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Leisure, especially as a procrastinator, should be an important aspect in your life. Time spent in leisure can lead to a greater sense of self awareness and goals, a spark for innovation, and a stronger sense of calmness and confidence. Unfortunately, we live in such a hectic fast-paced wold that any sort of leisure --it‘s seen “waste” of time. If you’re not working 100 hour weeks, if you sit down for a moment, if you ever want to take a moment, just a minute, to be lazy, you’re weak; you’re a failure. There’s no balance. Your ultimate goal is to create a work-life balance, but you can’t create balance without tipping or leaning on the other side of the scale. That is why you must embrace laziness, embrace leisure. Leisure is no more of a waste of time on your productivity than charging your phone is a waste of time of running apps. The only acceptable term for laziness in society that seems to be widely accepted in public and regarded as a positive thing socially is called “Meditation”. What is meditation? It’s entering a state of total relaxation, free of worry, stress, and attachment to the material world and the world of obligation. It is encompassing yourself in comfort and pleasure. In essence, Meditation is embracing your Laziness, but god forbid you say that! Meditation is literally doing nothing. We live in such a hard-work driven society that we can’t even use the word “laziness” to describe laziness. It’s bizarre to me. We have to use phrases and words that dance around and jump through hoops to make it sound more professional or diligent or whatever, but we need to stop beating around around the bush. That’s too much fancy footwork. Just say what you mean and be done with it. Less time, less effort, better results. Don’t say you’re going to meditate. Say you’re ‘bout to be lazy af! You're doing absolutely nothing. Even yoga, which is basically just “stretching”, has a fancy term to it, but we’ll get to that later.  Anyway, meditation, laziness, the act of doing nothing, allows your brain to recharge, refocus, and unlock its true power. A mind at ease is a mind in focus. A mind in focus is a mind open to creativity and progress. You must let go of everything you feel “required” to do in order to find what you feel “desired” to do. You must let go of your ideas of rules & patterns in order to find original thoughts and ingenious ideas. You must de-program yourself. Release all of your mental constraints and personal inhibitions. You must recharge yourself and remind yourself that you’re a lazy human and not a hardworking machine. When you’re cooped up in cubicle at work, you’re not only physically constrained, much like a small prison cell with little space and a scheduled “pee time” (they’ve literally imprisoned your bladder), you are mentally incarcerated by the way you can think, the way you dress, the problem-solving methods you can use, the goals you want to achieve (it’s encouraged for you to follow the company’s mission statement, rather than your own personal mission statement). You must free yourself from these imaginary restraining orders. Freedom comes from laziness. As Robin Singh, founder of E-Junkie & Peepal Farm said on my recent interview with him: “The best ideas come from leisure time...You’re not gonna come up with great ideas while you’re slaving away in front of a machine from 9-5. You’re gonna have a great idea when you’re just like, chilling somewhere.” He further goes on to say that he spends his “chill time” in nature just “watching plants grow.” I would further suggest that the “nature” doesn’t necessarily have to be in the depths of a forest or at the tops of a mountain or out in the sea, or really anywhere out in actual nature, but rather “nature”, refers to whatever is natural for you to do, wherever it is that you feel most “at home, " even if that's your bed at home or between book shelves on a bean bag chair at the library It should be somewhere though that is away from your typical work environment and will not make you think of or give you any reminders of any due dates, obligations, or stress triggers. Nature should be your happy place, your own little Lazy Island, a Sloth Sanctuary, whatever you want to call it. It is a place that’ll set your mind at ease. It will cue your brain into engulfing yourself in laziness, into entering a completely tranquil state of mind. Eventually, you can reach the point where this “Nature”, becomes a crutch and you can visit your own little Lazy Island --- embrace your laziness by entering a state of relaxation through meditation, without physically being out in “Nature”. It comes from within yourself, rather than anything external. For now though, find a place -- a library, a coffee shop, or yes, even out in the woods -- where you feel safe, comfortable, and at rest. Take a deep breath, Yawn (the "Y" in L.A.Z.Y. Mindset) and just soak in the environment. Live in the moment and don’t worry about “oh I have to do this” or “oh I should be doing that.” Don’t force yourself to think about something specific or avoid something else. Watch your thoughts as if they are clouds rolling by on a Lazy Sunday afternoon. You can examine them, but don’t dive deep into them. Don't become attached to any one idea or thought. Let it pass. Then relax... Fully. Deeply. Completely. Relax  Realize that your thoughts are just that. They are just temporary instances in the brain. Just like emotion, you may not be able to control them, but you can control your reaction and reflection to them. It may be hard to choose what thoughts come and go, but you can always choose which ones to nourish on and lie down in -- just like how you choose which slice of pizza to eat or which couch in the living room to lie on A procrastinator chooses when to do things; s/he is in control of their decisions; s/he chooses when to think about things, and doesn’t like spending time on things s/he doesn’t care about. You have to be lazy. Don’t think. Don’t “try” to get anything out of your meditation experience. All you’re doing is relaxing and letting go of your trained habit of always being awake and alert. You may get distracted, which is fine. You’re not quite used to fully and completely being lazy yet; you’re not used to totally relaxing. You’ve only ever temporarily took a break from you’re ever moving, non-stop, swift paced lifestyle. You’ve likely never had the chance to slow it down and take it easy, and I mean take it REAL easy. Even when you did relax in your quote on quote “leisure” time, you may have been worried about what you should be doing instead or what you’ll have to do later to "make up for” your laziness. The only time you may have legitimately fully relaxed was in your sleep. The problem with that is you often forget the ideas and thought processes Though you may occasionally remember your dream, your brain often naturally discards this information. (By the way, there’s been studies that show that people who play a lot of video games are more likely to have conscious control and remember their dreams better than those who do not play video games. Another topic for another time though, perhaps) A lot of artists and musicians realized the value of this relaxed state of mind and some of the most popular songs came directly from dreams. The Beatles were notorious for writing songs based on their dreams, for example. They would literally keep a “dream diary” on their bed side so they could jot down their ideas immediately upon waking up. Paul McCartney from the Beatles wrote the song “Yesterday” and John Lennon wrote “Let it Be”, both inspired