Finally, around the same time, Min closes a sale, and so does Max. They go out to celebrate.

Then, crap happens. Min gets distracted. “I’m not really making any money with this,” he tells Max. “I’m only making about $50/month after all my expenses are paid. And my family still needs a roof over its head, so I’m going to go find a job.”

Max says, “Good luck, buddy.” He’s not really making any more money than Min, but he sees something that Min doesn’t. The person who said yes is now paying him $50/month in passive income. Surely, if he got one yes, he can get more.

Max spends more time. Each day, he contacts three people. And most of them are still saying no. But things are changing. He’s still reading success books and learning like mad, and he notices that more people are starting to say yes. He’s not making much money, but he senses that he’s about to break through.

18 Months Later…

18 months elapses. Min has found a job that pays pretty well, and his family is happy. He figures he’s doing pretty well for himself, and decides to call up his old buddy Max and invite him out to dinner.

Min arrives first. Then, he sees a brand new Mercedes pull up outside. And who hops out but Max, who tips the valet handsomely and comes in in a nice suit to meet Min.

Min is shocked. He can’t find words at first. He finally manages to gasp, “What happened to you?”

Max just grins. Then he says, “They said yes.”

Get the First Yes

Turns out, if you can get one person to say yes, you can get hundreds or thousands to say yes.

What do you want people to say yes to? Maybe you want them to subscribe to your blog or buy your product. It would be great if they signed up for your email list, or became your partner in some way. But it’s probably discouraging how many people are saying no.

Don’t give up. Get that first yes. From then, it’s just a matter of listening, learning, and continuing to ask.

I find it takes at least 18 months from when you start to when you really notice that people are saying yes. After 12 months of running my hosting company, I was making the grand total of a little over $400/month gross.

But nearly 6 years into it, we did over $76,000 in sales in one month.

I have friends who started web hosting companies when I did. But they all gave up and decided it wasn’t worth it before they “broke through”. Every single one of them had at least 5 people who said “yes.” If you can get 5, you can get 500. Once you get 500, you know how to get 5,000. It just takes time, a personal commitment to hustle every single day, and a willingness to listen and learn.

Do I believe that every single one of you can build a million-dollar business? I do. I just think most of you give up too quickly.”

About Erica: After selling her online business for $1,100,000.00 at age 26, Erica Douglass “temporarily retired.” She now shows you how to grow your own business to $1,000,000 via her online business blog. Quick link: Download her free Blog Success Manifesto — 30 tactical tips to grow your blog faster than you ever have before.

Get free, pre-release bonuses for my boot camp at iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp

To skip the entire explanation below: Get a preview and new bonuses I’ve never released on entrepreneurship, negotiation, and personal finance at http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp

Last week, I asked I Will Teach You To Be Rich readers what you want to do before the end of 2009. Look at the #1 result:

Taking ACTION. Aww yeah…

• One of my readers, Paul, cut 30% off his 30-year mortgage, saving $5,000/year
• Another reader saved $1,455 with two phone calls
• And in a personal example, I took my friend’s advice exactly one year ago and implemented it in a month. Since then, it’s generated tens of thousands of dollars for me

The key is not just learning more, it’s IMPLEMENTING the tips you’ve read about.

So in 7 days, I’m launching the first official I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp to help people invest in themselves — to stop reading and start taking ACTION with their finances.

What’s an online bootcamp?

You’re reading this site, so you’re already dedicated to saving money by focusing on the Big Wins. But there’s more than just saving money — there’s picking the right accounts, earning more, optimizing your spending (including automation).

I’ve put together an online 6-week boot camp that will take you through my entire automation system, including picking the right accounts, creating a plan to pay off debt, opening and funding the right investment accounts, and automating your money.

You want to know how to turn your idea into a business? Have a specific question about your finances or want to get input on a marketing plan? Yep, we’ll cover that.

The bootcamp includes:

• Weekly live classes from me where I’ll kick your ass to take action implementing an advanced automation system, and answer your specific questions (new topics)
• Expert guest speakers on entrepreneurship, finding dream jobs, earning more, and advanced topics — every week (new)
• Curriculum with detailed action steps on saving, earning more, automation, and entrepreneurship — which will let you start 2010 off fresh (some new material)
• Private community with hundreds of other members who are going through the same thing as you (and are dedicated to taking ACTION)

I’m sick of people reading blogs and books and websites and doing nothing. The point is not reading, it’s automating your money, starting to invest, and using conscious spending to live a Rich Life!

