For some folks, an added income of five figures (that’s between $10,000 and $99,999) per month is not a big deal.

But for most of us, it’s a life-changing proposition.

Fortunately, this level of side income is achievable… in fact,  it’s not that particularly difficult to come by. You just need a checklist of proven steps, and to suspend disbelief  long enough to put ’em to work.

At age nineteen, I discovered the Five Steps to Five Figures a month. I also call them the Shoestring Steps because they’re steps to starting a business with less startup capital than you might pull out of a weekend garage sale. The story about how I stumbled onto this great method for starting, marketing, and exploding the growth of a small business is in this cute little one-pager.

Okay, if you read the Shoestring Story… or even if you didn’t… look out because here come the Steps!

Five Steps to a Five Figure Per Month Income

Step 1: Get OFF Your ASS

“Find a way to get paid to do something you love,” I heard in a motivational seminar once, “…and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Horse Puckey.

I do work. I work my tail end off. But I also get to take a break when I want to, and it’s because I actually own my Biznesses instead of them owning me. I started Shoestring101 to share what I’ve learned about that… and to network with other smart people so’s we can all do that a little better.

Nothing happens until someone is willing to produce something. If you came here wanting to learn how to get something for nothing, move on because I can’t help. On the other hand, if you’ve been yearning for a way that combines all the income you need with all the interesting fun stuff you’ve always wanted to do… stick around. We might have something to talk about.

These posts can help you in the get-off-thine-arse category:

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Step 2: Find Out The W’s

When a friend and I first began a lawn-aeration Bizness, we had only two ideas for finding customers: going door-to-door with flyers, and using a ‘shotgun’ approach to marketing by placing an ad in the paper.

By themselves, neither marketing method got good results. Most neighborhoods were lukewarm at best to a knock on the door, and we only got three calls from the newspaper ad. But when I noticed that two of those calls were from the very same street, we handed out flyers all up and down that street… And ended up bizzier than a one-armed paper hanger! Seems birds of a feather, flock together.

Find Out The W’s means creative market research: What people Want, Who they are, Where to find them, and hoW best to reach them. This Step is the most important once you get in motion from Step 1, because it takes out a lot of bizzy work.

This Step is easy if you are passionate about something. Folks with shared interests seem to end up at the same places, reading the same materials, visiting the same blogs, connecting with each other on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. It doesn’t seem like work.

Spend more time on this Step than you think is necessary… it’ll save you huge amounts of time, money, and headaches. These posts can help you if you’re at this stage of setting up your Bizness.

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Step 3: Learn To Create Value

Almost everyone that’s killing it in business (Bizness) 😉 has learned how to share a solution to a problem that they themselves had. For example, I once needed a training method to get my martial arts Students to the level of 100 consecutive pushups quickly. After having a bit of success with that, I just recorded the training program in PDF and video format and it became a information product at www.howtodo100pushups.com. That site is already profitable even though it’s nowhere near polished. Once I have enough information to use Step 4 below, I’ll be scaling it big.

Creating customer value means sharing values with your end user. If you both care enough about finding a solution to a certain problem, you’re more than halfway to your five figures per month.

Creating a product or service is easier than you think. Here are some of my favorite posts on how to do it.

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Step 4: Measure EVERYTHING That Matters

This is where it gets really interesting. I never got to five figures per month in any Bizness until I fully learned how to use this Step. It’s almost like you’re doing Bizness on purpose once you get here 😉

Keep statistics… either manually or with an app… on everything that matters, like:

1. the number of leads that you attract per a particular form of advertising,
2. the number of those leads that convert,
3. the number of converted leads that you sell something to,
4. the number of ‘sold’ leads that you can upgrade,
5. ….and so on.

Use this Step to scale your Bizness by reverse engineering your profits. This works in online as well as offline Biznesses.

Example: I mail a postcard to 300 homes near my martial arts studio. Six people phone in saying they want to try my offer of two introductory lessons  for $22…

Because I have kept statistics on this sort of thing, I know that of the six that called, five will show up for the appointment. Of those five, three will sign a year contract and one will go month-to-month. I’ll have four new Students paying at least $139 per month. That’s  five people that spent $22, then four that will spend $139 next month. That’s… (gulp!) $666 that I’ll take in.

If the cost my postcard mailing campaign to those 300 homes can be kept around 600 bucks, I’ve got a winner! The influx of new Students will cover the cost of my campaign, and then the income from their continued lessons will continue rolling in. Now I know my campaign will be effective, instead of the buy-and-hope strategy of most advertisers. By using direct marketing methdos I can afford, right now, to gradually roll out a mailing to three THOUSAND homes instead of just three hundred  and jump my enrollment by FORTY new Students instead of four.

Statistics, metrics, analytics. Really boring-ass words for some seriously EXCITING results! Other posts about ’em…

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Step 5: Now WRITE Everything DOWN