Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 127

How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (That Kicks Ass)

(Photo: Norman B. Leventhal Map Center)

Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at The Art of Non-Conformity blog. He is a master of clever air travel (among other things), and this is a guest post on perfecting one of the rare gems that can truly change your life: Round-the-World (RTW) tickets.

Enter Chris…

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To outsiders, buying a Round-the-World plane ticket is a mysterious process. How does it work? Where can you go? How much does it cost? Unlike buying a simple one-way or round-trip ticket, you don't just go to Kayak and click the "Everywhere" tab. (You don't have to look – there is no such thing.)

Over the past three years I've spent at least 60 hours, probably more by now, learning the ins and outs of Round-the-World travel. In this post, I'll explain a) why Round-the-World tickets can be an excellent value even if you're not trying to visit every country in the world like I am, b) how to plan your trip, c) how much it costs, d) 7 bonus tips on optimization.

The Time Investment

Planning and shopping for a Round-the-World (RTW) ticket is a labor-intensive process. If you don't enjoy planning a short trip, you'll find it much more difficult to plan a complicated RTW itinerary. Personally, I enjoy the process, but then again, I also like airports and flying.

Also, before you can actually buy a Round-the-World ticket, you need to be willing to do all these things:

- Spend a couple of hours of initial reading

- Spend at least a couple of hours planning and optimizing

- Place an initial phone call (usually at least 30 minutes) setting up the trip

- Place a secondary phone call a few days later after the ticket has been validated

- Make any adjustments due to lack of availability or invalid routings

- Arrange to pay for the ticket with a local office in the originating country (this step may be optional, depending on how you structure the trip)

Those are the minimum "time costs" for getting a Round-the-World trip set up well. Keep in mind that you can use a RTW ticket for up to a full year, so taking the time to do it well is important. The value I receive from my tickets well exceeds the planning time it requires, but as noted, the practice is not for everyone.

Good Reasons to Use Round-the-World Tickets

If you're willing and able to invest your time, the benefits you'll receive from using these kinds of tickets are significant.

– Tremendous Value. RTW tickets are not especially cheap (see below for a cost outline), but a well-optimized ticket can provide value far beyond what it would cost to otherwise buy a series of one-way tickets.

– Freedom and Flexibility. I change my flights all the time, and with RTW tickets, it's easy. Date and time changes are free, and you can make changes anytime — from far in advance all the way up to the day of departure. For a fee, you can even reroute the entire ticket after you've begun the trip.

– One Full Year. You get an entire year to use the ticket, which means that you can have up to 365 days of going from place to place, or you can get even more creative like I do and spread out the ticket into a series of shorter trips by finding a way to come home in the middle.

– Miles and Elite Status. I carry the highest-level elite status in two airlines thanks to my RTW travel. I also earned more than 200,000 Frequent Flyer miles with American Airlines in 2009, thanks to double-mileage bonuses and a lot of time in the air. With the status, I'm now first on the upgrade list, can hang out in nice airline lounges around the world, and don't have to wait on hold when I call the airline.

– Creative Opportunities to Travel. You can get to a lot of places in the world with simple round-trip tickets, but because RTW tickets are priced by mileage or by segment, you can visit destinations that are otherwise cost-prohibitive when using regular tickets.

What to Do First

If you know this is what you want to do, or even if you're just curious and want to create a sample itinerary, start by downloading these two free tools:

Star Alliance Mileage Calculator

OneWorld Timetable and Itinerary Planner

Spend some time getting to understand how they work. You'll also want to check out the OneWorld interactive route map and the Star Alliance Downloadable Timetables to better understand where you can go.

WARNING: This software can be hazardous to your productivity. Many a workday has been lost at World Domination HQ because of the attraction of these tools. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Next, you need to answer a few questions: where do you want to go? What's the goal of your trip? How much time do you have?

Star Alliance versus OneWorld

Each airline alliance has its own rules for how the ticket works. The one from Star Alliance is mileage based, meaning you'll have a limit of 26,000, 29,000, 34,000 or 39,000 miles on your ticket. The trick here is to optimize your route to where you are just below one of the tiers, getting the best possible value without spending more money than necessary. (A friend of mine got his itinerary to 33,998 miles, which I thought was pretty good.)

The OneWorld product is segment-based, meaning that a flight from Hong Kong to New York (11 hours) is the same as a flight from Chicago to Dallas (less than 2 hours). You can have up to 16 segments on the trip, and naturally, you'll want to optimize for flights that would be fairly expensive when purchasing a standard ticket.

I get even more creative with my plans, involving overland trips, return journeys to my home base in Portland, Oregon, and having multiple tickets open at one time. You don't have to be that imaginative; I've been doing this for a while. Even a fairly basic RTW ticket can yield significant benefits and travel opportunities you wouldn't otherwise have.

