But I don’t like following instructions blindly. I don’t just want to know WHAT to do. I also want to know WHY it works, WHY I should trust the process, and HOW the whole thing hangs together.

I guess I was one of those kids at school who was never satisfied with being told WHAT to do or learn, but wanted to know WHY and HOW.

I’m certainly not alone. There are a ton of studies that demonstrate how kids and adults alike learn better when they understand the broader context around the topic they are trying to understand.

Here are some of the WHY and HOW questions you will find answered in New Path to Riches.

How is it possible for someone sitting at home to create a website that attracts a large audience, and makes thousands of dollars a month?

Why now? Why is now such a perfect time to become a one-person publisher, sitting in your pyjamas?

Why are one-person websites able to compete so successfully with large, big-media websites?

How is it possible for a one-person website to do better than its larger competitors in the search engine results?

Of course, I also tell you WHAT to do. But because the book starts with answers to the big WHY and HOW questions, you can execute on WHAT to do with a complete understand of WHY and HOW it works.

To my mind, that’s a much smarter way of moving forward than simply following someone’s instructions blindly, and hoping for the best.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

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Give New Path to Riches as a gift this Christmas

Maybe you already have your own copy of New Path to Riches. Maybe not.

Either way, I bet you can think of some friends, family members or colleagues who would love to find a way to make some extra money.

Maybe you have a teenage son or daughter who wants to save money for a car.

Or a close friend who wants to make money to send their kids to college.

Or a parent who is looking for a way to supplement their retirement income.

Or a colleague who needs extra money for medical bills.

Give them a copy of New Path to Riches this holiday season, and you’ll be giving them the opportunity to make a big second income from their own money-making website.

Yes, they will have to work hard on their website. No, they won’t make a million dollars.

But if they follow the model I describe in my book, they will start making a nice passive income each month.

In today’s economy, giving someone the chance to make some extra money each month, without even having to leave the house, is perhaps the most generous and thoughtful gift you can give.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

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That translates into about 5 million households having serious trouble making ends meet.

Life could get a little easier for every one of those households if someone in each home was writing a hobby website that brought in some extra cash.

Just one of my own money-making websites covers my mortgage, care payments, utilities and more, each and every month. And it is income I don’t have to ‘work” for. I just spend a couple of hours a week adding new pages to my website. The revenues from advertising and affiliate programs just keep flowing in.

This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, so if you start writing your website today, it won’t be helping with those mortgage payments for several months.

But that’s not a reason to delay getting started. The sooner you start building your own money-making website, the sooner it can start contributing to those monthly bills.

Is this something that can be done by someone with no sales or marketing experience? Absolutely. There are only three things you need to bring to the table.

1. You enjoy writing.

2. You are willing to learn.

3. You are stubborn, and will keep working on your site until the money starts coming in.

All this and more is explained in my book, New Path to Riches.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

If the meltdown over the last 18 months has taught us anything, it’s that we are not in control of our wealth when we invest it in stocks and bonds. Bad things can and do happen.

But…I’m not in the least nervous about investing a little time in my own websites.

Let’s take a look at my best-performing website so far, CoffeeDetcetive.com.

Back in 2006 I spent quite a bit of time on research and getting the first twenty pages written and online.

Since then, I spend maybe one or two hours a week on the site. That’s nothing. It’s the time we spend on watching a couple of TV shows.

But today that site earns me close to $50,000 a year in revenue.

And that’s not all. A website with a proven track record of revenues is also quite easy to sell. A site like mine could sell for two or three times its annual earnings. That’s $100,000 or $150,000 dollars.

That’s a pretty good return on two or three hours a week doing something I enjoy anyway.

That’s as asset. Like a house or a retirement fund.

In any event, I won’t sell the site. I’ll rather keep adding new pages and increasing my monthly earnings.

Do you think you can beat that kind of return by investing a portion of your hard-earned salary? I doubt it.

Instead of investing money, invest a little of your time. And make you site about a topic that already interest you. Do that, and adding more and more pages feels more like a hobby than work.

If this sounds interesting to you, you’ll love my book, New Path to Riches.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

Then I ask them a sneaky question: How many hours a day do you spend watching TV?

Let’s say you’re not a complete TV fiend and spend only three hours a day watching the box. And let’s say that one of those three hours is spent watching a rerun of a show you have seen before.

Why not skip the rerun and spend that time writing a website that will pay you back in cash, month after month and year after year?

That’s the thing about the model described in my book, New Path to Riches. It’s not like launching a new product or service, or even starting a business. You don’t have to put a vast amount of time into the project before you have anything to show. You simply get started and then write the site one page at a time.

This is a long and easy walk, not a frantic sprint.

Maybe you first publish the site with a total of fifteen pages. Your site is up and running, and worth visiting.

From that point on you simply add pages as and when you have time. And if you use an hour of your TV time each day, you will have time to add a new page each day. Even allowing for a few skipped days, that’s over 300 pages by the end of the first year.