Why a bootcamp?

Because there are 2 months left in 2009, and I want to show you how you can make life changes in just 6 weeks. I have tons and tons of examples of people who’ve taken action and gotten out of thousands of debt, started earning more, etc.

I’ve spent months developing the curriculum and building a system that will help you take action on your finances. After all, if you’re going to spend time learning about personal finance, you might as well go the extra step and apply it to your OWN life.

By the end of the bootcamp, I guarantee you’ll have saved money, automated your finances…and stopped worrying about your day-to-day finances.

What you should do

I’ve put together a pre-launch list with tons of bonuses, including a video on how I spilled coffee on my brand-new laptop (and still got over $1,000 reimbursed to me for my mistake), an extremely detailed video on how I helped my friend Susan negotiate $8,000 in a salary negotiation, and MANY other bonuses.

Everyone who signs up for the pre-launch list will get a discount to the bootcamp when it launches on November 3rd.

Sign up instantly for the pre-list here and get 7 days of unreleased bonuses (videos, case studies, and surprises):

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp

Today, I’m going to share how I use beta tests to get rapid feedback on in-depth projects I’m creating. This will show you what I’m doing behind the scenes, and how you can use these same techniques for your entrepreneurial projects.

What you’ll find in this guide

• How I decide which products to build
• Why a beta test? Using the 85% Solution when building products
• The logistics of testing (and: Charging for a beta test? Are you crazy?)
• Mistakes I’ve made in beta testing

“Rich” is about more than money

Although I Will Teach You To Be Rich sounds like a get-rich-quick scam, you know it’s not — it’s about living a rich life, with money as part of that. Since the early days of this blog, I’ve always emphasized that rich is about more than just money.

My book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, crystallized my automation system and philosophy about money.

But there are so many areas that I want to cover, some of them dealing with money, some of them dealing with other ways to live a rich life. (As an interesting data point, the guest post on becoming a full-time traveler for $14,000/year was my most popular guest post — ever).

So I’ve been working on specific, in-depth projects that I hope will help you live a rich life. For example, they’ll include automation techniques and scripts you can use to earn more, save more, negotiate, get better service, etc. These are far more complex than a simple blog post. They involve significant research, months of writing, interviews and case studies, custom design, and lots of testing. And while it’s a lot of work, it’s too easy to be a commodity blogger who simply uses cheap tricks (5 posts/day!! Top 10 ways to…!! Look at the new ING interest rate!!) instead of taking the slow path to building something that you’ll be proud of in 10 years.

Now that I’ve set the context, let’s get to the part about building a beta program to test these.

How I decide which products to build

There are an infinite number of in-depth projects I could do. I could talk more about automation, walk people through my book and help them to change money attitudes/behaviors, help people negotiate, focus on debt reduction, show people the similarities between food and personal finance, and on and on.

Just like the infinite number of financial decisions we have when we wake up each morning — which invariably cause us to get overwhelmed and do nothing — I prefer to limit the scope to a few Big Wins.

I take two approaches when deciding which products to create.

1. Listening to users. I get dozens of emails from iwillteachyoutoberich readers each day and I read every single one, trying to see what the patterns are. For example, people LOVE the scripts in my book…interesting. On the other hand, I get a lot fewer emails about debt reduction (probably because debt isn’t really my focus, if you have a lot of debt, there are better sites than iwillteachyoutoberich to handle it). Again, another data point.
2. Intuition. After 5+ years of blogging, emailing, and meeting you guys in person, I think I have a pretty good idea of what you’ll respond to.

I admit that this is a luxury of having a large user base, but don’t commit the Shrug Effect and think you can’t do the same thing. I use this blog as a laboratory and test frequently to hone my intuition.

Once I come up with an idea, I don’t keep it secret — my idea is never good enough to keep secret. I start asking people around me what they think. Is it a problem for them? I’ll tweet it. I’ll search and see what else is out there.

