What books or audio would you recommend for beginners in online business?

I know books are no substitute for experience. I have to limit the time I spend reading so that I don't become purely an armchair entrepreneur. What I tend to do quite a bit is get the audiobook- eg from audible, who do a monthly subscription scheme, then I can listen to them during "dead" time when I am doing something else, but my brain is free or semi-free - like when in the car, cooking or out walking.


I have read several in the ever-popular self-help/get wealthy genre. Much of it is nonsense. I've learned to discriminate, but some rubbish is cleverly disguised, and sometimes gems are well-hidden.

I think there are two things I can get out of books, and some things I can't.
Firstly, They can provide a structure or blueprint - there is a lot of useful information on this forum and on the Internet, but the good stuff needs to be filtered, and then it needs to be structured into a plan - so that I can work out the best next steps to take.

Secondly - they can help with keeping motivated, especially when things are not going well. For me the better ones for that are those that explain how difficult it is to succeed, rather than how easy. I think of this as part of taking care of the emotional side of building a business.

What they are not always so good at is the detailed tactics - as these change rapidly and books can then become dated.

I'd be interested to know what books or audio people on here would recommend for beginners.

Here are a couple of books I've read or listened to recently that I've found value in. Bear in mind that I am not a successful entrepreneur and my opinion should therefore be valued accordingly

How to Get Rich - by Felix Dennis.
Cheesy title, which completely put me off to start with. Bought it based on the reviews I'd seen. Dennis made his billlion in ink-on-paper publishing, starting in poverty and his empire now includes online. He still owns 100% of his core publishing business. He describes it as an "anti self help" book, and didn't write it for the money ( compared to his billion, it will make peanuts even as a bestseller) but because of all the other books out there like "The Sun Tzu split-second manager" ( his words) which are full of nonsense and more concerned with making their authors a fast buck than making their readers wealthy.
One takeaway from this book, was that "Ownership isn't important, it's the only thing". He talks a lot about not diluting equity - at least in the core business. I knew this already, but he brings home the point home in a very forceful way. He does do partnerships and public companies and talks about that, but not in his main business.

Another book I've read recently is "The six figure second income" by David Lindahl who is a hectomillionaire in American real estate who also does very nicely in online information products. He seems to have quite a good structured and no-nonsense approach to the whole thing of peddling information that people need.

My current read is "Get out while you can" by George Marshall. British, he says he is doing well online. I also saw that the main review on Amazon includes a positive review by a certain Kay, and that coincidentally, there is a person called Kay on this forum who wrote a blog about "Plan A" and "Plan B" - Marshall's book is about escaping the rat race and wage slavery, which he calls "Plan A", and making a living from passive online income freeing up time to do what you want - "Plan B".
Again, he has a fairly structured approach and takes you through everything from selecting domain names through all the monetizing possibilities. Whichever you choose you then need to go into more detail over.

All of the above seem to have common themes - One is the importance of keeping ownership. Marshall bangs on about wage slavery, Lindahl about doiing it once and then selling many passively, Dennis spells it out. It all amounts to the same thing. The real money comes from ownership, not from selling your time. The other is the value of that time - the one asset that's not replaceable. They all emphasise this.


Finally I just also got ( based on someone's recommendation here) "The Art of SEO" by multiple self-professed luminaries from the SEO world. Havent read it yet, but so far it strikes me as similar to a marketing textbook - it talks a lot about it in terms of the marketing principles. To someone like me with a marketing background and having done the courses and got the teeshirt many years ago, it seems to make sense in many ways - the principles of strategic marketing don't change, but the methods of communication do. SEO is an example of that, and it approaches it from that direction. So even if google do constantly change their ranking systems after the book has been published, rendering some of the tactical information less valueable, it may give you a good framework in terms of how to think about it and how to respond to changes in the methods, as well as changes in the market.

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