Why I love the Digital World

For most people the digital world or digital revolution doesn’t mean much more than added convenience. They think of online shopping and lifestyle apps, maybe even Uber and Airbnb. That’s fine and of course all these things are fabulous but I’m on a mission to open people’s eyes to the wider possibilities on offer here.

When I think of what we can do today I have to admit I sometimes find it hard to sum up the digital world. The Possibility picture just expands till it’s too big to see! But what I can do is start with an area I have a lot of experience in. This is an area that has been improved beyond recognition in the digital world. We can move outwards from there and look at the bigger picture. The area in question is Music production.

My partner and I have been semi professional musician/songwriters for many years. We used to pay for recordings at local studios but then we started doing our own. We went from little tape based 4 track machines to large digital workstations and finally to a laptop. That whole evolution really took less than 10 years. At every stage recording and production became, faster easier and better sounding. We were able to play, record and produce our own CD’s which we sold at gigs and online. We did all this from the comfort of our home. N.B Tapes are now gone and CD’s are kind of old hat.

Marching To Your Own Drum In The Digital World

One of the problems we’ve always had is recording or replicating drums – not being drummers ourselves. We did invest in an electronic drum kit for our home studio. That was great when we worked with actual drummers but not now as we work as a 2 piece. We still want a full band sound but neither of us plays drums. There are lots of ways to manually programme drums but to be honest it’s a real drag.

Recently Garageband, the free Digital Audio Workstation that comes with Mac’s, introduced something that blew me away. It’s a built in drummer. Basically it’s like having a stable of real drummers at your disposal. They automatically come up with drum parts for a song. Amazing as this is, it still involves more faffing about than we would like.

So just last week I went searching for an even better solution. I found a programme called Ezdrummer. I took a 10-day free trial of it. It is quite simply a revelation. Like Garageband’s drummer, you set a tempo for your song and Ezdrummer does the rest. Without boring you with the details, this means you can build an entire drum track in minutes. These are real drum parts played by pro drummers. They’ve been recorded in Mark Knopfer’s studio using the best mics, engineers and session drummers in the world. All this for £100.

If you are not a musician this won’t mean much to you. Thanks for sticking around. Now lets move on to the bigger picture surrounding the digital world.

The Much Bigger Picture

This is just one example of how quickly technology is marching onwards and how it’s disrupting practically everything. That is scary in some ways. My example hopefully shows though, just how life enhancing it can also be when you fully embrace it. Lets face it – it IS happening and WILL continue. Burying our heads in the sand is not only useless but kind of stupid too.

I fully transitioned to the digital economy about 5 years ago. By that I mean I earn my living online. The worldwide recession that began around 2009 led to me being laid off from a long corporate career in 2012. I’d seen how the digital revolution had affected my own passions: music and photography, and many other industries. It made things much better for the consumer but it killed off a number of industries almost overnight. It became obvious that no industry was safe in the digital world and that job security was a thing of the past.

So I looked at how I could leverage the Internet and possibly build an online business around my own passions. Music is a fickle business and we knew we were past our sell by date – at least as a commercial band. I decided instead to see if I could sell related products online– like the ones I mentioned at the start of the post. I already knew about the business model known as affiliate marketing. That’s where you sell other people’s products and services for commission.

The Digital World Skill Set

Online learning with SFM and DEA

I quickly discovered that there is literally no end to the range of products that can be sold this way. As an affiliate I can sell all of the musical and recording kit I mentioned earlier for example. Even better, online marketing dispenses with traditional sales methods. In the digital world economy all you really do is recommend products to people who are looking for them already. When you use those products yourself it’s not difficult to create enthusiastic, informative, experience based content about them. And that’s what we are all looking for now – we no longer need or want to be SOLD to.

You can build an income around the things you love by leveraging the Internet and scale it to any level you want to. If you just want to make everything you invest in pay for itself that’s fine. Want to turn it into a massive business? No problem. In our digital world you can even design your own products. You can have them manufactured, personally branded and have Amazon store and distribute them for you. The possibilities really are endless.

Where To Get Digital World Skills

To create an online lifestyle business you do need some new skills. Anyone can put up a website and fill it with affiliate products. Without knowing how to actually market online however, nothing will happen. I looked for training when I got started and found that traditional education didn’t have much to offer. It still doesn’t. You need to go to the digital world itself to find it.

I came across an organisation built by two very successful online entrepreneurs, which offered what I needed. It also offered an affiliate programme that paid very high commissions. In effect you could earn as you learn. That fitted my number one rule – everything I invest in has to pay for itself. I have used their training, tools, resources and digital business system to build not one but two online businesses. One for music based products, the other as an affiliate for that organisation.

I hope this has made you think about the wider possibilities the digital world has provided us with. If you would like to learn more click on the link below. This will introduce you to the organisation I’ve mentioned. From there you can subscribe for their free video series. That is exactly how I got started myself.