The truth is, because iwillteachyoutoberich has grown so much, I could basically release anything and get some sales and interest from people. The point is not to release anything, though. I try to pick projects that will (1) optimize my returns and (2) make me proud of what I’ve built by helping a lot of people — and not just iwillteachyoutoberich readers, but outside people.

See also: My bookmarks for customer research.

Why a beta test? Using the 85% Solution when building products

Beta testing is a great way to test your product and get real feedback from people to let you iterate (or improve) on what you’ve got. Here’s how I do it.

Once I’ve decided on a product, I focus on building it. (More on that process later.) I do check in with a close group of friends along the way, but mostly it’s just heads-down to create something that I think will be useful. Whether it’s an ebook that I have to write, or a video product that I structure and record, my goal is build a skeleton that’s 85% complete.

Basically, it should be good enough that it can be used by people and get them very impressive results — but not be polished in terms of design, testimonials, outbound marketing, or even content, because I can do that later. Sometimes, the positioning may even be wildly off, but it’s good enough to send out to a small group for testing.

The point of testing is to validate the following:

• Is this useful?
• Is this better than anything on the market
• Where do people get stuck? What’s their favorite part?
• What kind of feedback/testimonials/impressive stats can I collect from people?

Usually by this stage, you don’t get a lot of catastrophic feedback that your product sucks. If so, something has gone very, very wrong in the product-creation and micro-testing process. But I ALWAYS get feedback on areas that are broken, not easy to understand, or can be improved.

The other thing I ask people is to go through the product, try every step of it, and give me explicit feedback on what works. In this stage, I’m looking for awesome testimonials I can use to put in the product so others can see how well it works.

So, bottom line: I’m trying to identify the weaknesses in the product, as well as get feedback on the strengths of the product. This is a classic product/marketing exercise that helps you stay on track and comes in very, very handy when it’s time to launch the product.

See also: My bookmarks on testimonials.

The logistics of testing (and: Charging for a beta test? Are you crazy?)

Here’s the fun stuff: How do you actually run these tests?

I’ve done it in a variety of ways. For my book launch, I created a pre-launch community where people could join a private community, get PDFs of the book before anyone else, and go through my 6-week bootcamp with a group of similarly aggressive people. Check out the original announcement.

For other projects, I’ll have people buy the 85%-complete product at a steep discount, work through it, and survey them with very specific questions on what works and what doesn’t.

The commonality is this: For beta testers, I always look for qualified people. This means paying in some way, whether pre-ordering my book or buying the product at a large discount.

Why do I charge for beta tests?
Because I’m looking for the type of people who will pay for value — these are the same types of people who will pay for the product when it launches at full price. If I opened it up to anyone for free testing, I’d get 100x the response rate, but the type of tester would be totally different than the real customers. In other words, people who pay are far more likely to actually open, use, and give feedback on a beta test. I have statistics to back this up by unimaginably huge margins, which I’ll share later.

The beta price actually doesn’t matter — usually I’ll offer steep discounts for the beta product when it will end up costing many times that on launch day, and I always offer generous money-back guarantees if it doesn’t work. The point is simply to separate the serious people from curious looky-loos who will never buy the product, anyway.

I also intentionally limit the number of testers to keep it small yet ensure I get enough responses. (For example, if I need 10 testimonials over 5 different topics, most people won’t give you really superb quotes, so you need a lot more than 10 people.)

In exchange for paying a dramatically reduced price, they get early access to a product that’s 85% complete (and presumably works very well), a chance to give feedback and shape the final polish of the product, and we all get a chance to interact via webcast and share feedback about ways to make it better. I usually send them a copy of the final product in exchange for their help.

Bottom line: In exchange for their feedback, beta testers get early access to the product, a dramatically reduced price, and the ability to help shape the final version — and usually the final version of the product for no additional charge.

More about logistics
I usually get beta testers from my newsletter list. This is because of (1) qualification strategy and (2) I can track clicks, opens, and the entire engagement funnel more closely. More on these in future posts.

When newsletter subscribers join the beta program, I add them to a separate email list where I send them automatic followup messages to get their feedback about the product via email, survey, and even video or Twitter. I share some of the best feedback with others because collecting feedback is difficult — people often don’t know how to articulate their feedback, so showing examples helps.