How Much Does it Cost?

The cost for either product mentioned above varies from $3,000 to $10,000 – largely dependent on travel class, mileage tier (Star Alliance only) and where you begin the trip from. My tickets over the past few years have been almost exactly $5,000 each. I purchased two of them last year, and I'm trying to set up a new one for early 2011.

$3,000+ is a lot of money, of course, but when you consider all the flights you can take, the price per segment goes way down. My price-per-segment is about $300 (now $400), and this includes many long-haul flights that would otherwise cost thousands of dollars.

For example, here is an itinerary I used for my first OneWorld RTW ticket:

NRT-HKG-LAX-SJO-LAX-ORD-SEA-JFK-SCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-ORD-AMM-TUN-AMM-FCO-HKG-NRT

This 18-segment itinerary, purchased before the limit dropped to 16, included:

- A trip to Easter Island, usually quite pricey since there's only one easy way to get there (through South America on LAN Chile or LAN Peru)

- A visit to North Africa and the Middle East, another pricey region

- A quick trip down to Costa Rica, which provided more miles than most U.S. flights would have offered

- A return to Seattle (in between Asia and South America) where I could stop and break up the trip for a while

- Base mileage of 54,894 miles, which when added to a number of bonuses I received, came up to nearly 100,000 total award miles

- When combined with overland trips on location (to Uruguay from Argentina, to San Marino from Rome, etc.) the chance to visit 10 countries from this one ticket

Geographic Advantage

You can get the best deal on Round-the-World tickets by departing from (and eventually returning to) a few specific countries where the price is much lower than leaving from North America or Europe. Which countries? Well, they change from time to time, but as of the time I'm writing this (October 2010), the best places are South Korea, South Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.

Yes, it takes some work to get there. If those are too far, Japan is also a decent choice, where I began that first RTW trip. And of course, you don't have to begin from a faraway place. If you don't mind paying a fair amount more (usually $2000-4000), you can begin from North America or wherever you live. To get the estimate cost for your trip based on travel class, number of miles (Star Alliance only) and departing country, complete a mock itinerary on either of the two online fare calculators. You can then switch the departing country around to see how it compares with other options.

Reservations

Finally, when you actually get ready to buy your ticket, you'll need to do two steps that may or may not be easy:

1. Create your itinerary. Until very recently, RTW itineraries usually had to be phoned in to an airline desk to set up manually. Thankfully, you can now set up a RTW itinerary online most of the time. In some cases there may be quirks in the itinerary that are allowed but not recognized by the online system, in which case you'll need to phone it in. To at least get started online, use these links:

Star Alliance

OneWorld

If phoning it in, plan for the process to take at least half an hour once you get someone on the phone. It is much easier with OneWorld, since they have a dedicated RTW desk operated by American Airlines. With Star Alliance airlines, you may need to talk to several people before you find someone who knows how to create the itinerary in their system.

2. Find a way to pay for the ticket. I don't mean, "Save the money," although that of course is important too. I mean, "Find out how to physically pay for the ticket." This is easy if you are buying online or are already in the country you are departing from. If you live in the U.S. and want to depart from the U.S., for example, then you can pay for the ticket after it is "rated" by the airline desk. In this case, you wait a few days after first phoning in the itinerary, and then call back to pay with your credit card.

If you're beginning the trip in another country, it's a bit more complicated. In some cases, you'll need to phone the airline's office in the country. I used Skype to do this last year with AA Japan. Some airline reps in overseas locations are more helpful than others, and of course there can be a language barrier as well. A certain amount of persistence may be required, but you can also get lucky and have it done in 20 minutes with the right rep on the right day.

7 Tips to Help Plan Your Trip

1. If using OneWorld, here is a very helpful validator that can help check your itinerary before going to book. It can also suggest alternative cities for more mileage.

2. Due to a quirk in airline rules, some countries in North Africa are defined as being in Europe for the purposes of ticket validation. You can visit Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, or even Sudan as part of the "European" portion of your trip.

3. Similarly, "North America" includes the Caribbean and parts of Central America. You can visit Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and several other stops during the North America portion.

4. If you don't know how you'll use certain segments, you can book them as "open" (so that the ticket can be issued) and add the dates later. You won't have to pay a change fee when you add the dates.

5. London's Heathrow (LHR) airport has very high taxes. If you can avoid it, or use it for transit only (less than 24 hours), you'll save quite a bit.

6. Most of the time, you won't want to use Frequent Flyer miles for a Round-the-World trip. Instead, you can get better value by redeeming miles for two round-trip tickets between continents. You'll then effectively have two RTWs for the price of one.

7. People often ask which airline program is best for them. It all depends on where you travel and what your goals are, but if forced to make a recommendation I usually send people to the AAdvantage program from American Airlines. Even if you don't live in the U.S., AA's program can help you. If you prefer Star Alliance, then most programs are equal.