by dreams. Similarly other artists like Sting who wrote “Every Breath You Take” and Tom Rundgren who wrote “Bang the Drum All Day”created those masterpieces during their state of lazy relaxation, of sleep and dreaming. You’re not going to fall asleep in this case, however. The idea is to tap into that creative subconscious mind, free from social pressures and logical reasoning. When you’re fully awake, you have definitions of “things”. Every place, person, or object has a definition and understanding of how it works. “Things are this way because that’s the way they are.” That way of thinking is limiting because you focus on what is, rather than what it could be . This line of thinking often leads to doubt and insecurity in one’s self. You can have this definition of yourself based on mistakes or choices you made, rather than actually having any sort of true enlightenment on who you are and embodying a sense of real self actualization and not self definition or obligation. You are not a firm puzzle piece, fitting into a specific slot in a specific corner. You are not pre-cut and pre-determined in who you are. You are more like clay, a flexible material capable of creating any statue possible; you can mold and shape anyway you choose. You don’t have to follow instructions or a blueprint either.  You are a total free form and spirit, a lazy human being with freedom to lie down in any position you want, a procrastinator.
While practicing your laziness, ahem, “meditation", you’re aiming for a state of sleep-awake -- laziness. You’re so relaxed that you’re ALMOST asleep but not quite catching 40 winks or entering REM. You’re still conscious enough of what’s going on in the surrounding environment and could wake up at any time, but you choose not to. You’ll eventually innovate ideas you never thought you’d ever come up with, and it’ll be more effective than (and not to mention easier than) any sort of forced “brainstorm meeting” your boss thought would be a good idea. Anyway, that’s it for now. Take it easy. Take it real easy.
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“Don’t be late” “Watch your tardiness.” “Be punctual.” That’s what they tell you to do. But keep that up and you’ll be working the same 9-5 dead end job until you’re over 70. You’ll be brainwashed and programmed to follow the schedule of your boss, rather than learn the value of your own time and be able to use it to your advantage. Nah, I’m good fam. I’d rather just show up late once in a while, Procrastinate with Purpose. You'r e not a robot and are not limited to lines of code in carrying out schedule like its your programmed Cron Job. You have the freedom and authority to choose what to do with your time. You don't care about when others think you should have something done by. You're not a pre-programmed hard worker Droid 3.0. You're a procrastinator. You make your own rules It’s not about being “on time”, it’s about valuing your time and deciding purposefully how to use that time. If you want freedom, you can’t be a slave to time. You are either in control of your time or your time is in control of you. If you’re a PROcrastinator and Procrastinate with Purpose, you control your time.  You Procrastinate, put things off to do what you want. Yet you don’t just blindly procrastinate and let other distractions control your time. For example, you may decide to watch Netflix or play video games instead of doing homework or preparing that report for your boss. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total gamer myself but... That’s not Procrastinating with Purpose!That’s letting time consume you. True procrastination is calculated and intended, not a mindless act of dilly dallying. For example, instead of filing that report to your boss on time, you turn it in late because you were practicing guitar for an upcoming gig that’s going to take you a step forward in your music career or maybe going to a job fair or convention related to your field. (And I mean practicing slowly, not just jamming out. That’s a whole other blog topic though.) Anyway, if you find yourself as a natural procrastinator. In other words, if you find yourself playing video games or watching TV instead of doing what you’re supposed to do, then I have good news for you. You have the potential to be a super hero. That’s right. You’re basically a person who just discovered their powers but has no idea what the f*ck they’re doing or how to control it yet. You’re just wildly shooting off fireworks from your hands or flying into poles. You’re a bit reckless. You’re inexperienced. You’re an amateur hero. But that’s okay. That’s why you’re here -- to evolve into a real hero, a real Lazy Mastermind. Controlling your procrastination (being able to Procrastinate with Purpose) is what separates the lazy amateurs and the Lazy Masterminds because as Uncle Ben told Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) “With great power comes great responsibility.” One who understands the Lazy Mindset in depth understands how to leverage his/her natural procrastination habits towards “Procrastinative” Productivity. It also takes a bit of practice. But in the end you will be able to get things done without putting in the hard work; minimize effort and maximize results. You will also be respected for your time. And that is why being late is “no big deal.” As Kei$ha says, “the party don’t start ‘til I walk in" Now we can probably criticize the musical and grammatical integrity of that song, but we’re not gonna go down that path here. The takeaway is simple: to embrace the attitude she has (or at least pretends to have as her stage character) in that song in order to be a Lazy Mastermind. The party doesn’t start. People don’t get excited or feel stimulated until you decide to show up. Your presence, your time that you make available to others is valuable; it’s valuable because once again, you value your own time for what you believe it’s worth and not for the number your boss slaps on your hourly wage or salary. Once you walk into what was an otherwise dull and uneventful gathering, or unproductive meeting,it turns into something lively and memorable, or productive and worthwhile. Now you may be thinking, “But Nate, I can’t be late to my job! I’ll get fired.” or “I can’t be late to my date or my [significant other] will break up with me!” or “I can’t be late to class! I’ll fail!” And well, that might as well happen. But so what? If you value your time enough, you know they’re not going to be able to find a more productive employee or a better lover or better, no ya know what? School is just waste of time! (but we’ll dive into that later) You control your time and your time does not control you. They can wait 10 or 15 minutes for the best they’re ever gonna get. Otherwise they’re going to be waiting months or even years to find someone even half as competent or charming. Point is, you don’t worry about the “consequences” of being late because you know an even better opportunity will come after. Either they’re going to have to deal with your tardiness, or give you the boot then suffer the consequences of not having you around. That’s the Lazy Mindset you need to develop. Furthermore, there are situations where being on time just isn’t feasible, safe or practical. There are car accidents every single day caused by people hurrying to be to work “on time”. Imagine how much the rate of car accidents would decrease if people weren’t so rushed. When you rush, you rely on instinct rather than cognitive thought and that easily causes accidents. Enjoy your waiting time and procrastinate. Just take it easy. Don’t stress deadlines. The consequences of missing one really aren’t that severe. The consequences of valuing someone else’s time over your own are. Take it easy, Take it reeeal easy, - N8 P.S. Subscribe to the ProcrastiN8r Podcast so you don't miss the episode on Friday! Robin Singh, founder of E-Junkie will be joining us to talk about how laziness was the fuel for his entire successful online business. Plus, there will be a FREE 1 year E-Junkie membership to open your own e-commerce site and affiliate program if you tune in. The coupon code will only be given to LISTENERS and will NOT be posted anywhere else, so be sure not to miss it this Friday (Oct 26th) for a special Halloween treat! No longer do we live in the days where you open a corner store or “Mom n’ Pop” shop. The days of paying rent for a brick and mortar store are gone. Anyone with a laptop or computer can open up a store now.
