Shake Rattle and Roll

Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald

Drizzle with a chance of earthquakes in the afternoon… On Saturday morning I was asleep – I usually am, but I was late getting up and getting online.  I noticed that Skype was flashing a message – it was SY from Hospitalera Blogs asking if I was OK. Hmm I thought yes – why? I turned the radio on – it was talking about the big quake – obviously not  the long awaited Wellington earthquake, and was in fact a huge quake of 7.1 in Christchurch. Its been an interesting few days – and I don’t just mean the minor earthquakes that we  have had in Wellington (and yes quakes do come in swarms, and no I didn’t even notice them).  Two things came out of this: trends blogging and business continuity and communications in the Twitter world. Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald Trends Blogging OK in my defence I knew no one was dead – but my second thought was – hmmm wonder what happens if I Google “earthquake insurance New Zealand” -ah I find my own Earthquake Insurance  hubpage (which was written almost a year ago after Hubpages did a disaster hubmob) ranking just below the [...] Read more »

Online Income – The Secret to Success Is …

New Plymouth Gardens

Online income is something many people profess to want – but few actually achieve it. Why? Isn’t terribly technically difficult – nope, is there really a secret – yes but not what you think. Online income, passive income whatever is a business – and a business is all about YOU. I read a couple contrasting attitudes today – which I thought were relevant. Chris posted on The Keyword Academy forums: To anyone whose article got returned on http://www.brightfluid.com,  I apologize, it definitely isn’t my style. With the craziness going on with the Iraqi government formation and the troop withdrawal, our base is taking a lot of mortars and rockets, and one just happened to nail our internet satellite. They just installed a new satellite, and I worked through the 119 articles pending, but I know some got returned, and I’m sorry. For the next 24 hours I’m doing hourly submissions to make up for it (besides sleeping of course), so hit me with your best shot. Just to explain – Chris owns a article directory on TKA’s postrunner system,  and if you don’t approve articles submitted within 7 days they are automatically returned to sender- something some people whinge about a [...] Read more »

Is Lis Lost Down Under?

Taranaki Egmont New Zealand

Life is for living has always been my motto – its one of the reasons I now own my own business rather than make obscene amounts of money as an IT contractor.  Being that miserable isn’t worth any amount of money. And sometimes going to work just seem too trivial to be bothered with. Unfortunately my online business has felt a bit like that over that last little while! Well life went from interesting to worse really. After I wrote that post (when we had sold the house, and my partner’s mum had died) – we found a new place we liked and bought it. There was gap of about a month between during which we stayed with friends – which was very nice and saved us a fortune. In the 4 weeks we stayed I managed to write-off our car by running  it into a bus – no serious damage to me but the back is only just about recovered from the whiplash now. My partner’s uncle died in Australia so he  had to fly over for that funeral (its only 4 hours flying from here though – slightly shorter than if we’d still been in Perth). My partner [...] Read more »

Slope Stability, Earthquakes and Passive Income

Big Pit, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

You may not know – I used to be a Geologist and even know useful stuff about how to make sure your house didn’t fall down a hill in rain storm or earthquake  (here’s a hint you probably need a 3D slope stability program to do the calculation!)  Having a science degree in real physical science has always been extremely useful – even long after I left the profession – because it taught me about cause and effect – and  that just because something happens at the same time doesn’t mean they are related. Where am I going with this – and does it relate to making passive income online? Well it does relate – we mix up cause and effect all the time: we think life is more dangerous for kids these days then it was in the old days – but most children survive to the age of 5 in developed countries now – something that would have been beyond imagining  even 200 years ago, and unfortunately still is in some parts of the world. We think that working hard on a site should see Google loving the site, sending us heaps of traffic and making us lots of money. [...] Read more »

Passive Income Online – Where Has Lis Been?

house in khandallah

Sorry I don’t usually do purely personal posts of Passive Income Online – so you may want to skip this one – unless you were wandering what happened.  Well first off from the online point of view – nothing bad has happened – in fact its looking like a record breaking month on my passive income goals – and I mean truly passive income because I have really done very little focused work this month.  We’ve had a month of it. First we finally sold our house in Khandallah (BTW ranking #2, #3 behind the major Real Estate Institute in the country – just wondering how much an Agent will want to pay for the site …). Got pretty much our price in a very slow flat market which was freaking out about the budget (now been and gone). We move out in a few weeks. Where to – who knows I’m  no fan of bridging finance – we may have to rent for a wile or we may win the tender that closes today – something will happen. I don’t know how it is in your country – but in New Zealand the Internet has been a game-changer for [...] Read more »

Passive Income: End of the Quarter Review!

