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!
Research, Chaweng Beach, Koh Samui. Thailand
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 to write posts about specific companies – then I lost all my page rank and also all the well paying posts. Lesson learnt – don’t blog for cash!
Then I discovered Internet Marketing – found out just how highly competitive most keywords were, and how little interest I had in writing about “Disney hotels with kids club” or “luxury Alasakan cruises” and dropped the whole idea of making money from travel.
For a while.
But I do really, really like travelling. And I’m good at it – I’ve done a lot of it. I am the go-to travel agent for friends. Unless of course they want to know about Disney hotels or Alasakan cruises!
Every year or so I’d look at it again. I learned a whole lot about SEO – it was a tough niche – don’t think that Expedia or Tripadvisor show up in the search listings by accident!
I figured out that long-tails in travel could add up to decent traffic. But still I did very little about it – why? Because traffic won’t pay the bills – traffic is a requirement for a successful website – but you need to figure out a way to monetise that traffic. And I hadn’t.
Travel Blogging – Where’s The Traffic From?
Today I answered a thread over at The Keyword Academy forum – someone had around 7000 visitors and month and not a single Adsense click. I asked simply: where was his traffic from? It was social. He’s worked hard to get this traffic (spread over 3 niches and only in a few months) – but basically the instant he stopped tweeting, facebooking, g plus oning, and pinning – the traffic disappears. And although he may eventually make money from the traffic – it won’t be for a long time, and it won’t be from Adsense.
I’ve seen travel bloggers hesitate to travel – because they thought the destination in question didn’t have good Internet connectivity… Anyone see why that is deeply wrong?
Which brings me right back to the most reliable form of traffic I know – Google. Yeah I know their are plenty of people saying diversify, diversify – but at the end of the date whether I publish this post in the next hour or in 3 months time – will make very little difference to this blog’s traffic. Most of it comes from Google, and most of it comes to posts that are years old.
But bloody hell the competition is flipping fear in travel. I’d looked and looked for “green keywords” in travel. Never found any. I was scared off.
I kept buying toys and playing. I particularly enjoyed playing with Ton’s Keyword Researcher tool. I threw a few terms in around Thailand travel. It came back with some nice long tail phrases. I tossed some of those phrases into Fraser’s Keyword Strategy tool – to give me the search volumes (could have done the same thing with Keyword Academy‘s Niche Refinerary but would have taken longer). Right so – Google is telling me that the terms that Google GAVE me have no searchers. And the terms made sense, and were similar to questions I’d seen asked in travel forums. I built a couple of pages. I interlinked them. I added some backlinks.
Up until a week ago I hadn’t posted on the site since October. I hadn’t built a link since before Christmas. I had 1000 uniques in the last month, 85% from Google, and 20% of the visitors were for search terms which had no search traffic according to Google!
And that 20% of terms that had no search volume? Most of them were variations of the terms from Keyword Researcher! (I’ve been fairly on the fence about Keyword Strategy – but I do REALLY like the way it gives you rankings for all the obscure one off search phrases you get).
Travel Blogging: How To Monetise
This has been my stumbling block – forever – with travel blogging. How the heck do you monetize it? The standard ways to monetize blogs seemed to involved either:
promoting the blogger’s brand in order to launch that career of public speaking or writing: see The Art of Non-Conformity or NomadicMatt. Problem: I loath public speaking and I don’t live in the US or Europe so my chances of getting on the conference circuit are zero. If you want to write books these days I see no point in doing anything except self-publishing.
Getting freebies for press trips, promoting certain hotels or travel companies in return for goods and services: see yTravel or GoBackpacking. Problem: I’m not single, and have zero interest in travelling my own country. Travel freebies never include the airfares – so suddenly I’m paying to travel solo somewhere I may or may not have wanted to go to – and this is the killer -in a GROUP. Yuk no thanks. I’m sure there was a point in my life when the thought of free trips and 5-star hotel stays would have been very exciting. But no longer.
Which left me with
Adsense – most of the topics I am interested in don’t give great CPC’s
Affiliate programs via hotel and airline booking sites. Again awful commissions. On the other hand if this post is right – there is money to be made in hotel affiliates with the right traffic.
Selling my own products. I wrote a book. I have 3 or 4 others – 1/2 finished. Then I got confused – should the content go in a book or on my websites? Both?
Selling ads. There are of course ads and paid links. Paid links are awful, terrible, a blight on the landscape of the Internet, and very popular in the travel niche. Ads are just that – ads. The difference? Add the no-follow tag to a link and its an ad. This monetization method still seems to work for many in the niche.
And then suddenly I realised – I was overthinking it.
