I was reading this post by a guy who just turned 21 and says he’s set for life from IM money.  I completely believe him, and if you know how to manage your money, you can certainly turn a few hundred thousand dollars into a lifetime of financial freedom.  But I was wondering from the start where he made his money, and then I noticed that in his signature there’s a link to a WSO called How I Made $603,094.00 In Just 7 Days – My Personal Diary Documents Every Exact Step.

I read the whole sales letter.  He charged $2000 for a product he produced, and gave out a 50% affiliate commission.  And when you think about how much money you can make with a great IM Idea, 2k is not much of a price.  In fact, you could have an absolutely insane ROI if you pull one great idea from a product.  Beyond that, people see that you have confidence in the product you’re putting out, and there certainly are plenty of people out there with money to pay for products like this.

So why are so many people hatching schemes to create a $27 ebook?  Why does it seem like everybody is trying to “make a living” off IM rather than making a FORTUNE off IM?  It’s just not in their reality that you can make that kind of money, so they decide to “start small” … from that, they develop the skills to run a small business … and that’s where they end up.  Probably generate around $100,000 a year from a business that is quite time-consuming, and in order to take a chance and build a bigger product, they’d have to devote all their time to that and lose their small business.  The risk never leaves you.

But say there’s a person who thinks big right from the start, they learn how to run a big project, and they grow comfortable with the idea that they can run a big project.  From there, they will never want to return to small projects, either.  Only the big ones will seem worthy of their time, and rightfully so.

So I guess the point of this post is, look at your overall business model.  Are the business ideas that you’re coming up with bringing you closer to your long-term goal of financial freedom?  Is the business model going to allow you to simply be an “owner” of a business in a few years, with very little hands-on so that you may relax and vacation and do all the things you’d like to do?  Or are you essentially building yourself into a trap of a business where you’re earning your money by the hour just like any other employee?

Think big.  It’s no less work in the long run doing article marketing every day than it is to develop a real sustainable business.  It just takes a different type of planning.