8. Use at least part of your RTW ticket to visit destinations that are otherwise prohibitively expensive to purchase. Among others, I've gone to Kurdistan (Iraq), Pakistan, Burma, and Uganda as part of my RTW tickets. Each of these places is fairly expensive to travel to on a simpler ticket.

What to Watch Out for

I spent a couple hours writing out this information because I frequently get questions about booking RTW tickets, and while I try to respond to each request individually, I also like to send people to an online resource for more reading. When I went to look for more resources on Google, the majority of the first-page results for "Round-the-World plane ticket" and related terms contained inaccurate information from a biased source. How do you know the sources are biased? Because many of them lead visitors to book through an online travel agency where they receive commission.

When it comes to Round-the-World tickets, this is one time when it's actually better to buy from the airlines instead of a travel agent or other reseller. Since these tickets aren't usually commissionable (the travel agent doesn't get paid much to issue them), some agents will play dumb or try to steer you towards an alternative kind of ticket.

If that's what you want, of course, there's nothing unethical about it. There are some situations when a DIY trip will be better, but in many other situations the alliance tickets are the best bet. I tend to think most people want the best kind of ticket for the lowest possible price, and once you understand how the process works, the OneWorld and Star Alliance products can be great options.

I hope to see you somewhere on a future Round-the-World stop. I'll be in the lounge with my MacBook, probably responding to emails or planning a future trip.

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Follow Chris' live updates from every country in the world on Twitter. Be sure to also check out his new book, The Art of Non-Conformity, for which he's currently visiting 50 states and 10 provinces. And I thought I traveled a lot!

QOD: What is the greatest travel deal (airfare, housing, recreation, or otherwise) that you ever chanced into or made happen?

Zen, Tea, and the Art of Life Management

This is a Zen-focused panel featuring Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, Susan O'Connell of San Francisco Zen Center, and yours truly.

The content starts at tea, moves to daily rituals, and spans many topics related to good living and productive living, which are not always the same thing. It also answers the question: is Tim Ferriss really as organized as you think he is? Short answer: no, and that should make you happy.

QOD: Do you have a helpful morning or pre-bed ritual? If so, please share in the comments.

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Odds and Ends: Signed 4HB Copies

Thank you all so much for the amazing response to The 4-Hour Body announcement! Just a quick note, as a few people have asked: the only signed copies were those sold via BN.com, which are now sold-out. None of the Amazon copies are signed at this point. If that means you need to cancel orders, I completely understand and apologize for any confusion. Thank you again!

Random Show Episode 13 – Kevin and Tim on Trampolines, Apps, and A**holes

12? 13? Our ability to remember episode numbers: negligible.

Kevin's ability to kick my ass on trampolines: priceless. (Kevin left out the fact that he grew up with one. Trixy.)

Join us at House of Air, which features dozens of trampolines at different angles, including the "Matrix" room. There is a fair amount of cursing in the video. If you have sensitive ears: earmuffs…

Enjoy.

Some viewers might have trouble viewing this with iPhones/iPads. Bonus points to anyone who figures out the reason(s).

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Odds and Ends: Sonos Winner!

The winner of the Sonos ZonePlayer and Klipsch speakers giveaway is Allen of Unfubared. This was a comment/tips competition on the post How to Travel 12 Countries with No Baggage Whatsoever. Congrats, Allen, and thanks for the great travel recommendations that cinched the deal. Keep an eye on your inbox.

There were dozens of fantastic comments, and it was very hard to choose just one, hence the delay in posting the winner. Honorable mentions also go to Mike Burngasser (survivalist approach), Heather Waibel (light-weight packing for women) or Craig Tobin (traveling light with kids in tow).

Thanks to all who commented!

Tonight: 400 Free Tickets to "Waiting for Superman"

To thank you all for making the last three years of life so amazing , I'd like to take you to a movie. Tonight.

I'm giving away 400 tickets to "Waiting for Superman" in San Francisco at 7:10pm (the SF premiere!), which opens tonight in several cities nationwide. If you get one of the 400, please print out your Eventbrite receipt and come to the theater around 6:30pm to get your real ticket. I'll see you there and will also be giving DonorsChoose gift cards to every attendee.

The iconic Paul Graham has called this movie "probably the most memorable movie I've ever seen."

I cannot imagine a more important film for Americans to watch… and it's a fun watch. Truly a must-see. To keep it short and sweet: please make a point to see this film. It will change you.

See you at the movies, whether in person or in spirit.

Spread the word!

Other ways to help:

1) Have a birthday or other celebration coming up? Consider doing this, as I did. Wildly successful.

2) Other options for parents and you… yep, that means you. As much the 25-year old male programmer as the mom with three kids. See the film and then take just five minutes here.