You don’t have to hire a real estate agent or contractor or buy insurance. You turn on your computer, open an e-commerce site and boom! you have a business in minutes. A procrastinator who never leaves his couch (like me) can be an entrepreneur. Ah, entrepreneur. That’s such a nice word to describe someone who doesn’t feel like leaving the house to go to a job. But that’s the very definition of it today. Most entrepreneurs are running a business from their own homes nowadays. See, they want you to believe that either you work hard as a corporate slave or you work EVEN HARDER as an entrepreneur. WRONGO! Of course slave master wants freedom to look bad and will make the plantation sound like paradise. “Look, it’s dangerous out there, it’s worse out there. You should stay here where you at least know you’re safe. You’ll lose out there. You’ll get kicked to the curb.” They have all this propaganda out there to make you work hard and make the path to freedom look nearly impossible. Not only is it possible to escape the 9-5 grind, it’s also a hell of a lot easier than slaving away for 40+ years at the same desk. Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with working hard, but just being brave enough to say “fuck it” I ain’t workin’ for anyone’s time or doing anything for anyone, except for myself. Entrepreneurship is euphemism for “ Professional Laziness;” it’s sweet talk for the method and mindset of being lazy and getting away with it. The hardest part of entrepreneurship is: You literally have to rewire your brain from thinking you must follow orders and do what you are told and meet deadlines, objectives, and goals that someone else set up all for you into thinking you are free to be lazy and do whatever you actually enjoy. You’ve been trained, hypnotized not to actually enjoy things, but just recover a little so you can “get back to work. An entrepreneur is a lazy person that has mastered the art of enjoying oneself. They enjoy what they do and make a living off of it. Entrepreneurship is having the courage to not care about failure. You are too lazy to care and too lazy to work on someone else’s schedule. You do things when you want, how you want. And failure doesn’t faze you because you’re at such a high level of “I don’t give a fuck” laziness that it doesn’t shake or break you or make you feel incompetent. It also takes a lot of focus. You know what you want. You’re focused on it. And you’ll get there, eventually. That pizza is gettin’ eaten, damnit! That Platinum trophy is getting unlocked, damnit! That hobby of mine is gonna pay my bills. Speaking of which, if you want to learn how Video Games can pay YOUR bills, check out this FREE e-book entitled “Self-Employed Gamer – 10 Days to Make Money Gaming” by clicking here If you’re worried about the consequences of losing your job or failing your e-commerce site or whatever start up business, then you’re not truly lazy. Not yet, anyway. You’re too emotionally attached and “worked up” emotionally. You’re embracing an active mindset, not a Lazy one. You have to change your attitude; you have to relax and ease up a little. You have to be lazy and unwire your mind from being the hardworking yet fearful machine its been programmed to be. You have to abandon obligation in order to fulfill desire. E-commerce is one of those paths to freedom, one of those methods of un-wiring your brain, truly detaching, and truly lying down in the bed of laziness and for once -- actually ENJOY yourself. The best part is, you don’t need an inventory of products or a giant warehouse or shipping supplies. You can sell DIGITAL products that have an unlimited inventory. Today, we’re talking about the basics of e-commerce and we’ll look at a couple options to get started, but first let’s dive into old school brick n’ mortar business just to sort of paint a metaphor here. Business real estate experts will always tell you when choosing a place: “location, location, location. The strongest factor in determining your brick n’ mortar business’ success is its location. Having a porn store next to an elementary school is not the best idea. It’s neither appropriate or good for sales. Also, probably illegal. Putting a bakery next to a medical marrijuana faicility or selling girl scout cookies is just pure genius business sense. Alongside with location, you must also stand out among competitors with unique branding and features. Maybe you don’t necessarily have the store on the corner, but you’re the one with their bright neon lights and the blow up Tyrannosaurus Rex out front, or maybe you just offer to do things “with pleasure” like at Chic-fil-a, or give a warm chocolate chip cookie as a welcome gift like Double Tree. In the online “real estate world, instead of location it’s: “niche, niche, niche” Similarly to when we talked about how the Affiliate Program that you promote on your website must be appropriate for the niche, it is also important for your own online product to be relevant and valuable to that niche. You must go, build your brand, your online building, where your audience is. You must build your shop in the right part of town, so the right people are attracted to buy it. Then you must present a unique perspective or insight on said niche or create a memorable experience.. I don’t have a t-rex or a neon sign but I have a sloth and a Lazy island. The first few questions that you want to ask before you create and try to market and sell any of your own products online is: Is this something that provides value for my niche audience? Does it provide a lesson or entertainment? Does it create hope and/or provide actionable steps towards solving a problem? Are you already receiving quality engagement with your audience? Numbers aren’t as important as quality engagement. You may have thousands of listeners, viewers, or readers but that doesn’t matter if they’re only reading the first paragraph or only watching/listening to the first few seconds. You know you’re ready when you have an audience that follows simple calls to action like “share, subscribe, like”. If they”buy” into your calls of actions, then they’ll be more likely to buy your actual product. If they’re paying you with attention, then they’ll be warm enough to pay you with their wallet. You establish yourself as an authority that people go to and trust and would be willing to pay for “more” of your content. If you answered no to one or more of these then it’s probably not worth selling. Don’t waste your time. Procrastinate and wait until later. If you answered yes, then you’re ready to be a lazy person that makes money doing what they want err -- e-commerce entrepreneur. All it takes is creating a website, opening up an e-commerce account, then integrating it into said website. Easy. There