I collect people’s name/email address because there are often a few people — usually 2%-5% — whose feedback is so outstanding that I personally reach out to them to chat with them over the phone, put together an interview, etc. This helps not only the product development, but marketing for the launch.

Mistakes I’ve made

I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes in running beta tests. The most common is simply working on too many projects, so I end up with 4 of them stuck at 70%, while nothing is getting completed. To help that, I’ve brought someone on to help me project-manage and kick my ass to get things out the door and prioritize better.

Other mistakes I’ve made with beta testing:

• Not planning the beta test in advance of launch. If you try to do run a beta program without planning how it will flow beforehand, you will run into lots of problems and wish you were dead. Also, you’ll be so busy polishing the product that you won’t have time to build the beta program on the fly, and your feedback will suffer. Now, I do it beforehand and automate it as much as possible.

• Not creating buckets for feedback. One dumb mistake was when I forgot to specify where the feedback should go. It all went to my email inbox, which was a mess. Now, responses go to specific buckets. For example, I might collect “day 5″ feedback in one Surveymonkey, and I’ll collect “day 10″ in another Surveymonkey. This makes it really easy to find the right feedback/testimonials when we’re ready to iterate.
• Not thanking the beta testers! It’s thrilling to get real feedback on the project you’ve been working on for so long. Once you get beta responses, it’s off to the races to complete it and launch. I’ve forgotten to take some time to thank the beta testers for taking a risk and helping with feedback, and that was a mistake. Always be sure to thank the people who helped get you the final 20%

So, that’s an overview of how I run beta tests with new projects coming out on I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Coming up: Beta invites for 2 new domination guides

I’ll be releasing a number of beta products in the next few days. I send beta announcements out via my email list, so if you want access to the beta tests, sign up for the free list below.

For a while now, behind the scenes, I’ve been working on a bunch of projects to create several in-depth projects/products for you that I’ll be rolling out over the next few months. These are specific projects with more scripts that you can use to dominate, techniques for earning money (like the earn money bootcamp I hinted about), recommendations for the best accounts, etc. Some are free, some will be paid.

So…

I was just planning to announce them when they were ready, but I just realized you might want to see stuff like:

• How I come up with product ideas
• How I decide when to charge (e.g., with The Scrooge Strategy and my book) vs. offer stuff for free (blog, Twitter, YouTube, newsletter, etc)
• How to set pricing
• How I do market analysis and craft a marketing plan — including online and offline
• When to hire other people vs. doing it yourself

Stuff like that.

This is more related to entrepreneurship than personal finance, but I think it’s relevant to iwillteachyoutoberich readers: It demonstrates how to take a simple idea (personal finance for young people) and build a business (and income) around it.

Leave a comment to let me know if you’re interested in seeing what I’m doing behind the scenes. If you guys are interested, I’ll do some occasional posts on the business side of iwillteachyoutoberich.

If not, no hard feelings. Just let me know in the comments!

[Edit] Lots of “Yes” comments below, so let me know specifically what topics you’d like me to cover.

[Edit] The first post is up: How I use beta tests to rapidly optimize new products

Below, you’ll find:

• Specific tactics on how to make a significant amount of money on eBay (with screenshots)
• Tips from readers who make 4-5 figures from eBay every month: Why the same items can sell for dramatically different prices — and how to make sure your sale price tops the charts
• Case study: We sell something on eBay
• Expert interview (audio download below) with the dean of eBay University: Which items should you sell?

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a few projects with my friend Susan. (You’ll be seeing those projects soon.)

One day, I mentioned that I was going to be selling a few things on eBay and she looked at me skeptically. We’re both fans of Big Wins, so I understand the skepticism — can you really earn a lot using eBay?

But it also surprised me how reluctant she was to try it, since she’s a master of earning more money (she negotiated thousands of dollars for a new job and routinely receives freelance offers).

We decided to spend some time creating a useful guide to show how you can earn significant amounts of money using eBay. I’ve earned over $1,000 in the last 2 months by selling stuff there.

Rather than just writing generic advice, Susan went to the source: a senior executive at eBay. We also asked I Will Teach You To Be Rich readers who’ve earned over $1,000 on eBay to share their specific tactics for selling at higher prices.

Here’s an excerpt of what she learned.

* * *

eBay: too much work, too little gain.

