@Legends_of_Men I looked it over a little bit. I couldn't identify the intended audience or the central theme of how reading it would benefit me. That may be because I'm not the intended audience, it may make more sense to a different audience. I'm wondering how A) Readers find your site B) What readers get that is of value to keep them reading C) How you establish yourself as a credible expert and D) The added value that you get by paying $5 to get the book

Lets look at earlyretirementextreme.com/ for an example. The intended audience is people looking to retire very early. The readers find the site through links for other blogs, forums and guest posts. Also, they find him because the content is pretty unique and interesting and so people tend to share it. Some get there off the straight shock factor of him living off of $7k a year in the Bay Area and retiring in 5 years. The reader value is a unique philosophy about money and on the left side is a bunch of interesting posts that have value on their own. The content and the extreme nature of his lifestyle establish him as an expert and the book presents the ideas of the blog in a more organized format that takes less time to read. In fact there's a link to read the first chapter for free making it easy to hit the buy it button at the end.

There's just a real clear funnel there where he's bringing in the right sort of people, giving them a space with free value, then using that to sell some books. I don't know what his cut is.. but 40,000 books sold times $20 each is $800k in revenue.

@CainPrice

How does he figure out what to invest in? How, mechanically, does he go about buying it? How does he figure out when to sell it? How, mechanically, does he go about doing that?

That's what we are talking about... there isn't one right way, just a lot of similar ways of approaching those problems.

And researching stuff like this is a full-time job.

According to who? They guy trying to skim 1% off your investment account while directing you towards whichever investment option gives him the fattest commission? Do you ever wonder why those people need to show up to a day job if they are so good at investing?

That's why there are guys who make their entire business out of giving financial advice and investing people's money for them. Most average guys don't want to quit their day job and become a financial investment guy for a living.

Those guys make money by having assets under management, not by delivering superior returns. In fact the sorts of things that deliver superior returns are known to require investors willing to endure a few years of underperformance. It's not the sort of thing you can even sell to the public because they'll bail the first year of bad returns and the outflows will sink the funds. There's a whole industry built up around selling mutual funds and they know as much about the mutual funds as your car salesman knows about the car. Just enough to sound good and move it out the door.

They just want someone to tell them what to invest in to make some supplemental income.

Fine. Invest in VTSMX. Problem solved.

@enfier I think 90% of the guys reading these posts already have a job and a savings account. The idea that you need to earn more than you spend is basic even to a five-year-old, and the idea that spending all of your savings on toys is wasteful is basic to a thirteen-year-old.

The issue for most average dudes isn't the basic equation. The average dude already has a job and savings. It's the specifics:

How does he figure out what to invest in? How, mechanically, does he go about buying it? How does he figure out when to sell it? How, mechanically, does he go about doing that?

And researching stuff like this is a full-time job. That's why there are guys who make their entire business out of giving financial advice and investing people's money for them. Most average guys don't want to quit their day job and become a financial investment guy for a living. They just want someone to tell them what to invest in to make some supplemental income.

Guys like Flyingpandaz can invest their own money all they want, limited only by how much money they have. Whether or not they tell someone else what to invest in doesn't affect how much money they have or how much they can invest. When a guy won't tell you what, specifically, to invest in, how to go about it, and how to make a quick buck, it's because he's full of shit and doesn't know. Someone who tells you basic platitudes like producing value and learning how to fish is like one of those guys who gives seminars at hotels about how to get rich by wearing suits and practicing your handshake.

@CainPrice If he could do that, why wouldn't he just make his own million and use it to buy a better bottle of scotch?

I'm going to break this down to the core concepts - Money is the measurement, wealth/capital is what is measured. Asking how to get money is kinda like asking how to get inches - you want to create value or to be taller. Don't make the mistake of focusing on the measurement rather than the substance of what you are measuring.

At work, you provide value to your employer, and your employer gives you money. Then you go home and you consume value by sitting in an apartment and buying food and scotch. So the foundation is that you have to create more value than you consume. If you create a lot of value at work, then you can get paid a lot, which is why he is recommending getting good at a job where performance matters. You also can reduce the amount you consume. In fact you can attack it from both angles.

So once you are producing a lot more value than you are consuming, the excess becomes savings. You take those savings (aka capital/investments/wealth) and then you put it to work buy buying productive assets such as stocks, real estate or paying down debt. What you don't do is send it to non-productive assets like a BMW, that shit is just more consumption. He's trying to offer advice about how to buy productive assets with your savings at a discount so that you can end up with more wealth in the end.

If you don't produce more than you consume, it's very hard to have savings. If you don't have savings, you can't invest. There's no way for us to give you one hot stock tip that's going to fix the basic value equation of your life. Plus if we had that tip, we'd just be quietly cashing it in ourselves.