But then there’s also all of those smaller factors that people all-too often overlook. And one example of this is the lighting.

People obsess so much over video quality and resolution etc. that they forget they need to think about the quality of the real image before they take the video! And actually, a bright video taken with a low-quality camera is almost always going to look better than a dark video on a high quality camera.
There will be more noise in the latter and it will be harder to make out what’s going on!

So how do you go about getting that lighting just right?

Natural Lighting

The great thing about lighting is that you don’t have to spend anything to get it perfect. The best lighting in actual fact is natural lighting and if you can find a nice large window with no blinds or netting in the way to block the light, then this will do a fantastic job of lighting any subject.

To make the most of this, you should set-up the shot so that the light from the window will be coming in at the side of the subject (which is likely to be you). This will light one side of your face more than the other, creating a sense of contrast and depth and being more flattering than ‘flat light’. This is known as ‘Rembrandt’ lighting and is a great effect if you can pull it off.

Lighting Equipment

The main problem with relying on natural lighting though is of course that it isn’t always going to be available and you can sometimes be left with nothing.

The solution to this problem is to use lighting equipment and here there are two popular options among YouTubers. One is the ‘halo ring’, which is a ring of bright light. The only problem with this is that it can show in your eyes and create a ring-like effect around your pupils.

Another option is ‘soft boxes’. These are large boxes that emit light but dampen it on the way through to create a less harsh effect. Using these you can make sure that all of your shots are bright and crisp and that your audience will be able to see your videos clearly.

Fancy Effects

Of course as you get more ambitious, you’ll have the option to create more elaborate and interesting lighting. A great example is to use colored lighting, which you can accomplish relatively easily using a colored bulb. This will allow you to light gadgets and all manner of other things using cool green or purple lighting effects. Invest in a couple and you can create a lot of amazing looks this way that will really set your videos apart! Experiment and get creative!

How Jobs Impact Us

I used to proudly claim that I hadn’t changed, because I became a blogger and never bowed down to the man. I have no colleagues as a blogger meaning that there was no one for me to become ‘more alike’, but this in itself can have an effect on you. And likewise, working from home and earning passive income has probably had some impact on me too. Blogging/optimizing changes you just like any other job, only it changes you differently. Once I was self-aware enough to recognize this, I set about finding out what had changed about me. Here’s what I came up with…

Care Free

I would say that compared to my other friends, I am more carefree and less restricted. While my friends have to work 9-5 jobs and get very stressed if they stay out too late one night, I can remain flexible and free to work when I choose and where I choose. If I’m honest, this has also led me to somewhat resent those people who aren’t free to hang out because they have work the next day. I guess it’s fair to say that I’ve become somewhat detached from the ‘real world’ and regular routine.

Opinionated

Writing online regularly has also made me somewhat opinionated. Sure, I’m opinionated in my views on employment (and self-employment), but I’ve also become very used to expressing myself a lot online and sharing my opinion. This undoubtedly crosses over into my daily life, as I tend to wax lyrical about pretty much any subject that I get the opportunity to talk about.

Independence and Confidence

You also get a lot of confidence from working online. Once you’ve made money yourself – completely yourself – you realize you’re capable of anything. This helps you to feel more successful and generally means you get used to ‘being the boss’.

And with that comes increased independence too. You don’t rely on anyone, and you have countless projects to pass the time when you are alone.

An Unusual View of Money

In some ways, being an online entrepreneur has made me stricter with my money. The money I’ve earned has been entirely down to my own effort and is a reflection of my success, so I feel more personally affronted when I spend it. On the other hand though, I also think of money now very much in terms of overheads and profits. Spending a little money on a friend is just another ‘overhead’ and I can earn it back by working a little extra hard for a while.

These are just some of the ways you change when you become a blogger or a digital marketer. Of course, the precise changes partly depend on who you are to begin with. Either way, expect to grow and change and to get more from the experience than you necessarily bargain for.