Dancing Rumba on my 48th Birthday, Nelson, New Zealand

Well a little late but so long as I get this out before the end of April! In fact the last time I did one of these was 6 month's ago! Anyway its the end of the tax year here so I had to do some tax stuff first. First off a huge tip for any of you who aspire to wander around the world logging in occasionally to make a little more passive income online! Sort out your tax status and try to be tax resident in only one country! After several years of doing tax returns in two countries I am significantly over it! Read more »

Shameless Advertisement for The Keyword Academy! Hurry Time Running Out!

Living the Dream? Western Australia, Cape le Grand

Are you reading this because you are tired of working for the “man”, never seeing your kids until late at night, juggling bills and worrying about where the next car repayment is coming from? Would you like to be younger, sexier, attract fast cars and pretty women? Well I have the answer for you – but you have to ACT NOW! Sorry – thought that might get your attention! Look lets me honest here – I make money from this blog and the most successful marketing I do is for the The Keyword Academy. Why is it successful ? Well I manage to con people into signing up for the $1 free trial by offering to refund their dollar if they don’t like it – and then people find its a great program and they keep on paying the monthly membership for the site. I get a commission on those monthly subscriptions.  All affiliates work the same Third Tribe Marketing, Scribe SEO – the lot. The difference is that most affiliates people cancel after a few months – which is crap for your passive online income! You see people who enrol in TKA stay enrolled for months and months and [...] Read more »

Passive Income Ideas

Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia

I’ve been playing with the new “Niche Refinery” tool inside of The Keyword Academy and found some new keywords for this blog – I shouldn’t have to tell you which one I am targeting today. Its not worth a million dollars or anything – but the current top ranking posts for “passive income ideas” – all leave a whole lot to be desired. As usual  content really doesn’t matter that much – its all about using the keywords in the right place and domain authority in the Case of the current top ranker’s – so I figure with a bit content – and some backlinks I too may get to page #1 and provide some useful information. What is Passive Income ? Passive income is income you receive which is not related to how you spent you day – well that’s my definition of it anyway! I might have spent the last week doing this (I wish!) but meanwhile I made over  NZ$2000 – passive income. That income happened with no discernable activity on my part – I don’t think I made any decisions to with last week – but the invoices paying me showed up today – being the [...] Read more »

New Zealand Bloggers – Can You Make Passive Income Here?

Dingies, Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand

Some of you seemed to like my photos in the Move to New Zealand – Australia compared so this post is decorated with some photos from Island Bay, Wellington – near where I am currently living.  Todd over at Todd’s Tips has been inspriring me with his Iraq photos – so here is my best effort! My attention was caught by the local Sunday paper featuring this story on a New Zealand DIY site making a claimed $20,0000/month from Adsense. Now that’s presumably New Zealand dollars – so that’s about US$14k – but still its a lot of money being claimed from a fairly small, 1100 indexed page, site. I was initially skeptical of the claimed figures  but I do know my mate Allyn over at bloggerillustrated.net sold a website for $30,000 and that it was a DIY type site as well, though knowing Allyn I doubt that AdSense was his preferred magnetization (he hasn’t said yet – it looks like the vblog series is going to extend well into 2010 while he keeps his audience waiting for the good stuff! According to the newspaper report the owner of the site – retired builder Les Kenny – was talking to [...] Read more »

Improving Time Management to Improve Passive Income

tomatoes

While I was figuring out my passive income goals for 2010 – I went thru the tired but true exercise: What went well last year? What went badly? Oddly enough – it was quite easy for me answer both questions – I think this is an important skill that being in business for yourself develops – one thing I cerainly hadn’t expected to learn while working online was to be much more aware of my own faults and weaknesses. Anyway back to the point – what went well – I haven’t had to get a real job that’s more than good! When someone asked me the other day whether  Iwas going to get a job on my return to NZ – I looked him in the eye and said, why? I made over US$4000 last month – what would I want a job for? What went badly – well unfortunately that was equally easy to answer  my time management sucks! This is not a new development – but now my inability to focus is costing me money not just an employer! This has to stop and like now. So what has NOT worked for me so far as time management [...] Read more »

Passive Income Goals 2010

Passive Income Planning

I’ve been doing some planning – well its better than doing some work right? Although you many of you, like me, will have sat through the annual corporate planning wank – “failing to plan is a plan to fail” – in the business of making passive income online planning is a often just another way to procrastinate for many people.  After all  planning the next big thing is much more fun that getting a few more backlinks! Working in IT put me off planning for a quite a long time.   I never had a plan to succeed when I starting trying to earn an online income – I didn’t have a plan at all. Which wasn’t a bad thing  – lets put it this way if you are 16 and have just decided to go to medical school – should you have a plan of which speciality you want to end up in and what income you want to be making by the time you are 30? To be honest you shouldn’t – you have no idea what life is like, haven’t met your life partner yet or had kids or not, you  don’t know any thing about medicine – [...] Read more »