I need traffic and I need the social stuff – because advertisers use both to determine what a site is worth to them. There are enough monetization options to worry about the fine details later. Those options are not trivial amounts of money either – for example see Kirsty’s earning reports – almost all of her income is from direct advertisors and all her sites are travel sites. And she spends most of her time volunteering in places that don’t have great Internet.
I’ve redone the site. I’ve now got a “travel blog” separate from my distinctly keyword focussed content. I will silo the keyword focussed content even further (also making it more attractive to future advertisers). Thanks to the magic of Catalyst I didn’t even need to get another theme, just changed the skin and did some different layouts.
Oddly the whole BMR debacle has really energized me. As they say in New Caledonia plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose. I think I just narrowed my focus down from about 30 sites to two – but apart from that – its all business as usual LOL!
What about you? Are you changing your business significantly after the recent Google changes?
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.
Tane Mahuta - the largest Kauri tree in the world.
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. I figured that now I was finally ready to write a business plan for my Internet Marketing business, Ms Google would provide me with a handy dandy template, or at least a format to copy!
Nope – I found a couple of sites willing to sell me a a template, for a bargain price, limited-time offer! But not a similar business plan to be found on the Interwebs! Well guess its time to fill the niche! Naturally I should have realised this months ago so that I could be #1 for “internet marketing business plan”, ah well, maybe next year? Maybe its just that Internet Marketers don’t want to admit to their business plans? Well I’m sure the A-Listers dont – but Z-List bloggers signed up for transparency – so here we go!
Anyway what I did start with was a fairly ordinary free business plan – and adapted it, yeah its written by New Zealanders, but none of this is stuff is very country specific.
Does Everyone Need a Business Plan?
Well as I write this I am entering my 5th year in this business. This is my first business plan. Should I have had one early, probably, let’s face it, I’m hardly a star on the earnings front! Should I have done one at the start – nope, you can’t write a business plan until you know your business. I still think it takes at least a year before you have any chance in hell of writing a business plan!
Because unless you can actually write down your business model and strategy – you can’t write a plan. As I look back through my archives, I see so much stuff that I tried and failed at, and some of it my fault some of it just failed business models that are now the relics of history. (Note to self – go through and put some caveats on those old posts in case someone actually reads them!). In the long-ago past I actually used to have to write business plans for company units, every now and then, as part of my job, it was a nightmare, but at least I know how to do it. My lack of business plan to date has nothing to do with being unfamilar with them, it was because I didn’t have the necesary information.
Now I think I do.
I’ve modelled this plan on a “normal” business plan, as linked to in the link above. If you want to apply this to your own business I suggest you download it and read the notes, you could buy a zillion worlds of business books on how to write a plan – but this template is the essence of the format, used world-over and beloved of MBA schools!
Business Model for Internet Marketing – Overview
Introduction
For the brief history – see here. The purpose of my business? Well to make me money while I sleep of course? Could there be any other?
Hmm my products and services … Well I’ve written one book in the travel niche and have plans for more. This in essence is the difficulty of writing this type of plan when you are in the business of affiliate marketing and ranking sites that make money from Adsense. WTF are your products and services!
Are websites products? I think they might as well be for the purposes of discussion, after all they make me money even though I don’t see them as my product per se, i.e. I don’t build websites to sell on a regular basis, instead they product me on-going income by way of affiliate and other advertising.
Yup lets take websites as products – in which case I have, 53 domains registered. Of those 5 are purely personal so can be ignored. Of the other 48 I have websites in some shape or form on all of them. Some of them are supposed to make me money and do, some are supposed to make money and don’t, others are “support” sites which aren’t supposed to make me money directly.
In addition I make money from my writing on revenue-share sites including HubPages and Wizzley
Current Position
Current position of the business – well summary can be found here. Where is my business in the business lifecycle, I’d say its at the start of its growth phase. The industry of Internet Marketing I’d say is an emerging industry which is developing at a frighteningly fast rate.
I really do see the whole on-line digital marketing/publishing world evolving at a speed which its hard to comprehend even to those of us who live in the midst of it. The rate of change is currently only accelerating, quite probably at a exponential rate, regardless of what measurement you are using.
Overall the whole landscape of SEO, affiliate marketing and digital products are all changing at light speed. Really I’ve always liked technology for its speed of change, but the whole online environment is amazing quick moving.
Competitive Advantage
Ooh a competitive analysis – who are my competitors and how can I capitalise on their weaknesses? My competitive advantage is simple, I’m small, I answer to no one, no bank to please, no investors. If I want to try something new in response to changing markets I can, and do.