True or false?

You’ve heard Ramit talk about the CEO model. Saving more money isn’t just about cutting spending, and your income ISN’T always fixed.

You probably already know that you can sell some stuff on eBay, but, like me, you probably also haven’t gotten around to doing it. What’s the point of learning and getting involved in a whole new system if all you’ll get out of it is $15 for a pair of your Sevens jeans?

I was thinking the same thing you’re thinking:

Too much work, too little gain

Then recently, I ended up having a phone conversation with Jim Griffith, the dean of eBay University. Griff teaches thousands of people how to use eBay as a platform to build their businesses, was personally hired by Pierre Omidyar (one of the eBay co-founders) as one of their earliest community / customer focused employees (15 years ago), and has been an expert seller since eBay got started.

After Griff shared a few really good tricks and tips with me, I started to feel bad about being such a hypocrite about eBay.

“Your income’s not fixed, earn more don’t just save” … I’d say these things to my friends all the time, but I never lifted a single finger towards it.

So, I decided I’d list something to see exactly how much work and how little gain it would be.

We ask the experts

Before setting up my listing, Ramit and I asked a few IWillTeach readers who’ve made upwards of $1,000 on eBay to share their secrets.

Here’s how they optimize their eBay sales, in order of importance:

1. Pictures

• Quality: They use really good pictures – not blurry and not old-looking. They don’t have to be perfect, but should show NOT ONLY the item BUT ALSO that the item lives in a nice environment. I don’t care how much of a deal it is – I’m not buying a designer sweater that’s being photographed in a coal plant.
• Quantity: They use lots of pictures. If you’re buying something from an unknown eBay seller, your confidence goes up with the number of real photos of the item in question. One reader told us her secret was “LOTS of pictures. Use an outside app to manage listings (I use Garage Sale) and to upload photos to your own server so you don’t have to pay eBay’s prices for extra photos.”

2. Description

• Completeness: Fill out all the fields in your listing, and make sure your textual description gives a LOT of information about the item. It’s just stupid not to, and yet SO many sellers don’t do this. Laziness I guess? Whatever the reason, don’t be like them.Think like your buyer – if I’m dropping $200 for a rare book on eBay, I want to know EVERY detail about it. I don’t care how mundane or even repetitive it is, I want every reason to have faith that my $200 will be well spent.
• Search optimization: Use targeted keywords in your item title AND description. You don’t have to be a tech wizard for this. It’s as simple as asking yourself, what would a potential buyer for this item type into the search box? The more closely your description matches that search query, the more visible your products will be. If it’s a brand name thing, then people will probably be typing in the brand, not just the name of the item itself, so make sure to include the brand –eg. [pottery barn queen duvet] versus [queen duvet]. One reader told us “Don’t misspell brand names” – who’s searching for Calfin Kline, anyway? Yeah, it’s obvious. But people still get it wrong. Just make sure you differentiate yourself from this:

  BAD
  

  to this:

  GOOD
  

3. Research

• Is there a market for your item? Taking 5 minutes to Google your item and learn its true market value – on eBay AND on a bunch of other e-commerce sites – helps you to sell it more competitively because you’ll find out whether or not there’s a market for your item, you’ll see the right price, and you’ll figure out the right search keywords to write into your listing.

4. Timing + Reserves

• One reader gave us a good tip for timing your listing: “Use the 10 day listing starting on a thursday, that gives you two full weekends of eyeballs. Weekends typically have the highest traffic.”
• This same seller told us even more about reserve pricing: “99.999% of the time I never use a reserve price. My goal is to make as much money as I can, so I reduce the amount of upfront money I have to pay. I also do this by using a low starting price of $0.99. This keeps me competitive with everyone. I would rather get little for it than have it sit on my shelf and have it COSTING me money.”

5. What to sell

• The survey respondent who made the most money off of eBay ($50k+ in the past 12 months) gave us an interesting tip on what to sell: “Find a niche market, and go deep (do you have a hobby – if so, can you sell supplies for it? If selling hobby supplies, make sure your customer has purchased everything necessary for a successful project (i.e. provide fantastic customer svc/support. Selling “irregulars/seconds” can be lucrative.”
• This was also one of the key takeaways from my interview with eBay’s Jim Griffith. Keep reading for more on this point.