are plenty of options out there: E-Junkie, SquareSpace, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Weebly, WooCommerce, the list goes on. As a bit of a disclaimer, I had a recent interview with Robin Singh, the founder of E-Junkie. I made it clear that I didn’t want the interview to turn into an infomercial for his site. He agreed and we focused the conversation entirely on the Lazy Mindset. He shared his story of how laziness literally was the foundation for his entire business. I’ll be publishing it as a little Halloween ProcrastiN8r Podcast treat for you all in a future episode next week so stay tuned for that. There will be a special offer ONLY FOR LISTENERS. It will NOT be posted or published anywhere else, so be sure NOT to miss that episode and listen. It won’t even be in the show notes, so you’ll have to tune in and listen! I also told him I’d give an honest review of E-Junkie. I wasn’t going to just blow sunshine up his ass. I could have shit all over this and hated it. I could have thrown it against the wall and sprayed it with graffiti. I really have complete leeway to demolish this thing if I hate it. I really could flush it down the toilet and say whatever I want about. So, how does E-Junkie fair in the world of e-commerce, is it worth a praise or does it deserve every ounce of hate I could give it? Is it awesome or complete junk? Let’s take a look. E-junkie is short for“electronic junkie”. A junkie, of course being someone addicted to something. We’re all junkies and procrastinators here. We’re addicted to video games or movies or whatever hobby and sitting all day in front of our computers or lying on the couch, talking about and enjoying said indulgences online. Makes sense to make a living off our lazy lifestyle rather than let it consume us. Embracing our addiction and laziness is the pathway to freedom and success. We have passion. Passion is just a cute word for addiction, of course. Right off the bat, E-Junkie wins points because there’s no installation or programming necessary. Just copy and paste a button and put it anywhere. This is a beautiful thing. I’m too lazy to program, personally. It’s not something I’m interested in. It’s too tedious for my tastes, so I don’t do it. Laziness is about putting off obligation to do what you want. If you put off other things to do programming and it’s something you actually enjoy, then go for it. For me personally though, I’m gonna have to take a pass on that. If you think of programming as some sort of puzzle-solving fun or a relaxing way to spend your time, then by all means, do it. I’m saying don’t work on programming or learn it if you’re lazy about it. Find something else to do that makes you feel leisure. If you feel like programming (or anything for that matter) is work, then don’t do it. The button is customizable, but you’ll need to do a bit of coding yourself to do it; there’s unfortunately, as of writing, no way to customize colors in an easy interface. There are free options out there for you programmers. Namely CubeCart. It’s totally 100% free open source e-commerce platform. There’s no license to purchase or monthly subscription fee. Plus, since it is open source, there are lots of extensions (including PayPal) and plenty of customization options. However, you’ll need to feel comfortable installing and editing scripts in your website. Woo Commerce is now a free plugin for WordPress sites, with some paid features you can purchase at a one time fee (memberships, subscriptions, bookings). It integrates with Stripe, and while Woo won’t charge you any additional fees for transactions, there is a fee that Stripe Woo e-commerce on WordPress is actually pretty easy to set up and is powering over 30% of online stores. E-Junkie is hella cheap (I mean it’s a bit more expensive than free), but it’s just 5 bucks a month. This is the cheapest option in the world of e-commerce. (Second closest is Shopify at $9 per month.) You’re also not limited to just WordPress sites and can put it anywhere, including eBay. E-Junkie lets you upload digital products, put them in a store and instantly send them to customers to their inbox the minute they hit “pay now". There’s plenty of payment options to choose from that E-Junkie supports, including PayPal, Stripe, Clickbank, and Braintree. Just like Woo, you are sitll responsible for paying the payment processor fees You can even sell software or subscription based content and create trial keys for people to test the waters with your product. You can create custom coupons and make limited sales and promotions. It’ll also calculate taxes and what not. There are some options to sell physical products, such as shipping calculation and inventory management/tracking. You can send custom “Thank you” e-mails that trigger upon a sale and also integrate Google analytics and a Facebook pixel to keep track of customers that click a link, add to cart or follow through with a purchase. They also have a newsletter option, but charge you a fee per e-mail sent. You’re better off using the free account at Mailchimp for newsletters, to be honest. Since assuming you’re tracking the purchase through some sort of tracking software, you can easily target customers in a list or tag later. We’ll dive into specifics of e-mail marketing in a later post. There are also premium upgrades that cost a bit more. Below is a list of all the packages available. $5/month Number of products: 10 Download Storage: 200 MB Unlimited Sales Unlimited Downloads $10/month Number of products: 20 Download Storage: 2 GB Unlimited Sales Unlimited Downloads $20/month Number of products: 60 Download Storage: 6 GB Pull remote files Unlimited Sales Unlimited Downloads $40/month Number of products: 250 Download Storage: 20 GB Pull remote files Unlimited Sales Unlimited Downloads Nothing beats their $5 entry price (unless you’re using the open source options). However, there cheaper options out there once you get past the initial 10 products (starter level). But there are NO TRANSACTION fees and, quite frankly, those fees that other e-commerce sites charge can be a HUGE cut into your profits. As a matter of fact, transaction fees are the bulk of your “Do It At Home Business” expense. Spreesy, for example, while at the low low price of “free” has a flat 3% transaction fee on a per sale (Shopify has a 2.4-2.9%That 3% may not sound like much, especially fi you’re only making a few dollars, but it adds up once you start getting a lot of customers. Just imagine when you’re making thousands and take a cut of 3%, well now you’re paying hundreds if not thousands just in fees alone. Now that number of 3% in particular is rather high, but transaction fees from e-commerce platforms tend to range from 1-4% in addition to whatever fees the credit card company or payment provider (eg. PayPal) charge. If you want an easy way to increase your profits, eliminate fees wherever possible. Instead of looking to sell more and work harder to drive more sales, just cut your expenses. It’s one of the easiest business practices you can do to make more money. E-Junkie by not charging any transaction fees accelerates your profits easily. Big Commerce also charges no transaction fees, but costs a whopping $30 in its cheapest package. But we can’t ignore how Woo is doing the same thing but for free. However, the free version of Woo only supports basic products and does not include subscription based products or an affiliate system. You must browse through the plugin store and purchase it in order to add these type of features. The plugins are rather costly; the “memberships”, plugin for example is $150 and the “subscription” plugin is $200, and you have to purchase a separate license for each individual site you want to put it on. E-Junkie includes these things in the $5 monthly subscription fee and allows you to integrate the store, cart, and all of its feature with an unlimited amount of sites. You don’t have to pay separate licensing/subscription fees for each site when using E-Junkie.Woo commerce may be cheaper in the long run though because it is a one time fee that you pay up front. Use your discretion In E-Junkie, the amount of storage space you get for digital files is rather low (200MB) and will fill up quickly, especially if you’re selling video webinars or premium podcasts or any sort of media file. You can probably have a solid library of e-books, which don’t take up much space, before reaching anywhere near that limit, though. However, other sites offer “unlimited” storage space, will charge you transaction fees on top of a monthly fee. If you think about it, you’re basically paying for the extra storage each time you make a sale. You’re purchasing the megabytes. While I haven’t experienced this personally, some customers on Trust Pilot report that their e-mails weren’t being automatically sent to customers and there was “nothing they could do”. I imagine perhaps the e-mail provider blocked the e-mail in their spam filter. .I would make it VERY CLEAR on my sales page to please check spam folders to avoid this sort of thing. You can even create your own affiliate program and offer commission to people who promote and sell your product. You do have to pay out the commissions manually though and there’s no option to set up automatic payments. This can be a tedious task to juggle if you have hundreds if not thousands of clients. You cna use something like PayPal’s mass pay option, but still, that’s an extra bit of steps in the process. I would much rather have a system that automatically pays my affiliates so I don’t have to do any maintence. The plus side of this is that the service isn’t charging you any sort of fee, but it does require extra work, which as a procrastinator, I’m not too fond of either of those two words: “extra” and “work”. Overall, I would give E-Junkie a Procrasti 7/8 If you want a cheap place place to start e-commerce without the hassle of learning (or dealing with) programming, e-junkie makes it easy to dive in, packs it with a plethora of built-in features, and most importantly, doesn’t break the bank. Some of the features, like the whole Affiliate program system should be automatic, but requires extra manual labor to have running. Visit E-Junkie Check out all the features: https://www.e-junkie.com/wiki/features By the way, subscribe to the newsletter and check back for when I do a full review of these other e-commerce platforms I mention. Also, you may be thinking “Nate, you haven’t even covered how to create content yet and you’re already discussing selling e-products. WTF?” Well, look I am the ProcrastiN8r. You shouldn’t expect any sort of structure here. I do things when I want. Patience, fellow procrastinator, I’ll cover how to create website content in the most easy lazy fashion possible...eventually. As a matter of fact, it may be the topic in this week’s podcast on Friday, ya know, if I feel like it. Then we’ll dive into some mindset tricks with Robin Singh next week as a little Halloween treat! Today, I’m going to introduce to you one of the laziest ways to make money. I mean it’s one of the laziest ways to make money, period, not just online. And it requires very little effort on your part, especially because it’s, likely,something you’re already doing without even thinking about it; you’re just not getting paid for it. We’re going to talk about how you can get paid for doing something you already do. It’s called Affiliate Marketing and in a nut shell, it’s the monetization of word of mouth recommendations of products and services. Yup, good ole Affiliate Marketing. It’s basically telling people “hey I like this cool thing. Check this cool thing out.” It’s sharing products/services and getting paid for it. That’s all. Some of you may have never heard of this before and didn’t know it was even possible to make money that way, while some of you may have, but maybe felt intimidated by the fancy words (Don’t worry I have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia too; the fear of long words), and too lazy to deal with it. Or maybe you already are an affiliate marketer yourself and just want a lazier/easier way to do it. It’s sort of like how a cashier nowadays is called a “Point of Sales Associate” or a waiter/waitress is called a “Culinary Customer Service Specialist” Every title is embellished nowadays, in this “work hard” society; a lot in our language is over the top, to make seem so complex and unattainable. But it’s frankly, quite easy. Let’s simplify it, take it easy, and digest it slowly. First, let’s look at just how common UN-monetized Affiliate marketing is. It’s in our every day little chats we have. Pay attention to the conversations of what your friends, family, and people in general out in public for that matter, are talking about. Chances are the conversation will almost always have somebody recommend a product or service at SOME point-- whether it’s an exciting new first person shooter, an action packed character-driven movie, the delicious new Italian restaurant down the street the or whatever, chances are somebody will bring up something that s/he purchased and recommends. I mean if you even look at what people post about on social media. It’s the movies they watch, the games the play, the places of vacation they traveled to. And maybe some political arguments sprinkled in. But people are generally talking about what they buy all the time. You’ve probably even done it yourself. Maybe you just got a new sound system and someone says “Wow that sounds amazing" then asks where you got it or maybe you just had the coolest vacation out on an island resort no one has heard about and you feel the urge to tell people about the trip.  It makes sense to start making money off something you’re going to be doing anyway. That’s the Lazy Mindset method -- monetizing what you already do so you don’t have to work and do more. Do less with more strategy behind it. The way it works is you join what’s called an Affiliate Program for the website/brand you are going to recommend products for. Once you get all signed up, you’ll get your own Affiliate Link. This is a magical little link that when clicked on and a purchase is made through said link, you make a commission based off the total sale price. While you do make commission, it’s not exactly “sales” because you aren’t really “selling” anything, not in the traditional sense of being a door to door salesman and booking clients sense anyway. You are telling people about a product or service that they may be interested in and may find useful or entertaining. You are just giving a review, a small recommendation, you’re spilling your thoughts about something you’ve tried and enjoy. Easy, lazy, no big deal. You can pretty much find an affiliate program anywhere. If you go to a brand’s website, literally almost every single store on the Interwebs, has some sort of affiliate program you can join. Heck, even Wal-Mart and Amazon have one. Now Affiliate Marketing has been around since the early 90s, so this is nothing new, but recently it’s become easier than ever before thanks to a new app I’m going to talk about in a minute, but first I want to dive in deeper on how Affiliate Marketing has worked up until this point. As I said, you suggest products/services