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Improving Time Management to Improve Passive Income

Written by Lis on December 29, 2009 · 40 Comments

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

Written by Lis on December 16, 2009 · 53 Comments

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 »

Its Spring! End of a Quarter Report – How To Manage the Dollars

Written by Lis on October 3, 2009 · 44 Comments

So its the end of another month – another quarter anywhere so how is my journey to passive income online. Well to be honest its been flat-lining since my record of making over $2000 in one month – in July. Bouncing around at the same level give or take in US$ terms, dropping in local currency because of the strength of both my local currencies (yes I run accounts in two countries – I don’t recommend it!). Oh and finally spring has sprung – downunder in Perth anyways – finally I might add, so much for global warming its been freezing here for far too long. The photos in this post were taken in King’s Park, Perth a couple of weeks ago – yes we have quite a display of wildflowers at the moment. New Custom Thesis Theme I’ve been spring cleaning this blog too – a couple of you have noticed that the design has changed a fair bit. None of my doing – Costa who makes cool custom WordPress themes at blogigs.com wrote to me saying that my previous design hurt his head and here is a new one. Well OK I can take a hint – I [...] Read more »

How Can I Make Passive Income Online?

Written by Lis on September 23, 2009 · 32 Comments

We were talking last night, my partner and I, considering what we want to do in 2010 when his current contract comes to an end and the obvious question came up – do I make enough passive income online for him not to work anymore. The short answer is not quite – but we are getting close. What’s more I am definitely now of the opinion that it would be a huge financial risk for me to go and get a job now compared to my making money online – and here’s why. Passive Income in the Real World Every month no less than eight groups of people pay me – they are tenants in various properties we own in New Zealand. I hire a property manager so I count that income as passive – every month money goes into our account at home. There is a catch though – every month money goes out of that account too – usually just a little more than went in – all going well it will balance – but if you have a month where you need to replace not one but two hot water cylinders – it does not! We didn’t [...] Read more »

Online Income and Work Life Balance

Written by Lis on August 24, 2009 · 20 Comments

I took the weekend off – I drove 300km and checked out the golf course at Augusta, went whale watching, ate too much, drank too much local red wine. Did I login? Did I check my email? Did I approve comments? Did I check in with clients that it was OK to take the weekend off – no to all of those above. You see I used to have a J.O.B (Just Over Broke) – I used to have to apply for leave or arrange not to be on-call to go away for the weekend. I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I put an “out of office reply” on my main email account and disconnected. It wasn’t that hard for me – I must admit taking breaks and travelling is what’s important to me. Yes sure I’d like to make a zillion dollars a week – but only if I can still take off every month or so for a holiday! Although I now have a lot of American friends online, I still don’t understand the need to work 24/7 – if you are desperate to pay the bills sure – but for those who aren’t? To be honest if [...] Read more »

Making Money with An Online Gold Rush

Written by Lis on August 15, 2009 · 40 Comments

I had to explain my business to my accountant recently having finally made some online income to declare! Its been a while since I tried to explain my business to someone who, although they had their own website and is very computer literate, really had no idea what I was talking about. The thing is that people think because the Internet has only be around for 40 years and Google for less than 10 years, maybe making money online is all different and there has never been a moment like this in history before – well I beg to differ – there is nothing new under the sun and understanding history is certainly useful in avoiding the mistakes others have made. The Internet Marketing is like a gold rush people – Klondike, Otago, Victoria, doesn’t matter which country: gold is found, some people make money, many don’t, some companies are made others die, and society changes forever. For those of you are not familiar with history: gold rushes brought incredible wealth it a few and incredible hard work and death to many more – and I am a firm believer that understanding history can sometimes stop you repeating it. Your [...] Read more »

How To Make Over $2000 Online

Written by Lis on August 2, 2009 · 53 Comments

I have been on and off doing full-time Internet Marketing as a way to make a full time living since Oct 2007. As recently as March I made a total of $144 from Adsense and affiliates, April was the first month I made the $100 Adsense payout within a month. In July 2009 I made $1500 from Adsense and Affiliates (what I can passive income) – with my freelance work my income came in at $2800 for the month. Where I’m from, New Zealand, that is about the same sort of money that a junior teacher would be earning – not bad if I do say so myself. I dunno what full-time income is your part of the world but my definition has always been about US$1000/week – what I could make if I could get a job as a Business Analyst, Test Manager again. I am not there yet – but in March I was ready to quit – now I feel like I’m close to success -my partner finally thinks there is something to this online lark – and I know that once you have the momentum its so much easier to build on it. The Secret to [...] Read more »

Niche Devil and Making Money Attitudes

Written by Lis on July 31, 2009 · 61 Comments

UPDATE June 2010 – the party was great – but Niche Devil is longer available – and yes I still make money from it LOL The last few days have been rather entertaining. Vic released a {kick arse cool money making on steroids|automated worthless con} script called Niche Devil. If you haven’t caught up with all this you could call Niche Devil – the best alternative to BANS for eBay affiliates. Its faster to set up than BANS, has a very small footprint, indexes very quickly and has the potential to make me a great deal of money. It takes me under a minute to create a full blown site with this script – and yes the site is full of legal, unique content. I must admit I had reservations on the script because I knew that some of my readers would be worried that it was in conflict with some of the other approaches to making money online. Lets be clear – it is. There are lots of ways to make money online - life is complex – you will just have to make your own decisions. Quite a number of people I know and respect are basically saying [...] Read more »

Online Income: One Simple Secret to Success

Written by Lis on July 23, 2009 · 51 Comments

OK this is a bit of a follow up on my recent post on clueless bloggers. It probably reflects that I’ve been spending too much time on the HubPages forums recently too and I have decided that online there is a single reason why most people don’t make money online, and why online income remains just a dream. People who fail to make money online don’t fail because they can’t write, or don’t understand keywords. They don’t fail because they don’t have enough technical knowledge, they don’t have a degree, have too many kids, don’t have the support of their partner, or live outside of the developed world. They fail for a totally different reason. And I have finally figured it out. In fact its stunningly obvious now that I have though of it – and I should probably pad it out to an e-book and sell it for $97! Instead I’ll just make this post a bit long. Do you want to know what the secret of making online income is? Drum roll… You have to treat it like a business! No kidding right! Seriously though I wonder what some people think they are doing, whatever it is, its [...] Read more »

Online Income How To Make $1000 Online!

Written by Lis on July 2, 2009 · 19 Comments

Well oops – I see I haven’t done an online income post for a while – and now its the new tax year in Australia this is as good an excuse as anything to avoid doing my taxes! Back in May I had some new goals – so lets report against though shall we – well it amuses me – sorry if you find it boring! What has happening in the interim is that my passive online income has doubled from May to June. My overall income including some freelance work was US$1400 – not too shabby really – considering where I’ve come from. OK I’d struggle to live on that amount in Australia, though I certainly could in some parts of the world, but at least its more than I would have earned on the dole! And I figure its just the beginning because certainly the passive component of that (about 50%) will only keep on going up. Update on Current Business Goals Get those 10 sites up and running with backlinks built and starting their run up the SERPS. Hmm not quite – “excuse” below Build more backlinks to the hubs which make me money- after all they [...] Read more »