Case study: How to earn money on eBay

With all these tips in mind, I decided to go for it myself.

Here’s exactly how I did it (with screenshots):

Step 1: Sign up for an eBay account

This was very straightforward. If you know how to use email and read this blog, then you don’t need additional explanation.

Total time: 2 min

Step 2: Find something to sell

Almost everyone has something lying around for eBay. Last month, for example, Ramit sold his broken laptop (the one he ruined with a latte, of all things) for $661. (In fact, he used an assistant to do the market research, write the eBay page, and ship it, but that’s a story for another time).

Apparently, someone out there knew how to fix it. This highlights one of the greatest things about eBay – its wide reach means that you’re likely to find a buyer for almost anything that you have to sell. While most people don’t have tons of spare high-value electronics laying around, you probably do have something else. As for me, I had these too-big shoes in my closet that I’d never worn.

Remember, the point of this post to understand and optimize the process, so let’s use the shoes as an example.

Step 3: Research

I didn’t want to make the mistake of setting an arbitrary price based on emotions, or not knowing what the hot keywords are for describing these shoes.

Here’s how I researched:

1. Searched for the product name with Google Product Search [ Seychelles Share the Wealth ]
2. Looked at the top 5 ecommerce sites selling the product. This gave me the price AND, more important, lots of details about the shoe and the brand to put in the description to make it look super professional.
3. Saw the item I have has one major distinction – a hard-to-find color. I’ll highlight this in the description.

Note: it’s hard to Google ‘value of broken laptop,’ but in this case, Ramit’s damaged computer was making $0 sitting on his shelf. Remember the tip about pricing at $0.99 we heard from our power seller-it’s always better to make some money from your item than to get all emotionally attached to it and not make any at all.

Time: 5 min

Step 4: Market it

Since I already did the research, this was the easy part. I took photos and then determined the title and description copy from the other sites I saw that were selling this product, making sure to highlight the major distinction (its color) along with the standard brand distinction.

I took the reader tip and decided to list on a Thursday, for a 10-day auction to get in two weekends’ worth of eyeballs.

Here’s what I did:

1. Borrowed the title and best descriptions from the other sites I saw. (5 min)
2. Took photos and did some minor editing. (10 min)

Note: when Ramit was trying to sell off his broken laptop, he used brand identification (it was an Apple Macbook), photos of the actual item being sold, and added an honest, thorough description – ‘this laptop has some damage, but it’s definitely reparable and it’s a steal if you know how.’ The brand name draws in lots of viewers, and the honest, thorough description targets the listing to just the right person who’ll end up loving the purchase.

Time: 15 min

Step 5: List it

eBay makes this really easy. I chose to offer free shipping because this attracts more buyers. I bundled the estimated shipping cost into the price of the item.

Time: 5 min

Step 6: Fulfillment

It’s really, really important to get those good seller ratings, even if you’re not quitting your day job. Fullfillment means being a reliable seller, packager, and shipper, and getting the item to your buyer ASAP.

Time: 10 min

Total time: 37 min

Bonus tip from my interview with Griff

When I asked Griff for any secrets on getting inventory to sell on eBay, he told me, “think local.”

Instead of thinking only about how to sell YOUR stuff on eBay (like your old stereo, computer, designer jeans), think about how to make a micro business selling OTHER stuff on eBay, that you obtain locally, such as….

• Stuff that’s on major sale at retail discount stores (TJ Maxx, etc, may be selling stuff for really cheap that’s actually going for full price in other marketplaces, like eBay. Griff has a great, real-life example of this.)
• Undervalued things you find at garage sales, swap meets, thrift stores
• Brand name stuff or items with a certain following that are being discontinued
• Items already listed on eBay that are undervalued (either badly marketed and not using any of the tactics discussed above, or just priced wrong). Ok this one is not local, but it’s a similar idea.

Audio excerpt

(Full interview is 23:01 — see below for instructions on getting it)

[ Running Time: 2:48 | Download File (Right-click, choose "Save as...") ]

If you liked this tip, we’ve put together an even MORE detailed guide to earn money using eBay

Get more tips to earn money on eBay. We’ve put together an even more in-depth article on earning money using eBay on Scrooge Strategy.