and people buy them, but there’s only so much you can earn by telling your friends/family, not to mention many Affiliate Programs won’t even get you approved until you have a certain audience size. That’s where finding a niche and building an audience comes in. You can write about video games, for example, review games and hardware then include an affiliate link of the game or system you’re talking about in your posts. Similarly, you could write about crypto mining and affiliate link to mining gear or new coins. Finding an affiliate program for your niche is as simple as going to Google and typing in “[blank] affiliate”. You could do golf, board games, cooking, photography, writing, hiking, dance, literally anything that exists, there’s an affiliate program for it. Consider it Rule 34 and a half of the Internet. See when you build an audience that trusts your word (and your recommendations for that matter), they are likely to purchase things using your affiliate link, especially when they not only trust you as a person, but also have an interest in whatever product you’re talking about/linking to to begin with. The product/service you offer as an affiliate must be congruent with your niche and audience, of course. You wouldn’t, for example, link to a sewing kit Affiliate Link if you’re writing about AR technology; that just doesn’t connect with the content or your audience. The Affiliate Link MUST be appropriate for the audience, otherwise you probably won’t make any sales. I always say that writing a blog, producing a podcast, or creating videos is easiest when you do it for an audience of a niche that you’re already personally interested in. That way, you don’t have to do the extra work of researching or doing homework or figuring out what kind of products your niche like. You’re already looking up news and talking about the things you like and know what you (and people in your niche) would buy, so the research is done for you. it’s a lazy way to success. But anyway, building an audience within your niche and creating content for them -- that’s whole other topic entirely. You look at big “social media influencers’ and this is essentially what they’re paid to do: recommend products to their friends, family and most importantly, fans. But these guys (and gals) had to build up a large following before starting Affiliate Marketing. The fact is: Affiliate Programs usually require you to have “influence” over a lot of people before they will even consider LOOKING AT your application. This large audience requirement, has, up until this point made the entry level into Affiliate Marketing quite tremendous (which again we’ll cover how that has changed briefly). The other thing that placed a limitation on streamlining Affiliate Marketing and doing it effectively is the fact that there was not one portal or hub to keep track of all your affiliate earnings, no “catch-all” mechanism. You had to create a separate, individual account for each and every website then login, look There are apps out there like ClickMeter and myDash that allow you to track your clicks and income in one spot, but in order to sign up for each program to begin with, you had to do that manually as well as in order to WITHDRAW your earnings and well, actually get paid in Affiliate Marketing, you still need to login to each individual account. It’s too much of a hassle. Also a lot of these Affiliate Marketing tracking services are paid services and require a monthly payment; money, I’d rather save. But now you can signup, track your clicks, earnings, and withdraw all in one single Lazy mastermind’s Dashboard with this app called Wildlink all for free. (And no, unfortunately for Zelda fans, it's not Link from Breath of the Wild.) Ladies and Gentlemen, ProcrastiN8rs of all ages, this is an absolute game changer. In the same vein as iTunes brought online music to the mainstream, Wildlink brings Affiliate Marketing to the mainstream(or at least has the potential to if this picks up, which I imagine it will). Prior to the release of Wildlink, you HAD to be a Marketing Geek just like prior to the release of iTunes you HAD to be a computer geek and/or audiophile to download digital music. Wildlink enters the playing field with a crazy new set of rules. All you do is download the app and register and that’s it: you’re an affiliate for over 20,000 stores, including WalMart, Kohl’s, GameStop, Target, Sephora, BestBuy, Trip Advisor, StubHub, Groupon, man the list goes on and on. No need to register for each individual store. No applications. No Excel spreadsheets. And I mean even as an affiliate marketer myself, I may be a part of a few programs but definitely not thousands upon thousands of them. This is a MASSIVE jump start in Affiliate Marketing, and it requires NO website, NO blog, NO podcast. NO YouTube or Twitch channel. Just an e-mail address, device, and phone number and that’s it, you’re good to go within minutes (It’s important to note that you do need a text verification, which may be a deal breaker for some) Even the best and the brightest of Affiliate Marketers are certainly not registered for one thousand, yet alone twenty thousand different programs. The access to variety is unreal and unmatched. Once the app installed on your iOS/Android smart phone or Windows/Mac computer (and you register/sign up for a free account), any time you copy a link in your browser from one of the thousands of stores, Wildlink will AUTOMATICALLY convert that link into an affiliate link. You don’t have to rummage through your bookmarks to find it, like old school Affiliate Marketing. It’s a lazy way to start affiliate marketing. Any purchase made through that Wildlink you share earns you credit in your account. This is convenient and lazy, but also “forced” and unavoidable because just in case for whatever reason you don’t want to copy an affiliate link, there’s no toggle button to turn it off, unless you uninstall the app then reinstall it, but no one wants to deal with that nonsense. It will convert links that aren’t even affiliate links, like forum or blog posts and that can be quite annoying. Not only annoying, but think about it: they’re tracking every link you copy to your clipboard. You can also browse through dozens of categories directly through the app: fashion, travel, garden, health, etc. The HUGE down side of Wildlink is that they are basically offering you a SHARED commission. So rather than eating the full piece of pie for yourself, you have to split it with Wildlink, which according to their terms of service they are “subject to change" at any time. There’s no transparency in how much you are earning versus how much they are taking, which is a little sketchy to be honest; I prefer open communication, especially when they’re asking me to be so open about my information but we’ll get to that later. They do provide a tiny little payout rating (1-3 coins) underneath each listing, with the higher rating being the larger payout, but it doesn't provide any specific numbers. I mean that’s how they make their money; they let you use their affiliate and give you some scraps from the table. It’s convenient for you, but that’s the price you pay: less profits and commissions off sales in “your” affiliate link. See, it’s not really “your" affiliate link, it’s their affiliate link that bypasses and is tracked through Wildlink. They basically created an Affilaite Program within an Affiliate Program; it’s Affiliateception. The Matryoshka doll of affiliate marketing I bet you a bunch of affiliate marketers and programmers are just about kicking themselves in the butt right now wishing they had thought