But while this is true, there are certainly some business models out there that come pretty close to being perfect and probably the best example of this of all is dropshipping. Why is dropshipping so special? We’ll find out but before we do let’s discuss some of the issues with some of the other more popular online business models.

The Problem With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the route that most internet marketers will take when trying to make money from a blog or a social media channel/mailing list. The idea is simple: they promote someone else’s product and then they get a profit.

The problem is that these products are almost always digital products. In order to make the most money, that’s pretty much what you need to sell.

While this has big advantages for the manufacturer, it has some significant downsides for you. For starters, the appeal of a digital product is much smaller than that of a physical product. Try and sell a digital product to your Grandma for instance and you won’t likely have much luck. The same goes for trying to sell digital products to your Mom, your Dad or even your friends! If they do happen to buy from you they’ll most likely be some of your only customers.

The other big issue with most affiliate marketing products is that you’re sending customers away from your site. They’ll be more likely to remember the company that sold them the product versus the blog that sent them there, and this prevents them from buying multiple items through you.

The Problem With Selling Your Own Product or Reselling

So you could sell your own product, sure. But then you have to manufacture it, spending thousands of dollars and potentially wasting your money if the product isn’t a hit. Many of us don’t have the money or the knowhow to go this route.

So you can resell instead… only this way you still need to take a big risk by spending lots of money on inventory. You have to find a way to store all that product and then you have to deliver it and worry about damages and returns. It’s a huge amount of admin and not much fun…

Enter Dropshipping

With dropshipping, what you’re doing is selling a product through your own store as though it were your own item and then letting the wholesaler worry about fulfilment and delivery – as though it were an affiliate product.

This has all the benefits of selling an affiliate product because you can sit back and let the orders roll in without having to worry about the hassle of shipping it to your customer. But it also has all the benefits of selling a real product as a reseller or manufacturer – you get to keep your customers on your site and improve your brand awareness, while also selling real, useful products.

Best of all, some companies will even offer ‘white label’ dropshipping services. This means you can actually print your logo on the product and claim it as your own.

The next time you are considering what online business to start, seriously consider dropshipping!

You can take your skills and experience and turn them into income with time and persistence. Here’s what you need to do.

Find People Who Are Already Successful

You need to surround yourself with people who have already achieved some level of success in art or music. There is a social aspect to both art and business and you can’t get to either alone. Make a great effort to be on the inside of success instead of on the outside. People are generally more than willing to share how they became successful. Seek out those people and heed their advice, because they’ve already put in the long hours and found what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t start at the top with the most successful artist; go a little more modest and local, and join groups or clubs of other artists so you can learn from and support each other.

When approaching these other artists, be very purposeful. Don’t express that you’re a fan (even if you are), but do be respectful of their work and curious about them to help put you on a more equal ground. Think about how you make friends. You find things in common to discuss. Do that with the artist you’re hoping to learn from. You have a common interest so it shouldn’t be hard to strike up a conversation.

Create What People Want

No, don’t be a sell-out, but you’re not going to make money if you only create art that others are not interested in. Find the audience you want to reach and create works of art that you think they’ll want to buy. From time to time you can think outside of the box more and get ultra-creative, but you need to create things that you know people are going to want even if it’s not your favorite piece of work.

Complete Your Work

Having multiple unfinished pieces of work is not going to make you money. You might have a creative process, but if you never finish your work, then you can’t ever expect to sell anything. Make it a goal to finish what you started before you start on something new. Perhaps taking a step back is going to be important from time to time, but don’t step too far back. You can’t sell what’s not finished.

Get Your Work Out There

You have to begin to make a name for yourself. Get your work out there in the public. This might mean giving things away to become known. Encourage others to share your work freely in this manner just to get your name out there. You need to promote your work as well. And remember, if you can’t give it away for free, then it might be time to re-evaluate your work and figure out what’s wrong with it that people are not interested in it.

Take Criticism

You can’t grow as an artist if you can’t take criticism. Listening to what people are telling you about your art and taking action on it will get you to a much better position of being able to sell your work. At the same time, understand that you also can’t please everyone. Don’t change your work too much to conform to the critics.