Who is my main competitor? Well this is where I’m starting to think that I’m going to need to do a business plan for each of my main websites (or groups of websites), for example this site has a quite a different competition environment than say my travel sites.
In fact I think I will do that for a least three of my sites over the following week or so. So I’ll keep this post at a high level.
To be honest I don’t see my main competitors as the people who own the sites that out-rank my own in the search results. Rather I see my main competitor as Google and the major brands (Amazon, eBay, TripAdvisor, Expedia, LonelyPlanet) who Google tends to favour in those results.
My advantage is that I can go more niche and more specific than the competitors. Travel is a classic for this – try searching for a specific destination which you know has hotels. Pick somewhere obscure, but that definitely has businesses with an on-line presence. What will you get? Results for the nearby state, province, town – but not the specific destination you entered. That’s Google preferring their brand partners. But its not in the searchers best interest, eventually it will have to change. Eventually in Internet Marketing is within the year.
My other advantage is that I’m unique, people have called me lots of things, but bland is not one of them. On my count I’ve made more friends than enemies for being outspoken and saying it as I see it. You’ll never get h0nesty from a tourism website or from 99% of internet marketing websites. I can do honesty – must be an advantage!
Growth Plan
How am I going to increase my capability? I’m not, there’s nothing much wrong with my capability, its my application of the same which needs work! So really I need to either, severely limit or eliminate, the time I spend on Facebook and possibly some forums too. The trouble is of course, that forums and social media do get me visitors and subscribers, I’m just not sure that its worth the effort 1/2 the time.
How am I going to increase my capacity. Well I am going to build up my outsourcers as I grow my income. There seems to be plenty of people who can write competently, I’m happy to employ them, as I can afford it, to build my business.
I see no issues with growing my business, the problem is merely the CEO who has to stop bouncing from one new, bright idea, to another and to actually flipping focus!
Cape Reinga, Northland, New Zealand, on a bad day, the Pacific is meeting the Tasman somewhere in the background
Business Strategy
The suggested time frames with the original template business plan is “next year” and “next 1-3 years”. I think we need to focus in a bit of a shorter time-frame to take into account the speed of change in this industry.
1-3 Month Goals
Goal 1: Fast Cash via Wizzley
Well specifically I need to find NZ$3500 by April and the same again in May for taxes.
I’ve proven that Wizzley will rank long tail articles on page 1 of Google within 24 hours so I’m using a combination of content I’ve removed from Hubpages plus Tony’s Keyword Researcher to reuse most of that content and try to make some quick cash on Amazon, to compensate for the loss of Hubpage Amazon earnings from January and to pay my taxes. I’m not pretending its a long-term strategy – but I need the cash now, and the pages can provide backlinks long term.
I have 2 ID’s on Wizzley and I need to get both to over 100 articles to maximise my revenue share. I’m hoping that once I have the momentum going, that I can outsource most of my “anonymous” account’s writing.
I’ll need to average about 7 articles/day to get 200 published by the end of January. That’s lots, but not impossible.
Goal 2: Diversify from Google – Branding and List Building
After years of being anti-list building, I’ve changed my mind. I’m building lists for a single strategic reason. To remove some of my dependence on Google (see SWOT analysis below). The two main areas that I see that I can build lists is this blog, and my travel niche. These are two topics that I have genuine knowledge of and write almost all (all for this site) my own content for.
It also means I have to play the “branding game” – hence the Z-List Blogger manifesto!
I don’t even know what is considered “good figures” for a mailing list. I’ve seen plenty of bullshit figures in the A-List circles (let me know if you want me to tell you how to fake the numbers!). From a standing start (i.e. zero) on the 7 November, I now have 118 subscribers here, and 72 over 2 travel blogs. I probably need to give the travel subscribers a reason to subscribe ie a discount on a book or a freebie, and maybe the same here? I’m not sure. But I am (slowly) evolving the way that I split content between my blog and the subscriber list.
I’ll work out some specifics in my specific business plans for my main sites here, suffice to say, I think 1000 is a nice round number!
Goal 3: Diversify from Google – Publish More Books
I need to finish the books I’ve started and get them out there making some money!
3-12 Month Goals
Goal 4: Use the Wizzley Results to Diversify
Using the results from my Wizzley adventure, any winning keyword groups I will use to develop new niches. Early results suggest that Wizzley is rubbish for Adsense click thru rates, so these will probably be product niches.
Goal 5: Promote my Published Books
This one is vague at the moment – lets get the books out there first!