of this simple yet intelligent idea. I mean this is absolute Lazy Mastermind material right here at its very core. Don’t feel like making or selling a product? Start Affiliate Marketing. Don’t feel like doing the actual marketing? Get other people to do it for you. The other down side is that the minimum cash out is $20, but depletes if you account is inactive. In other words, they keep your money if you don’t hit the cash out minimum. Most people, to be honest, probably won’t hit that. Typically, a big brand affiliate store program will pay you a commission of around 2-5% (some services and products with affiliate programs offer a much higher commission, like up to 50%,, but usually the larger brands are in the low single digit numbers) Since Wildlink is taking a cut of the commission, it will take upwards to $2000+ worth of affiliate sales to reach cash out. That’s an awful large threshold, especially for their target audience of the general public, who are likely just sharing with their family and friends, and not their readers, viewers and listeners to cap out on. They’re no doubt banking on the possibility of people selling a product via their affiliate link, then leaving their account inactive for some time so they can scoop up the commissions s/he earned. I really think they should lower the cash out threshold to like $5 or something, but like I said, it’s probably not going to happen because it’s literally part of their profit model. They basically get a bunch of people (thousands of users) to promote THEIR affiliate link for THEM and make money off other people’s promotions, marketing, and sales. A little shady if you ask me. From the Affiliate Marketer perspective, this is absolute genius -- get people to mass share your own affiliate link and share the scraps. Ironically, in this Affiliateception concept that Wildlink created, they don’t have THEIR OWN Affiliate program. In other words, I can’t give you an affiliate link to sign up under and earn a a part of your commission; likely so they can keep the profits for themselves. Also there’s a bit of a privacy concern: you must share ALL your messages, texts, images, audio, and video with them. Every single link you copy is shared with them, even if its not a aprt of their affiliate program list. It seems quite ironic that a company asking me to share all my content with them won’t share with me how much of a cut they are taking out of my total affiliate sales. It’s hard for me to build a trusted relationship with someone that expects full disclosure from me but keeps their secrets. If you sign up individually for your own Affiliate Link (not through Wildlink), you don't have to share everything. I mean you might have to share some information (billing address, social security to get taxed and paid, etc) but they’re not going to look at your text messages and everything else in your phone or computer. This is targeted at the large mainstream audience though, and just look at what Facebook is doing with their sketchy invasion of privacy, and people’s continued use of the platform despite FB’s shady behavior. Also, look at Equifax that had half of Americans’ financial and private information leaked -- the company recovered its price on the stock market and people continue to use their service today. They’re job was literally to protect and store people’s data and they failed to do so. They should be out of business! I digress, but these two anecdotes highlight an import fact: If the service is something people use and like, privacy is no concern to them. So Wildlink probably doesn’t have to worry too much about people bailing out from their service due to privacy concerns, but it’s something you should definitely keep in mind when deciding whether or not to jump on board. For serious online marketers, I don’t think its worth the privacy risk or the lower profits. For the average procrastinator, or just someone starting out, though, I think Wildlink is a good spring board to launch off into the world of Affiliate Marketing. Like I said, acccess to over 20,000 affiliate programs in one click is just mind blowing! But I probably wouldn’t stick with it in the long run. Using Wildlink would be good opportunity to take a specific program out for a test drive and see what kind of sales you can get, without having to go through the whole process of filling out an application, waiting for approval, etc. You can test a mass amount of affiliate stores and stick to the ones you like (the ones that are most profitable) by opening your own affiliate account with those specific stores. Wildlink can be used to save a lot of time testing out different affiliate programs without having to take the time to fill out forms and register for each one separately; it’s all under one account: your Wildlink account. While I am tempted to remain active with Wildlink because of just how much it allows me to embrace my laziness; I mean it really takes away a lot of the work flow involved with affiliate marketing, not that affiliate marketing is much work to begin with, I can’t ignore the elephant in the room, which is the fact that they are tracking my every move and that I have absolutely no control over the negotiation of how much of the cut I’m getting paid. Do they lower my profits when they see I’m making a lot of affiliate sales form their links? Are they going to be sending me spam texts and e-mails based on my browsing history? I don’t know but they certainly could. Overall, I’d give the Wildlink app a Procrastin 5/8 score. It’s a quick way to join literally thousands of affiliate programs at the click of the button, but the privacy policy is sketchy as f*ck and they could easily screw me over in how much of the affiliate commission I get paid, since its completely at their discretion how much they share and they aren’t very transparent about how it is split to begin with. Download it here! ---- P.S. If you are getting into Affilaite Marketing be sure to mention that the link you post, wherever you post it, is an affiliate link and you make a commission from sales via that link. It’s actually legally required by the FTC to do so, so yeah let’s not be criminals here. Also, you can’t make purchases yourself through your own affiliate links. No cheating. A new Oxford university Study found that 3-day weekends make people much happier and more productive . During an 8-week trial, those who worked a nice and lazy 4 day easy work week, as opposed to the typical 5-day nonstop grind fest alleviated their stress levels and leveled up their cooperation and amount of output. Stress-free, motivated to perform better team work, inspired to get more done. Hmm... Wow! Imagine that. You mean you can’t “work hard” for happiness? You mean happiness is something that just comes naturally when you’re doing the things that you actually, oh I don’t know, what’s that word again, on the tip of my tongue, oh yeah! ---enjoy? And when you’re happy and carefree, you’re likely to accomplish a greater amount of tasks compared to if you’re miserable and stressed. I don’t understand! We’re supposed to work hard. That’s what leads to success and success leads to happiness. Stress is just part of progress; you have to put up with an extreme amount of it to amount to anything. NOPE! Procrastination leads to satisfaction. Say it with me now: Procrastination leads to satisfaction. A little louder for the people sleeping in the back! When you take the time to procrastinate and spend time doing exactly what you want to do, whatever tickles your fancy, whatever makes you feel good, and balance it out with purpose, a focus on moving (slowly) towards