Want to learn more about how the power sellers make money on eBay? You’ll get the full 23:01 recording of Susan’s interview with eBay University Dean Jim Griffith, more in-depth tactical tips to earn more using eBay, and a premium tip on saving and earning money every week by subscribing to The Scrooge Strategy.

This was a guest post by Susan Su. Susan is a writer, marketer, designer, Twitterer, and Stanford alum. She wants bloggers to make beautiful ebooks, startups to make it big, and you to make more money. She can help with all that.

If you’re a recent college graduate, you’re probably struggling with finding a decent job in this down economy. In fact, it’s tough for anyone right now. Just like with personal finance, most of us will shrug our shoulders, accept the circumstances, and assume there’s nothing we can do but wait out the storm (and complain about taxes).

Stop complaining and start dominating

The reality is that it’s actually possible to improve your personal situation and get the job of your dreams, within a year of college. My friend Charlie Hoehn was able to do exactly that, and I asked him to write an ebook on how he did it. I’m putting it up here for you because it’s one of the better things you can read during this recession.

The ebook contains the techniques he used to guarantee himself any kind of work he wants over the next decade — pretty cool since he’s continuing to work with me on several new projects. And as an added bonus, I’ve included a short video of Tim Ferriss and me discussing how Charlie approached us, and why his technique was especially effective.

How Charlie made the approach

Rewind to about a year ago, when I got an email from somebody named Charlie Hoehn. He’d recently graduated from college and wanted my help to work with Tim Ferriss. He mentioned that he had some feedback for “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” and in a followup email, he sent me several details. It ended like this:

How I can help you: The answer to this is something I’ve struggled to come up with for both you and Tim Ferriss….shooting/editing video, and creating niche social networks…

Only a few months later, I left this LinkedIn testimonial for Charlie:

“Charlie is one of the most talented marketers and entrepreneurs I’ve ever worked with. First, some of the results he helped drive:

* He was one of the chief strategists to make my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal bestseller, and #1 Amazon bestseller
* Wrote scripts, filmed, and edited comedy videos that were collectively seen over 80,000 times
* Managed a team that created several new innovative strategies for book marketing

More importantly, Charlie understands the importance of blending strategy with rapid tactics. I feel comfortable calling him, giving him a high-level idea, and asking him to come back to me in 48 hours with a proposal for how to implement it. In fact, after working together, he now suggests ideas to me, then implements them completely on his own. He’s resourceful (he’ll take a high-level idea and flesh out every detail/resource needed to dominate it), detail-oriented (he edited our videos even further when I thought they were good enough), and versatile enough to create marketing strategies and write comedy videos. A true gem. I highly recommend him.”

How did Charlie do it? How did Charlie end up working with me, Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max, and several other popular personalities?

As iwillteachyoutoberich readers, I thought you’d enjoy this because it’s a fresh spin on the popular drivel of “find your passion and the money will come.” WTF does that mean? Where should you start?

What you’ll find in the 30-page ebook

• Why CareerBuilder and Monster are useless during a job hunt (page 8 )
• The most painless method for getting a job right out of college (page 9)
• The best graduate school you can attend… free (page 11)
• Specific email script to reel employers who “aren’t hiring” (pages 13 and 27)
• Using specific skills to earn more…which seems obvious, yet most people never do this (page 19)
• How to fix the mistake that affects many college graduates in their job search (page 21)

Enter your email below to get:

• A downloadable copy of this ebook (completely un-DRM’d — sent immediately)
• Continuing interviews with successful entrepreneurs who are working their dream job.
• Case studies of people in their early 20’s who have accomplished, in just a few years, what most people accomplish in 10.
• Specific tactics and scripts to implement the principles in the ebook

This week, I’m a guest writer at the New York Times. Here’s a quote from something I wrote:

“Your friends will try to convince you that target-date retirement funds aren’t as high-returning and exciting as their fancy stocks (which they probably picked using a dartboard, three beers and a sponge cake). Ignore them. You’re focused on growth, not impressing your friends…”

As you can see, I toned it down for the paper of record. No curse words this time.

There are lots of questions & answers for recent graduates, including college loans, Roth IRAs, and buying a house.

Check out the Money Q&A at the New York Times.