Have a wonderful weekend, all. Much love to you and yours.

The New Book Unveiled: The 4-Hour Body

Data crunching back to age 18. Three years of organizing self-experiments around the world. Thousands of blood tests and hundreds of case studies.

My new book is finally here: The 4-Hour Body.

I could not be happier with the end product. Truly, I am ecstatic.

If you want a minimalist guide to hacking the human body, this is it.

In each chapter (more than 50 topics total), I test everything on myself so you don't have to. In "Reversing 'Permanent' Injuries," for example, I tested the moderate options like over-the-counter supplementation and Feldenkrais, but I also imported stem-cell growth factors from Israel and had them injected. That was just for starters. The end result of that chapter? 90%+ of the injuries that plagued me for decades are now gone. I'm stronger and faster than I was at age 20.

If you want to know the two safe things out of 100 that worked abnormally well, I can tell you…

The 4-Hour Body is also designed to read unlike any diet or fitness book, which it isn't. It's more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book for the human body, full of ridiculous stories, practical philosophies, and larger-than-life characters.

Here's the back cover description:

THINNER, BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER… which 150 pages will you read?

Is it possible to:

Reach your genetic potential in 6 months?

Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours?

Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing?

Indeed, and much more. This is not just another diet and fitness book.

The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. From Olympic training centers to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, fixated on one life-changing question:

For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?



Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women.

From the gym to the bedroom, it's all here, and it all works.

YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 30 minutes each):

- How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails.

- How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)

- How to increase fat-loss 300% using temperature manipulation

- How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time

- How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested

- How to produce 15-minute female orgasms

- How to triple testosterone, double sperm count, and (literally) have sex like a porn star

- How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks

- How to reverse permanent injuries

- How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months

- How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects.

You don't need better genetics or more discipline. You need immediate results that compel you to continue.

That's exactly what The 4-Hour Body delivers.

Now The Real Fun Begins

Here we go:



1) The ask

2) Big media opportunities for you

3) An offer to friends in media.

THE ASK:

I try not to ask for too much on this blog, but today I will ask a favor: if this book sounds interesting to you, please take a moment to order it today. I've never worked harder on something, it's my sophomore act, and pre-orders are critically important in the publishing world.

The book is on-sale now but will ship on December 14th. Here's why you should pre-order now:



- I never do book signings, but I have signed 3,000 special editions of The 4-Hour Body, which can only be ordered on this page. The price is the same as an unsigned copy, and if you order two or more books, you get free shipping. (If you'd like unsigned copies, you can get them at these retailers)

- If you buy 5 or more copies by 12 midnight PST Thursday, you will be invited to an exclusive 1-2-hour telephone Q&A with me in October on lifestyle design. Just buy 5 or more copies here and then follow the directions here (if you have trouble with "phone number," just use a fake number). On the B&N page, just click "Preorder now," then "Edit cart" on the next page to change quantity.

- You will not be charged for the book (or books) until they ship in December.

- One signed manuscript of The 4-Hour Workweek sold on eBay for more than $2,000, so who knows?

- What would make a better X-mas gift than a signed book impossible to get elsewhere? My dad lost more than 70 pounds using two chapters. Please consider getting a few copies for your family, loved ones, or best friends. I promise that they will not be disappointed.

- Last but not least, your help would mean the world to me. Pre-orders will largely determine how much support retailers give this book. It's crazy, but only hardcover sales count towards the bestseller lists. If you've benefited from my last book or writing on this blog, I would really appreciate your help. This has been the biggest project of my life.

BIG MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES:

Have you lost weight, gained muscle, or otherwise changed your body as a result of blog posts I've written? If so, you could be featured on major TV and in big mainstream media. Please e-mail your details and (important, if you have them) pictures to jenny.rabun-at-gmail-dot-com. No professional before-and-after pics needed, but something that shows your before and after appearance, even in normal clothes, is helpful to producers.

Ladies — that means you, too! Help a brother out, and help your sisters out, by sharing your stories!

TO MEDIA, BLOGGERS, AND LIST OWNERS:

I've made very few media commitments thus far. Do you have a column, show, mailing list, or blog audience? Would you like to do a feature, an interview, or post an excerpt? Please click here to let me know. There is a ton of material, including case studies, video, and pictures.

Upward and Onward

Thank you all so much for the last three years. It's been incredible.

The best is yet to come :)

Tim

How Tucker Max Got Rejected by Publishing and Still Hit #1 New York Times

The infamous Tucker Max, self-proclaimed asshole. (Photo: Randy Stewart/blog.stewtopia.com)

Preface: I've debated doing this post for a long while. Today I bite the bullet. Part of my job is introducing you to valuable lessons and interesting people you might not find otherwise. "Interesting" takes many forms. Keep that in mind, and keep an open mind, as you read on.