a specific goal, you create happiness and accomplishment. You receive both pleasure and success with a proper work-life balance. We, as a society, push only for the hard work side of things and fail to give notice or appreciation toward the essential lazy leisure that promotes strong mental health and further, inspires both creativity and productivity. According to Business Insider, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an associate professor of economics and strategy at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, said “the four-day working week is spot on in terms of finding or striking that right balance between improving the work-life balance and unlocking the happiness potential from that in terms of productivity gains.” Balance is what the key to success and happiness is all about. You can’t have just one side of the spectrum, without toppling over, but we live in a society that thinks we can. We keep moving further and further on the edge, and it’s only a matter of time, assuming we continue the same direction that we fall right off. If hard work is one side and laziness is the other, we’re completely on the extreme side of hard work. We’re constantly bombarded with messages to stay driven and not be lazy. Video games are for losers. Vacation is a waste of time. Breaks are frowned upon. You get the gist. There’s no message out there (or at leas tit's very rare to find) saying “hey, take it easy so you don’t burn yourself out” or “take a break and don’t come back to work until you completely forget about it for a while” , less than the good ole “slow n’ steady wins the race”, there’s not a message of laziness out there.  I think the target where we want to land as a society is somewhere in between, but we can’t hit that target if it’s not balanced out. That’s why you must embrace your laziness and move toward the other side of the spectrum. You must lie down once in a while, rather than constantly taking running, leaping steps forward. If you move too fast, you burn out. Critics claim that some people “slack off” during a 3-day weekend and leave work undone that others are then forced to make up for and that the level of QUALITY in work did not increase at all. That’s fair. No one likes it when Bob slacks off and the rest of everybody at work has to play catch up. But if everybody is slacking off, everybody, what difference does it make? What if, we’re all procrastinators, what if instead, working TOO hard is frowned down upon, what if working overtime is seen as a waste of mental energy and dead lines as an unnecessary rise in pressure and stress levels. Imagine that, it's almost as if we're living in the exact opposite and socially pressuring each other to over-work and over-stress ourselves to the point of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion (spoiler alert: we are) If we create a society that values calmness and leisure, that values laziness and procrastination, a society of procrastinators, then there is no “quick catch up to meet the dead line”, there’s only moving forward at a reasonable pace. The environment becomes less hectic, the negative feelings of failure are less intense, the stress on your mind and body is cured. There are many benefits to a lazier society. Certainly there are the extreme side of things and too much laziness can lead to idleness and complete lack of any motivation to do anything. Unmotivation. Too much laziness can lead to wasting time, rather than using it effectively. But look, we are absolutely no where near that case at all. We’re not. That’s like worrying about a forest fire during a hurricane. I mean you could in fact point to the large obesity rates and be like “hey look, people are fat and lazy”. but I’d suggest that they are not necessarily lazy, they are just stressed beyond their limit and unmotivated to put up with said stress. I can hear the naysayers now: "They're just weak. Weak-minded people.Gotta push hard. Put up with the stress." What the fuck? Like this isn't survival any more. This isn't a struggle of survival against other tribes. You understand what I'm saying. We're not living out in the caves anymore, hunting and gathering for survival. We're not competing for resources. We have plenty and the means to grow more of them. We don't have to stress ourselves out or put ourselves under pressure for no good reason. Like why in the hell are we acting like it's survival of the fittest? What kind of primal prehistoric instinct are some of us having a hard time letting go? Shed that shit off and enter a new skin. Laziness is evolution. Every invention since the wheel was invented by a lazy person. Our evolution is one of the mind. Those that need to "work hard" have something primitive in them that hasn't quite evolved yet. In this society, goals are seen as something “hard” to do and moving forward has to be instant and fast. Success is, as taught by society, make it or break it. It’s not about just making slow steps forward when you feel like it. It’s not about taking time to move on your goals in between your passion, hobbies, and enjoyment; it’s about keep moving until you crash, then, take a little break. But not too long ‘cause ya gotta get back to work and ya don’t wanna be a slacker! Yee-haw! Giddy up, work horse! I’d notion that perhaps the work hard mantra is pushed too much and needs a better balance with the contrary. That is why here, on Lazy Island, we push messages proclaiming the opposite of all the popular publicity. There is both the Yin and Yan, the Light Side and the Dark Side of the force, that create balance in nature. By exerting a strong LAZY message and call to (in)action that opposes the mainstream “work hard" propaganda, we as procrastinators create balance in the galaxy. You, as a fellow ProcrastiN8r reading this blog, could be part of something bigger here and it starts with you letting the laziness flow through you (and skipping work to do what you want.) Another study from Warwick University in 2015, found that employees were 8-12% more productive when they were given chocolate or listened to a comedy clip before a task, as opposed to thinking and writing about a family loss. Again, this goes to show that morale, happiness is important in determining productivity in the work force, and society, as a whole. When not allowed to do what they want, when not given the opportunity to embrace laziness on at least some occasion, humans, as a survival instinct, put less effort in the things they do. That does not just apply to their job, but also taking care of their physical and mental health.. You see, then, that obesity is not a laziness problem. It’s a happiness one. We aren’t making people happy by force-fucking hard work down their throat and making them eat it, even when they aren’t hungry. Let people graze a bit on their work nourishment. Let people laze a bit on their leisure nourishment. A balanced diet is a healthy diet. If we continue to just suck it up and kiss our bosses’ asses, rather than embrace laziness, and say “no, I’m doing what I want. I’m taking a day off. I’m human, not a work machine.”then it will be a long while before we see any changes. If we go back to the Labor Movement of the 1800s, it literally took DECADES before workers were able to establish even a 5 day work week and abolish child labor. Let’s not repeat history. Let’s not put off procrastination any longer. We’re done. We’re taking a break. It’s time to procrastinate right now and take the 4-day work week we deserve. |
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March 2022
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