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Internet Business Plan: Making Money with a Travel Blog

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Research, Chaweng Beach, Koh Samui. Thailand

Back in January I talking about business planning - and at the time I expected to do several follow up plans which would detail business plans for several of my bigger websites. But it never happened. Why not? Frankly – I was stuck! I couldn’t figure out a business plan for my favourite niche – my main travel blog. So I did, nothing. Well I did think – quite a bit, and thought of and discarded dozens of plans. Now, several months later, I do indeed have a plan. If you just CLICK HERE I will tell you how to make $997,999 in the next 7 days while planning your next vacation. Nah sorry – but I’ll tell you what I’m trying to do – who knows it may even work out!  Travel Blogging Is Tough   My first website (it wasn’t a blog) – was in travel – it never made a cent. I still have the domain, now it makes a few cents with Adsense.  My first blog is long gone (I have the content somewhere on the hard drive). It was the classic: this is what I’m doing type trip diary. Then I discovered you could get paid [...] Read more »

Internet Marketing Business Plan – 2012 Edition

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Cape Reinga, on a bad day, the Pacific is meeting the Tasman somewhere in the background

Sorry this is a bit of long one, even for me! You might want to read my previous posts first if you haven’t (and they are shorter!): 2011 Looking Back, 2012 Goals – Introduction. Short version, why should you read over 3000 words of my ramblings? Because most people don’t have a business plan to make money online, and I think more of you need one!   A Whole Bloody Business Plan? Why Not Just Some Goals?  This started off as my 2012 goals post – and ended up as an Internet Marketing plan – how the frig did that happen?  I read some other people’s goals posts – and don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking posts like this, or this, this one, or indeed the one that made me buy a book. I read them all, and they all seemed reasonable goals and plans.   But I wanted a bigger picture, I wanted a  vision, some frigging idea where I was going with this whole business thing, and 2012 in particular.   Or, to be allegorical, (’cause I am playing with language at the moment), I needed to know the layout of the forest, before I focussed on individual trees!  And then Google has failed me. [...] Read more »

2012 Goals – Introduction

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Ugly photo! December 2011 - though they did send me a medium when I asked for an XL!

As I mentioned in passing in my last post 2011 – wasn’t the most exciting year of my life.  Personal Goals  Gonna hit big 50 this year, which is cool because it means we can dance in the next age grade in Dancesport ie instead of competing against 35 year olds, we are the youngest couple again (well I am, partner’s 10 years older!).  HOWEVER, we want to compete in Latin again, so I need to look good wearing this:  Let’s face it, I probably won’t be going back to looking like this:   - but it’s got to better than this!:  As of today I’m 108kg, in the 1988 photo I was probably about 70kg (and yes over-weight according to the  wisdom of the day – trying to get to 65kg from memory). Now apparently 75kg is OK weight for my height (180cm) – you see why I have a problem with the weight loss industry! Frankly if I got down to 90kg that would be a) record-breaking low for the last 20 odd years for me, and b) still “obese” by the stupid “one size fits all charts” , and frankly – I’d look pretty hot in my latin [...] Read more »

2011 Review Looking Back

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looking back

Hmm, looks like although I’ve used Chris Guillebeau’s approach to planning before, I’ve not actually blogged about it!  I don’t have a lot of time for most “self improvement” blogs, and I first noted Chris’s site because he has, what I still think is, a stupid idea of visiting every country in the world. Really, I love to travel, but there are number of countries that I’ve never wanted to visit, so why spend money going there?  Anyway I like his writing and his goal setting is quite unusual. This is part 1 – looking back, check back in a few days for when I’ve actually figured out my New Year’s goals!  Anyway – this is the easy part of the process: looking back:  Pretty much I’m looking at health, travel, business,  in that order, because that’s probably what matters.     What Went Well in 2011  Frankly I was kinda worried about reaching that “certain age” that women get to.  I had heard so many bad things about menopause. Well I’ve reached it, and what happened? For the first time since I was 20 I’m not popping a daily pill, had the odd weird dream, woke up hot a couple of [...] Read more »