—

I rolled over in bed to grab my cell phone. This time, I didn't mind being woken up. The text message read:

"You hit the list. I $%ing said you would."

Just after 9am PST meant the newest New York Times list had been received by publishing's insiders. The insiders and one other person: Tucker Max.

He was the only person who, play-for-play, predicted how I would hit the printed list of the New York Times.

I first met Tucker in 2007 at a panel (he'll explain), where he greeted me with "Who the fuck are you?" Usually, this is a conversation killer, but — instead — I answered him and we ended up drinking later. Why did I brush it off and make the effort? First of all, I expected him to respond like that. Second, Tucker is a veritable genius.

He made his first book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, a #1 New York Times bestseller with no outside support. Furthermore, a large proportion of the English-speaking world hates Tucker, which is reflected in media mentions and reader reviews. To wit…

"I find it truly appalling that there are people in the world like you. You are a disgusting, vile, repulsive, repugnant, foul creature. Because of you, I don't believe in God anymore. No just God would allow someone like you to exist."

But, then there's the flip side: Tucker graduated summa cum laude from the University of Chicago and went to Duke Law School on an academic scholarship. He's smart. Last but not least, though I'd think hard before inviting him to a dinner party, he is 100% honest to everyone and 100% loyal to his friends. I'll take 1,000 Tuckers over the multitudes of false friends who walk on egg shells in polite company but pull out the claws when it serves their short-term interests.

This won't be the last time you hear me say this about Tucker, so I'll cut the preamble short.

This post is on book marketing and building an online following. There are many resources listed. The conduit for it all is a rude misogynist named Tucker Max, but don't confuse the message with the messenger.

I'll add notes in a few places, as well as an afterword. If you are easily offended, you should absolutely skip this post. I'm serious about this. If midgets, sex, the two together, or far worse will bother you, it's a good idea to stop here. Hold off a week and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Otherwise, you've been forewarned, so no complaints in the comments if you choose to set foot in the Tuckerdome. If I lose you as a reader forever, it's been very nice knowing you.

Enter Tucker Max.

Tucker Max

I first met Tim when he came to my SXSW presentation (about turning a blog into a book) to pick my brain about what had worked for me. I explained to him everything I did, and he loved the advice so much he bought me a coffee. Thanks, big spender.

[Tim: my very first encounter with Tucker is captured here on film. And, Tucker, you're most welcome.]

We stayed in touch, and Tim called me up the other day and asked me to write a post for his blog that would outline to his readers all the things I explained to him years ago at SXSW. I told Tim that there was no need for a long post; in fact, my success could be explained in a Tweet: "Because Tucker is really fucking awesome."

Tim politely laughed, took a deep breath, and explained to me–in the least ego-crushing way possible–that that would make a crappy blog post. He asked me to dissect and analyze what I did, and then write about it in a way his readers could utilize for their own writing.

I still think my awesomeness plays the key role in my success, but since my second book (Assholes Finish First) is coming out and I like lots of people to know this fact, I agreed to do this post.

Why I'm Qualified to Write This Post:

Tim told me to start with some background, so readers could understand the basis of my expertise. I told Tim that if they didn't already know who I was, they were beyond my help. He was silent until I agreed to lay out my qualifications:

-Early 2002: Tried to get my book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, published. Sent the core stories from the book to every publisher, literary agent, magazine and newspaper in the country. At least 500 query letters, maybe closer to 1000. I was rejected by 100% of them. Literally every single one, without exception.

-Late 2002: With no other option, I learned HTML and put my stories up on a website, TuckerMax.com.

-May 2003: The site's popularity exploded (on the internet), and the publishers came back to me, asking to publish my book.

-January 2006: Book came out, got zero media coverage and zero advertising support, but still hit the NY Times Bestseller List immediately because of the support of the fan base I'd cultivated through my website.

-October 2009: Reached #1 on the list, more than three years after it came out.

-Current day: Been on NY Times Best Seller List every year since it came out, over 180 weeks total, and currently in its 150th consecutive week. Sold over 1.5 million copies (and counting), and translated into 15 languages.

Now you know how fancy and important I am, so on to the marketing secrets:

1. Give your content away for free, and keep it free:

I started doing this in 2002, long before the word "freemium" existed. Granted, I stumbled onto this idea by accident and had no idea what I was doing, but what I learned quickly was that giving content away works really well. It allows you to find an audience at no cost to you, and allows huge numbers of people to test your material out for no cost to them. Everyone wins.

This does NOT mean you should never make money from your content. Of course you should. If you are providing value to people, you should be able to capture some of that value back. But how will anyone know they want to buy your book or magazine or whatever until they have tried it and liked it? Not only that, but giving things away for free doesn't indelibly stain them with worthlessness forever. Take my midget story for example; it was originally put up for free on my site, and is still there. Then published by Hustler, for which they paid handsomely. Then it was sold as part of a screenplay. And now, it's part of my new book.