If you know it’s good quality work and plenty of others that you know and respect agree that it’s good work, then don’t bend over backwards trying to change something. Pay no mind to critics who are clearly not a fan of yours.

Buy Others’ Work

If you see work that you like, buy it. Don’t pirate it; purchase it. Show support for your fellow artists and respect for them. It will come back to you if you do right by your community.

Appreciate Your Customers

You can offer a little extra something to those loyal customers who keep coming back and buying more. Think about how any other business works. Take for example a laundry detergent company. They might give out coupons for “buy one get one free”. That keeps people coming back for more. You can do similar things, like offering one-on-one time if someone purchases a certain product, or providing signed copies. Customer appreciation is important to any business, even when your business in in the arts.

You can make a living as an artist. You have to be willing to put in the work to do it, though. It is not something that will happen overnight, but you can turn your skills and experience into income.

However, when you remove all of the window dressing and break the strategies down to the basics there are only three that make up nearly all of the online entrepreneurial ventures that are out there. Which one you choose will depend on your personal preference, your unique skills and where you see a hole in the market.

Service Providers

The first of our three top online strategies is providing some type of service. There are many occupations that provide a service where someone can become an entrepreneur. Graphic design is one good example; freelance writing is another.

Whenever you are doing a service for somebody else and they are paying you for it (while not the employee of another person or company) you are an entrepreneur.

Affiliate Marketing

Another big boom in Internet entrepreneurship is affiliate marketing. With the creation of websites like Clickbank, affiliate programs offered by leading retailers like Amazon and the big profits that can be potentially earned, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular entrepreneurial ventures today.

With affiliate marketing, you find the customer, send them over to the seller to buy the product and the seller pays you a commission. Of course, you have to find the right product not to mention have a solid plan for getting in front of people, which can be difficult.

Info Product Creation

Rather than being the person that receives the commission when someone buys a product from someone else, you could be the person that they are buying the product from. You could create an info product of some kind that you’ll be able to sell to the Internet at large.

One of the more popular ways to do this is by publishing Kindle content on Amazon, but the products on Clickbank are also part of this strategy.

Combining Strategies

Of course, you don’t have to just stick with one. You can combine two of the above strategies or you could combine all three if you like. There are no rules when it comes to entrepreneurship. If you can create something that sells without working for someone else and be successful, you are an entrepreneur.

Do you ever feel tired, stressed out, or overworked?

Has your health and vitality suffered? Do you seem to be completely unable to get moving? Perhaps you feel like you’re just treading water. All this can eventually start to get you down. This is not what we were promised. Perhaps you always pictured that your life would be different. Many of us assumed we would someday make a lot of money.

Many of us assume that we should have much more energy than we do. And we see people around us who seem to have the things that we want to achieve. We all know people who are polished, who are confident, who look attractive. We all know people who seem to have it all. So why can’t we have that? Why is life being so unfair to us?
Well, if you have read any of the other guides then you know that this is where you are going wrong to start with.

It’s blaming your circumstances and it’s blaming other people. You have everything you need to live a truly incredible life right now. All that is missing is the right mindset to go about achieving it. You know what’s even more likely? You’re already living a truly amazing life. You already have everything that anyone could ever ask for… but you just don’t appreciate it.

As you learn over the years, your happiness and your accomplishments stem from you. And more than that, they stem from your mindset and the way that you view yourself and your life. They stem from having the drive to go out and get the things you feel you deserve. And from knowing how you are going to go about doing that.

What Are Your Priorities?

The first thing you need to do is to start reassessing some of your priorities. Many of us complain that we aren’t healthier, happier or richer but we never do anything about it. That’s because  despite what we’re saying  we aren’t giving those aspects of our lives priority. Let’s break down your current routine shall we and see if we can assess the problem?