300 pages of great content on the topic you’re writing about. 300 pages for Google to find. 300 pages on which you can place AdSense ads or affiliate links. In other words, after a year, you’ll have 300 pages which will be generating you a monthly income.

Now add a second year, and so on.

Even after that first year you’ll be able to look back and say, “Wow, instead of watching so much TV, I have created a long-term asset which will pay me a monthly income indefinitely.”

The same applies if you spend hours a day playing World of Warcraft, FarmVille or any other online games. Can you spare an hour? If you can, you’ll have the opportunity to make yourself a significant second income.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

But trying to make a million bucks in a few short months is not what this model is about.

Frankly, when marketers pitch systems they claim can make you a million dollars by Christmas, they are selling you an illusion. They are selling you a lottery ticket.

With a lottery, your chances of getting back anything at all on your investment are very remote indeed.

The model described in New Path to Riches turns all that around.

Instead of there being just one or two winners, almost everyone gets to win.

Not everyone will make the same amount of income from their money-making websites. Your income will depend on how carefully you choose the topic for your website, how well you write the pages, how hard you work on writing a lot of different pages, and so on.

Using the model I describe in New Path to Riches I have some sites that make me only a few hundred dollars a month. Frankly, I just haven’t worked hard enough on those sites and they don’t have enough pages.

My most successful website to date, using this same model, is CoffeeDetective.com, which makes me about $4,000 a month.

The point being, my book won’t show you how one in a thousand people might make a ton of money. It shows how anyone, you included, can make a valuable second income, simply by writing a website on a topic that already interests you.

Making a million dollars online is a nice idea. But for most of us, that’s just a dream and an illusion.

Making a few thousand dollars a month online is definitely within our reach. And, unless you are hugely wealthy, even an extra thousand dollars a month is going to make a difference to your life.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

We can’t be sure our jobs will even exist next year.

We can’t be sure that home prices will always rise.

We can’t be sure that our retirement nest egg will continue to grow.

We can’t be sure that our company retirement fund won’t be swallowed up by fraud or bankruptcy.

Our parents could be pretty sure about all these things. But we can’t. And our children won’t be able to either.

This is another reason why the second income I make with my money-making website, CoffeeDetective.com, is so valuable to me.

It’s safe and reliable.

Over the last eighteen months the number of visitors to my site has more than doubled, as has the income. The economic downturn hasn’t impacted it at all. Unless, of course, my site traffic would have quadrupled over the last eighteen months, without the downturn. But 100% growth is OK by me at a time when other investments and assets are spiraling down in value.

This second income also gives me a strong feeling of independence.

The more I grow my site and its income, the less I have to worry about shenanigans on Wall Street. I feel in control. My future wealth is not in the hands of people I don’t know, or economic circumstances I can’t predict or control.

And both my risk and opportunity are spread wide and far. If one person decides not to click on an AdSense ad on my site, another person will. If someone in Connecticut  chooses not to buy a coffee maker through one of my affiliate links, someone in Colorado will. It’s like the ultimate, global mutual fund.

And while I might worry about what income I’ll achieve with my consulting or coaching business this month, I won’t worry about the income from my own website. Plus or minus a few percentage points, it’s always there. And consistently growing.

If there is another source of income more reliable and safe as this one, I have yet to find it.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com.

In my case I have some sites that make less than $500 a month each. While my best site, CoffeeDetective.com, makes closer to $4,000 a month.

As for what to do with that extra money, there are several ways to use it.

1. Save for retirement.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m no spring chicken and I have been freelancing most of my life, which means I don’t have a big fat retirement fund waiting for me. Right now, instead of investing money in a fund, I’m investing time in my websites. By the time I retire, I hope to have a monthly revenue of $10,000 a month from my sites.

2. Save for your first home or a bigger one.

One of my sons is using the money he makes from his money-making website to put together a deposit for a place to live. Nice for him, because he doesn’t have to put aside money from his pay check, and nice for me, because I won’t have to find a a big chunk of money to help him out. : )

3. Put money aside for your children’s education.

If you want your children to go to college, you’re probably trembling at the thought of the costs involved. So why not build a website and put aside its revenues in a special college fund account?

4. Pay off credit card debts.

A long list of experts tells us to put aside 10% of our pay check to go towards paying down our credit cards. Good advice, but not always easy to do. But if you have a second stream of income coming in from your website, you can use that to pay down any debts you might have.

You can probably think of other ways you could use some extra money right now.

The nice thing about making a second and quite separate income is that you can choose not to have it swallowed up in the family bank account, but put it aside for a specific purpose.

And you don’t have to be serious and sensible with every penny you earn this way. Maybe you should put some of this extra money aside for vacations, long weekends, special dinners or a bigger TV.

Once the money flows in, it’s yours to do with as you wish.

Buy New Path to Riches from Booklocker.com (also available as e-book)

Buy New Path to Riches from Amazon.com