And here's the thing about free: It's not a short term strategy. I've kept some of my best stuff on my website for free going on 8 years now. That's the coolest thing about having a bulwark of good free material out there: it passively gives people an easy and permanent way to be introduced to you and your writing. Plainly put, free is the best kind of marketing: constant, cheap, effective, and meaningful to the user.

Here are my four best free stories up on my site, the ones that have led to tens of thousands of people to buy my book [WARNING: My writing is not for everyone. I curse a lot, I am graphic in my thoughts and descriptions, and I drink to excess and just generally write about all the stupid, assholish stuff I do. You have been warned]:



1.The Famous Sushi Pants Story

3. The Midget Story

2. The Hockey Story

4. The Austin Road Trip

[Tim: This list was actually five items long, but I couldn't bring myself to include one of them. If you want the missing link, look for "Hilarity Does Not Ensue" in "The Stories" section on his site. You will lose a piece of your soul if you read it. Then again, if you want to see a post with 2,200+ Facebook likes, march onward.]



2. Make your content easily shareable:

This ties into free, but is not exactly the same thing. If you stand on a street corner handing out free books, that's great, but even if people love them, it's highly inefficient to share a hard copy with someone else. The beauty of digital media is that additional copies (after the first) have a zero transaction cost. This means people who like your content can easily share it with lots of other people, promoting your free content for you, especially when you make the sharing process effortless for them.

There's millions of ways to do this, and the specific ones you want to pick will vary depending on your content. For example, one thing I did was format my stories so that they could easily be printed out and taken somewhere else to read. This worked wonders; apparently a ton of people who worked in offices couldn't just read my stuff on the screen, but could easily print it out to read later, and hand those print out to their friends. [This is basically what newspapers do, with their "Print" button that takes you to a plain text screen with just the story, formatted to print on 8x11 paper.]

There are so many other ways to make sharing easy; free ebooks, links to social media sites, etc. Shit, you can just look at my site, or even better, copy Tim's blog, he does everything but click the mouse for you to make it easy for you to share his content. Check out these resources on where you can get started:

* Facebook plugins (e.g. "Like" buttons, Recommendations, "Facepile") that you can add to your site.

* Twitter widgets, including the "Tweet" button.

* Embeddable "share this" button that allows easy sharing across multiple channels (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

* Delicious bookmarking badges.

3. Promote your content in places that make sense, but DO NOT spam:



I remember at the SXSW panel that Tim came and saw, when I talked about how early on I submitted my website to places like CollegeHumor and Fark and other "link dump" sites, people actually hissed at me. They tried to shame me for promoting my writing to places that ASK PEOPLE TO SUBMIT LINKS!

There is this notion that some people have that artists must toil in obscurity and never search for an audience, but wait to be discovered. Fuck that. A creator's job is not just to make something useful; it's also to get it to people who can use it. And if you are a writer, you'd better understand that you're competing for attention with so much other media, you can't afford to just sit on your ass and pray. Actively put your material in front of as many people as you can who you think will like it.

But that's the key phrase so many people miss when making their promotional efforts, "who will like it." I didn't promote my writing to fundamentalist Christian sites or Mommy blogs, because it doesn't make sense. Spam is just promoting something to someone who has no interest in it. But people love finding new things that interest them, so go out and find audiences who might like your stuff and the places where they congregate. Then interact with them not as a huckster, but in a way that potentially benefits you both: You find the audience, they find new entertainment (or information, or whatever value your writing provides).

The top 5 sites that worked for me when promoting my website (this was 2002-2004, remember):



1. GorillaMask.net

2. Fark.com [Tim: this was true for me as well]

3. BoredAtWork.com

4. Stileproject.com

5. CollegeHumor.com

4. Build relationships with people who can help you, and vice versa:

This is something I've never been big on. Mainly because my style of writing doesn't lend itself to this strategy, and, of course, I hate most people. But it is a strategy that can work for a lot of people, and Tim did this amazingly well prior to the release of his book.

Basically what he did was go to every conference and meet-up he could in the year or so before his book came out, made it a point to meet and befriend everyone who had an online audience that he thought might like his book–diverse groups, ranging from people like Robert Scoble to me–gave them all copies of his book, established relationships with them, and learned everything he could from them. Then when his book came out, he had all their knowledge at his disposal, and had hundreds of very influential friends who were willing to talk about it to their specific audiences, both because they thought their audience would like it, and because they liked Tim as a person.

I know a lot of you people are thinking about how you can do this online, like through email or something. That misses the point. The brilliance of Tim's strategy was that he met these people FACE-TO-FACE and created real human bonds with them. It was something no one was doing at the time, and he did it very well.