You’re telling people you want to have six pack abs. you’re telling people you want to be a successful author or a successful business owner. You tell people that your family means everything to you. Okay then. So, if that’s true, those are the things you should be spending the majority of your time on right?

Instead, what you will probably find is that your lifestyle looks something more like this:

Sleep: 6-7 Hours

Work: 8-9 Hours

Commuting: 1-2 Hours

Lunch Break: 30 Minutes

Everything else: ~5 Hours

And in those roughly five hours, you need to fit in waking up, getting ready for the day, washing dishes, doing the laundry, cooking. Now ask again why you don’t have the lifestyle you want? You claim that your goals and dreams are your top priority and yet you don’t live a life that reflects that in the slightest.

How it Got This Way

Have you ever asked how things got this way?

The answer, while it might not be very pleasant, ultimately comes down to fear and indoctrination. It’s fear because we are driven so often by a fear of our partners leaving us, by a fear of debt, by a fear of not being able to put a deposit on a house or a fear of being single in our 40s and missing the boat to have children. This means that you are motivated by the stick rather than the carrot.

You are focused on running away from all the things you don’t want, rather than toward all the things you do want. And this really isn’t helped by the media and by the way we’re brought up. This is where the whole ‘indoctrination’ part comes in. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not here to tell you that this is a deliberate move on the part of the government or any such thing. BUT it is nevertheless the way most of us are brought up. We are raised to believe that we are born into some kind of debt.

We feel we owe this debt to society. That hard work is something to be proud of. Meanwhile, we are taught to want all kinds of things that are just out of our grasp. These include widescreen TVs, lavish properties, expensive looking cars and more. We work toward these things, we work because we’re afraid of debt, and we work because it is what society expects of us. But let me ask you this: is there really any inherent value in work itself? Working toward a good cause is of course a good thing.

Working to support your family is likewise to be applauded. But those people who proudly state that they’ve ‘never missed a day of work!’ or who retire in their 80s, or who talk in a generally proud fashion about the work they did stacking palettes. It’s nice they’re proud. Really it is. But here’s the sad part: if they didn’t come to work, the world would keep on ticking on without them. And the worst case scenario is that someone would get a palette late.

Meanwhile, wouldn’t it have been much better if they had looked after their health? If they had spent more time with their family? If they had pursued a passion and written a beautiful piece of music? Work in itself should be a means to an end and certainly not a means in itself. Work only has value as long as the end product has value. And even then, it’s not worth sacrificing every other aspect of your life.

Lifestyle Design

The simple cognitive shift I want you to make here is that you are not living to work, but working to live. It’s a cliché I know, but if you actually follow that advice through to its logical conclusion, then you find yourself with something akin to lifestyle design. Lifestyle design is a way of life that simply flips traditional notions of work on their head and instead focuses on building a lifestyle you can be happy with.

You decide what it is you want to accomplish, who you want to be and then you change your career and other factors in order to fit around that lifestyle. For many people, this will mean becoming a digital nomad. Thanks to modern technology, there is no need for us to work from a stuffy office or make a long journey into work. Instead, we can simply load up the computer and work from anywhere.

This affords an amazing amount of freedom, allowing you to work from wherever you like and whenever you like. Many people will take advantage of this by traveling the world with just a laptop and working from coffee shops. That’s lifestyle design and that’s being a ‘digital nomad’, but it can also mean something much smaller. It means looking at the promotion that comes with so much extra responsibility and it means asking yourself if it’s worth it.

Wouldn’t it be much better to spend more time with your family and keep the job you’ve got? Alternatively, maybe you take on that job but you negotiate having one day off so that you get a whole day to yourself. Or perhaps you take on a part-time job and a side-income instead. Maybe you conclude that in order to follow your passions, the best option is to become a garbage collector so that you can be free by 2pm in the afternoon. Need more money? Then get a smaller house!

