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

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 figures – and there were as bad as I thought they would be.

I needed cash, not today, but it was getting borderline as to whether my income covered my living expenses.  A few years ago I would have checked the job sites.

Now that’s not an even an option for me now – instead I looked a minimizing expenses in my business, sent out some over-due invoices, they all paid within hours. Wow that was easy! I felt a bit better – why the heck do I find it hard to ask for money I’m owed?

By 10pm I was surfing Facebook – I noticed that a new backlinking service that I hadn’t been using much, and that I nearly cancelled last month (but missed the date), opened up for affiliates, several days earlier. 

Hmmm – I make $300 or so dollars a month selling Build My Rank – might try promoting the new service a go. By 1am the review was up (including typos in the title and url LMAO – I am too old for late night stuff). I promoted it here, the Pond, Facebook and TKA. Within 48 hours I had signups – by the time the initial offering was sold-out (genuinely – not bullshit false shortage BTW) – I had sold the majority of the memberships available. I had made a lot of money. 

I’m ranked  #1, 2, 3 AND 4 for “seo cobra review” and similar terms in the search engines. I don’t think I’ve had a single visitor or sign-up from that though (yet – SEO is the long game). 

Hmm looks like I’ve turned into one of those scammer A-list bloggers,  ie one who make a living selling  stuff to their followers. Its hard to ignore the fact that if I recommend stuff on this blog – you guys buy it- and thank me for it…  

Shit – I make money from selling make money online services (albeit good ones) to people who follow me online and think that I’m knowledgeable, helpful and probably think I’m successful!  Well two outta three ain’t bad, as the old song says.  

• Knowledgeable: I’ve been doing this since 2007,  I’ve been making my income entirely online since March 2009, I’ve followed lots of gurus, several of whom no longer post at all (or rarely) – yes I have some knowledge – I’m the personality type that likes finding out stuff – there’s some Myers-Briggs label for it – I call it analysis paralysis; 
• Helpful: yeah – I am, its innate, happens in real life too, having found all that information, I like sharing it, I quite like writing  too -hence the blog keeps on getting updated (but don’t hold me to a schedule!). 
• Successful: – now that’s the bit I’m not sure on – that’s what I want to fix up 

Is Lis Successful At Online Marketing?

I made a profit of  NZ$37,900  in the last 12 months, in the same time the US/NZ exchange rate varied from 74c to 88c in those same 12 months – so in US$ that’s an income of : US$28,000 or US$33,300 depending on the rate on the day (you understand the nightmare then?). 

That’s not gross sales – its income less expenses – I claim all the obvious expenses – hosting, domains, memberships, but also my home office (power, rates, ISP) – this is the real money I earn – its what I have to pay tax on. 

Is this a successful income? For me its a start – my aim has always been around US$5000/month. At my current earnings level I can pay 1/2 our household expenses, but we own our home (no mortgage), and I only doing minimal retirement savings, we do do a lot of travel and dancing, but we have no children to support, nor an expensive shopping habit; your mileage may vary.  

For comparison purposes: 

•  NZ average wage March 2011 NZ$49,00;
•  US Average Wage 20101 was  US$41,000 .  

So if you thought I was making 6-figures and throwing the cash around – if you didn’t realise that rather nice lunch we had just after that photo was taken, cost about $10 and we took a $2 tuk-tuk to get there, not a $25 taxi ride – sorry. Genuinely.  

So What the Heck Is Lis’s Problem? That’s Not a Bad Income and She Never Said She Drove a Porsche! 

I make about half my income from this site. That’s my issue. I do make money from other sites as well – but this one site is my solid month in, month out,  pay-the-bills website.   Over the years, through a bit of luck, some great friends, and the fact that I didn’t give up on it, Passive Income Online  now makes me half of my income, and the stable 1/2 at that. 

I make half  of my money from selling stuff to others who are trying for the same lifestyle as I am.  Inadvertantly I’m doing what the A-Listers do all too deliberately.  

There’s another reason why I have been coy about putting out my detailed income figures recently. I don’t want to encourage the rest of you, particularly the beginners into thinking that THIS is the way to make money, particularly not short-term. 

It doesn’t work like that. I’ve developed an online reputation over four years, for longer even than I’ve had this blog. Most of the time I wasn’t doing it deliberately, its sure as hell evolved.  In fact until very recently (hmm like this month) – this site has been deliberately only focussed on search traffic, because I was so bloody uncomfortable about the fact that some of you think I know something useful, and I was selling to you. 

What’s happened – well basically I’ve playing the old – go with your strengths card – I didn’t expect to make serious money with a MMO blog,  its happened despite me.  So now I’m going to develop it – it appears this personal relationship stuff works – and I want to develop that – so I can apply it to my other, non-MMO, niches. 

But you guys don’t go away – you keep emailing me with nice comments and intelligent questions, you seem to appreciate what I am doing!  So really in short – my readers have driven me to it and its not my fault – you asked for it and now:

That’s Me Out in the Open – Welcome to Lissie: the World’s Only C-List Blogger! 

 Lis Is Embracing Her Spammy C-List Blogger Status – Passive Income Has An E-Mail List!

See you can sign up just below. I’ve always resisted email lists – its the A-listers weapon of choice – but a list will allow me to do what I can’t do with just the blog. 

I will use the list to publish my regular monthly income reports. The monthly reports will NOT go on this site . To see them  – you will need to sign up, plain up and simple.  The WHY – that’s for the list too LOL. 

Also the list will allow me to give you heads up on stuff that is happening – but is not worth a post.

Hey I might even throw in a summary of posts – but if that’s all you want – then the feedburner service already does that (email or RSS reader options).

So yeah that’s more than enough soul searching for the day I think!  Leave a comment, sign up, or unsubscribe, sorry if you feel pissed off or misled by my little corner of the Interwebs – feel free to leave – and apologies I annoyed. 

For the rest of you – well – normal service (or lack thereof) is probably going to be resumed. 

And the question on the form? I’m curious as to whether I should be reusing some of my basic stuff and putting it out onto the list on a regular basis?