[Tim: How did I go from Tucker's "Who the fuck are you?" to drinking with him an hour later and having lunch with him the following day? Out of 40 people lined up, why did I make the cut? Simple: I made an educated guess and used language to reflect it. Here's how it happened: I noticed Tucker had a big neck when he walked up to the panel seats. I therefore guessed he either 1) had trained in jiu-jitsu or wrestling, or 2) was a former football player who at least watched UFC. In response to "Who the fuck are you?" I answered "My name is Tim Ferriss. I'm writing my first book for Random House and used to compete as a fighter." That was the lure. Tucker responded: "What, MMA?" Bingo. "I competed mostly in wrestling and kickboxing, but I train at AKA in San Jose with Dave Camarillo. Swick, John Fitch, and a bunch of the UFC pros train there." A few minutes later, Tucker grabbed me to go drinking. Once again, it pays to know your audience, and being different is often more effective than being better.]

5. Engage your fans, but only in the ways that are authentic and provide value:

It's quite the vogue for self-proclaimed social media experts to breathlessly inform companies they HAVE to blog and be on Facebook and be on Twitter and manage communities and all that.

Bullshit. When people ask me what social media tools they should use to promote their writing, I ask them a question in return, "Which ones do you like using? Which ones do other people like reading?" Then they look at me as if they never even considered that angle. That's the thing that's cool about the internet: You get to define how you interact with people, and you can pick and choose the tools and mediums that work best for you. Instead of using everything just because, you're better off picking only the things you like, will engage in a meaningful way, and use to provide value to your readers. Ignore the rest.

I use my personal website, TuckerMax.com, I use Facebook (personal profile and fan page), and Twitter. That's pretty much it. No LinkedIn, no YouTube, none of the myriad other ways to engage people online.

But here's the thing: I enjoy using those sites.

I am on them a lot, and I manage them in such a way as to bring value to the people who follow me on them. Go look at my Twitter feed–there is nothing on there about what I had for breakfast or what my favorite color is. Pretty much every tweet is either informative or funny–i.e., they are entertaining, which is the added value my fans expect. Same with Facebook; it's information about things my fans care about, or me bantering with people (and yes, that's actually me writing everything on there, my assistant doesn't do it. You can't outsource funny).

6. Find the fulcrum of attention for your specific content:

When I decided to pursue writing as a career, it never occurred to me that people would find my subject matter to be controversial or incendiary. I thought they'd find it funny and entertaining, maybe a bit outlandish, but that's it; after all, this was the same stuff all my friends were doing; I was just the dude who wrote it down.

Well, that's not the way it played out. I have become an extremely polarizing, controversial figure in media. But instead of running from this, or trying to redirect it, I decided to embrace it. There are even times I played it up to some extent. Why would I do this? Why would I court negative attention in a way that most people try so hard to avoid?

Because it made sense with who I was as a person and a writer, and quite frankly, this was the pretty much the only avenue through which I was going to get mainstream attention, so I took it. Without that negative attention, there would be zero attention, and in a digital media world, attention is the main scarcity you are fighting for.

Now, I would NOT recommend my specific path for most people, simply because it doesn't make sense for them. If you're writing about knitting, courting negative attention is a ridiculous strategy. But what might make sense for knitting would be a strategy to write about or engage the topic in a new or novel way, something that the knitting world has never seen (I have no clue what that would be).

The general lesson is that you need to find the fulcrum of attention for your specific writing, and then use it to leverage yourself attention that you can turn into new readers. If you're unsure how to do this, ask yourself, "What is interesting or engaging about my writing to other people? What about my writing are people responding to? How can I use that to get more attention?"

7. Permission marketing:

This is a phrase invented by Seth Godin (the god of 21st century marketing, I recommend you read his books and blog), but what it basically means is that you don't carpet-bomb everyone with your ads; you actually ask your fans for permission to tell them about the things you are doing. The most obvious permission marketing tool is an email list, and I use one. I think I have about 100,000 subscribers to mine, and it works great, because I only send out something like two emails a year, and they are always highly relevant. I use my Facebook fan pages in the same way; people "like" them in order to get info about me and things I am doing, and I only post when it's highly relevant. This is a pretty simple but powerful concept, and you can read more about it from Seth here.

And here are five of my favorite posts about either permission marketing, or similar tactics being discussed here:

Secrets of the Biggest Selling Launch Ever

1,000 True Fans [Tim: If you only read one article on marketing in your life, this is my pick.]

A User's Guide to 21st Century Economics

So What's All This New Marketing Stuff, Anyway?

Earning Your Media

8. Word of mouth is key:

Have you begun to see a pattern in the way I marketed my book and writing? If not, I'll spell it out clearly: WORD OF MOUTH.