It can even mean that you choose to move home somewhere that you’ll be nearer to work so that you have a shorter commute. A shorter commute means 30 minutes extra to yourself per day. Maybe you decide to pay for a cleaner so that you can have a beautiful home! There are so many variables here that you can play around with that you don’t need to take the most obvious route through your life.  You don’t have to follow the predetermined path that has been set out for you by society and you don’t need to keep making life harder and harder.

Some More Changes

Choosing to design your own lifestyle and take back control is one way to start getting what you want from life. But there are a few others too that will help you with this. One cognitive shift is to know your worth, to stand your ground and lose the fear. Another cognitive shift is to recognize that time and money are both interchangeable. This latter point means that if you are getting paid more but you are also working longer hours then you aren’t really getting a pay rise at all.

The only way this would count as a pay rise is if you got paid more for working the same hours. So, if you’re being offered a profession up the ladder but it involves staying later at work, there is an obvious answer: you’ll just take the pay rise thanks! This is where knowing your worth comes in. You see, many of us are afraid to ask for more money, or are afraid to increase our rates. We think if we do that, we’ll lose work and we’ll end up homeless. Again: lose the fear. This doesn’t happen.

If you are providing a good service to someone, or if you’re a good employee, then you can afford to charge more.
Think about how much they’re earning thanks to you and how much they’d lose if you stopped working for them.
You have the right to charge more. And not only that, but it is common for wages to go up regardless of responsibilities. So, if you feel you need more money then don’t be afraid to ask for it. And if they refuse? Then you look elsewhere for a new employer or new clients.

As Tim Ferriss says: ask for forgiveness, not permission.

Ultimately, you are worth what you think you are worth. If you put a price on your head that is too low, then you can work incredibly hard for no reward. Keep looking. And keep learning.  And here’s one more thing: don’t wait. Don’t wait for life to get better. Don’t wait until you’re old and retired. Because life always throws you curveballs and the stars never align. The only way you can live a better life is to start right NOW. And don’t tell me you’re too old: you’re never too old to be the person you always wanted to be.

So if you’ve been putting off traveling because of fear, because of opportunity and because you worry that life won’t be there for you when you get back it is time to buck up your ideas. Take charge and go now. This is the only way you’ll ever go. Work will be there when you get back. And if it isn’t? At least you’ve done something truly memorable and worthwhile. What could be more valuable?

It Starts With Everything

Hopefully, some of these tips will help you to start getting more from your life simply by changing your priorities and going after the things you want.

So where do you start?

The answer is with everything.

What I mean by this, is that if you want to be healthier and happier and to live a generally better life, then you need to change everything all at once. We’ve discussed that your ability to change your life starts in the mind. But have you considered what affects your mind?

So as you start to put the emphasis a bit more back onto you. As you start to focus on your goals and on the things that make you happy, you can also look at how you can ensure you are charged and able to get the very most out of life. It starts with simple things: things like getting enough sleep, things like going out in the sun occasionally and maybe things like taking vitamin supplements.

Later it goes on to more profound matters: learning to meditate. Finding a passion. Surrounding yourself with the right people. Every aspect of your health and your lifestyle will feed back into the way you feel and what you can accomplish. You need to start small and build up the energy you want. Right now you might feel trapped by your circumstances, so find just that small crack of light.

That might mean getting a little more energy by taking a supplement in the morning. But if that gives you enough fuel to consider implementing systems to keep your home tidier and that gives you the mental space to start challenging your work-life balance… then it will all be worth it.

And Finally

And finally? Learn to appreciate what you have right now. Because this is the ultimate key to happiness. The truth is that if you keep dreaming of that widescreen TV then you won’t be able to escape the hedonistic treadmill. You’ll stay in the fight or flight mode, you’ll keep pushing and fighting. And looking forward to a holiday isn’t much better. Looking forward to quitting your job isn’t that much better either.

Do it now. And meanwhile, learn to focus on what’s already just right in your life. If you stop and smell the roses, if you practice a ‘gratitude mindset’ you’ll realize you’ve probably already accomplished a whole lot. And you’ll find that you already have many happy moments in your daily life. Live in those moments.