An Apology – I Need To Come Clean – A Z-List Blogger Is Born

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Picture of this C-List Blogger Living The High Life, Ko Samui, Thailand

This stupid MMO blog is a curious thing. It started as my online learning journal/personal diary thing.  But its become something a lot more than that.  You see, while publicly, calling out the A-List bloggers –  I have somehow become one:  a C-lister anyways, woops  no, now a Z-List Blogger! I am making money from you guys, that’s the truth of it.  Its not what  I set out to do – but over the years – its just kinda happened – and an incident over the weekend really highlighted it to me. I’m sorry – that’s my dirty little secret, it would have been obvious to some of you for some time, but not to others and its always made me feel apologetic and uncomfortable.  I have probably been reading way to much personal devlopement stuff recently – but I’m not happy with my record here – so I’m putting that record straight.  It Started With A Cashflow Crises My cash flow was ugly in October, and not looking much better for November – HubPages is not playing nicely, and come the new year will be screwing  me out of significant Amazon earnings. Late on Friday night I did the Oct [...] Read more »

We Don’t Need No Stupid Badges!

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View From Our Hotel Window, Royale Chulan, Kuala Lumpur

The Keyword Academy has this absolutely infantile, ridiculous scheme where you can apply for badges to match your (verified) income – I mean its like pre-primary school right? Except for some odd  reason it does seem to matter to me – and today I made it – I made the next badge up – in the last month I earned $2500 in passive online income and I have nice pretty badge to prove it. Half of that was from Adsense and that figure represents a 50% increase over December’s Adsense figures. So how long does it take to make at total of $4000/month of online income? So in answer to the question “Can You Make $1000/month with Adsense”  (written almost exactly 2 years ago) – is YES, I DO. And yes at the time, I really didn’t think it would be ME that did! In fact I blame Mark Butler (from the Keyword Academy – yup you can get a personal consult for free within the Academy – its smart move by them – but unbelievable good value for members) – I had a consultation with him a few weeks ago – and I wrote on my white board – make $2500 by April [...] Read more »

Passive Income: 2010 In Review and The Two Day Work Week

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eMachine EM350 1.66GHz N450/1GB/160GB/Windows XP

Yeah I know – there are nearly 2 months left until the end of the year – but  I am about to hit the road for a spot of independent travel so I will probably have more important things to do than to consider my business position – like spending the loot! Yeah I now make $1,110,223.21 a month in my sleep – and could too – if you would just sign up … Anyway about a year ago I had some passive income goals for 2010. By the end of March I reported an income of : Total income of around US$3000/month – of which about 1/3 is passive;; In the last 6 months (May – October) I earned an average of US$3500, the 6 months before that $3200, and the 6 months prior to that US$2156. My all time record was last month, October, where I was just $8  short of US$4000.  The individual months bounce around but the general trend is definitely in the right direction. Still short of my US$5000/month goal – but not so far off as to be depressing. But the really exciting bit is that in the last 6 months I have never [...] Read more »

Passive Income: End of the Quarter Review!

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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 »

Passive Income and Backlinks No Fluff

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Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Backlinks are key in this business – I hope most of you know that already! I could go on and on about backlinks – particular backlinks for DIY sites which make lots of passive income with Adsense. But  I won’t – mainly because my mate Allyn is on and on about it – he seems to have morphed from the stroppy beer-drinking persona – to a nice non-fluff teaching bloke without a budget to afford a chair in his new fancy videos – and I do find the black background pretty dull compared to his DIY kitchen. Anyway he has this post up which is all about backlinks – and if you understand nothing else about making a passive income online – backlinks are the #1, important thing to focus on – yes more important than the number of  twitter followers you have, more important than the number of stumbles you have and more important than the content on your site. Good content is quite useful – in fact the only reason I linking to Allyn is because he has put together the definitive post about everything you need to know about backlinks So now every time I get asked [...] Read more »

Improving Time Management to Improve Passive Income

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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

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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 »