Every single piece of advice above is essentially a different way to create and facilitate word of mouth. Why that strategy? Because it's the one that works best. Have you noticed I haven't written one word about book reviews or magazine interviews or radio or any of that bullshit? Because for the most part, I've found that they don't really matter. I can tell you from very extensive experience that my book has done so well ONLY because people who read it recommended it to other people, and they went out and bought it. Word of mouth. Nothing else.

But here's the thing: Lasting, real word of mouth can only come from one source: Creating value.

And thus leads us to the reversal…

9. Everything you just read about effective marketing doesn't matter…unless you have content that people like.



Everything I wrote is true, and will work, and is relatively easy to do. But Tim has written about it before, Seth Godin has written about it, Jeff Jarvis has, Gary Vaynerchuk has, etc. It's well known, at least to people who care about this stuff. But smart marketing only explains about 10% of my success. The most important point, the thing that trumps all the rest, is this:

CREATE AMAZING AND COMPELLING CONTENT THAT PEOPLE LOVE AND VALUE. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, flows from that central principle.

That's the thing; there is no secret to being a successful writer. We all know what it takes: You have to write something lots of other people want to read. Sounds obvious, right? Well, it is obvious, but it's also difficult to do. And there definitely isn't a shortcut. It is HARD to create compelling content. It takes work, passion, creativity, and determination.

Take someone like Maddox, whose book The Alphabet of Manliness spent four months on the best seller list. He maybe does two things I talk about above–he gives his content away and uses an email list. His best marketing is just writing another post. Or Paul Graham. He doesn't even have an RSS feed in his blog, but people created one to get his essays, because they are that good.

People like to focus on all this other stuff for a simple reason: it's easy to do. And probably because they assume that their writing is already great, but that no one is reading it because of some secret that they don't know yet.

Nope, sorry.

If you've done most everything above and still no one is reading your stuff, you need to go back and look at it. Ask yourself an honest question: Is your writing providing value to other people? If yes, you'll find success in using the marketing tips I gave you. If no, you won't. Plain and simple.

What I'm Doing To Promote My Second Book

I know I'm going to sound glib, but it's truth: I'm not really doing much of anything to promote my second book. No big press push, no huge book reviews, no major TV appearances, no magazine cover profiles, none of that crap.

What I am doing is everything I discussed above. My site is still up, still with all the free stories that have always been there and I still use my Twitter, my Facebook fan pages, and my email list to promote to my fans. I will be doing a 33-city book tour, but again, that's only being promoted through my permission assets. I am doing a little bit of local press for some of the book tour stops, but only because my publisher insisted on it; no "major" media stuff really at all.

Why not? I don't need it. That's a game you have to play only if you haven't already created a loyal fan base by doing all the things I talk about above that that create value for your fans.

—-

Afterword

To second Tucker's conclusion: good marketing can grab readers, but good content is what keeps readers.

How is it possible that Tucker has become so popular? There are many contributing factors, but I believe one of the largest is overlooked: he has a clear voice. Good writing does not mean becoming a grammarian or using big words. It means telling stories worth telling (in Tucker's case) or sharing lessons worth learning (in my case), and doing it with a compelling and consistent voice. Tucker wrote many of his best stories while pretending to write an email to his closest friends. He knew that if he drifted or postured as a "writer" for even one paragraph, they'd hit delete and move on. It was this believable (and authentic) intimacy that hooked people.

The first four chapters I wrote of The 4-Hour Workweek went straight into the garbage. I started off writing like a Princeton-trained pompous ass, which I, of course, was. Huge vocab for no reason, and semicolons galore. Scrapped. Then, I swung to far in the opposite direction and wrote a few chapters like Three Stooges slapstick. It was breezy, which is different from casual, without being particularly funny. Into the recycling bin it went.

Then it was nervous breakdown time. After all, I'd already sold the book and was contractually obligated to write it. Before having a complete implosion, I took a deep breath and tried an experiment. Rather than writing for my "audience," I wrote as if I were writing an e-mail to two close friends, one trapped in investment banking and the other trapped in his own start-up. That marked the turning point.

To be a best-writing author, you don't need to win a Pulitzer. You need to have experiences that make good stories, and you need to be yourself on paper. It's that simple and that hard.

To be a best-selling author, you need to take being a "best-writing" author (as I've defined it) seriously.

The "marketing" is then finding people who most resemble the friends you wrote for in the first place. Get specific enough so that this "audience" comprises no more than 2,000,000 people nationwide. Next, find the few curators for this niche audience, much like the bloggers I met at SXSW, and only talk about your book content if you'd be willing to bet $1,000 on "fit". Fit = they'd definitely read a specific recommended chapter in the subsequent 24 hours. Anything less is, in my opinion, just in-person spamming.

Know thy audience.

###

Tucker's second book, Assholes Finish First, is now out in stores. If you want to laugh outloud and hate yourself for doing it, this might be your poison of choice.

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