Tactics
Despite Google’s best efforts at mis-information to the contary, I don’t see a whole lot changing as far as promoting websites in the near future. Its all about content and backlinks, content is a bit more important that it once was, but I still see absolute crap rank at the top of the search results, why, backlinks and site authority.
I know how to build both – but I’ll leave the details to specific posts I think at this stage.
Strategic Impact
The main risk I see in the next few years, for me and other affiliate marketers is Google, pure and simple. But the market is changing so rapidly, its hard to know whether search will even be the more dominant method that consumers use to find information in the next few years.
Core Values
Do no evil. Really, because, lets face it, Google abandoned that particularly philosophy a long time ago. Yeah I’d acutally like to be ethical in this business. Particularly in Internet Marketing, because, lets face it, there is not too much competition! Hence the transparency – how many other Internet Marketing blogs actually tells you the number of subscribers?
Marketing
SWOT and CSFs
SWOT analyses are cool – not heard of them? Read up, there is precious little useful in all the management courses I’ve done over the years, but learning to do a SWOT is handy, not just in business, I do when I’m buying a house too.
Strengths of me/my business:
diversification of income sources: I make money from many niches and from many advertisers.
I have standardised my sites on WordPress and Catalyst – and they are therefore much easier to manage, update and control than previously.
I live in a country that doesn’t have, and is unlikely to have, sales tax. This means the chance of my Amazon affiliate account being banned is low.
I have an eBay account, got in early, not sure what to do with it these days though, as I can no longer use it through HubPages. I do, however, know they are rare.
I’ve been in this game long enough to have some confidence in my own ability to pick keywords and rank pages in the search engines.
Weakness of me/my business;
I’m getting better at selling, but its still against my natural inclinations, I’m particularly uncomfortable about selling to readers and people I know online. I can’t stomach the sort of prices many people seem to be able to put on their products and their time.
short attention span. I’ve always had a tendency to value learning, over doing, so I am suspectible to the “shiny new object” syndrome so common in our industry.
my location. Because I live in a market of only 4 million people there are few local opportunities for selling services to local businesses. Basically pretty much anything will rank here with minimal effort, and the business community doesn’t “get” SEO, because, frankly, they don’t need to.
Opportunities for my business in the current external environment;
the rise of e-readers is driving demand for cheap fiction e-books, and an as yet unknown market, for non-fiction e-books. Self-publishing has never been easier, and the sector is very rapidly evolving. There are opportunities for those of us who can write.
Threats against my business in the current environment
Google is progressively blocking detailed stats from Google Analytics accounts. The only question is when it all become unavailable or unaffordable for most of us.
dependence on Google for much of traffic and the unpredictable changes to the Google’s search engine algorithmns;
dependence of Google for much of my income (Adsense);
dependence on a formerly good revenue site, gone bad (HubPages) for some of my income
Critical Success Factors have got a bit over-run with the newer fad of KPI’s, but I like them – because they are about as basic a question as you can ask your business: “what are the key things that need to go well for this business to be a success”.
CSF1: Chose the right keywords, the terms that people are searching for who have their credit card out and ready to run. I am so over keywords that either have no traffic or no profitable traffic.
CSF2: Produce good books and price them low enough to offer excellent value for money. The pricing of books has absolutely nothing to do with how long it took you to write it!
Market Research
Market research is the basis of this business. I do it two ways. Initially I take a guess at the relevant keywords, then, once I start ranking a site, I look at what I am actually ranking for, and persue those terms as well. Its not rocket science, I doubt that its changed for years, it works.
One of the delights of Amazon – is that they have plenty of actual data that they are happy to share with you (check for most popular items and then apply your imagination).
Google will tell you what people are searching for – by giving you auto-complete suggestions as your type in a query. I also have the feedback from readers and subscribers for the Internet Marketing and Travel.
Distribution Channels
My emphasis is on the US, and will continue to be. America may be having a recession, but even in recession you guys buy far more online than any other country.
Strategic Alliances
Initially, one of the huge appeals of this business was that I could be a one-woman band. The human race is full of idiots and most of the worst ones had been people I’d worked with and for over the years. I was really looking forward to working with no one. It didn’t work out like that. Instead I ended up finding out just how important your friends are online. I’m lucky to have had some of the good and great over the years – many of whom no-longer post regularly.
But the Internet abhors a vacuum and I am lucky to know Mark from SEOCobra (exciting developments there in the next few weeks) and Dave from ZenDuck.me, not to mention Tracey from Tracey-Edwards.com and SY from Hospitalera.com.
E-Commerce and Technology
“Explain how you’re using e-commerce and technology in your business”. Yeah I think we can safely say technology is my business!
Tactical Promotion Plan
Interesting question – in general I’m wondering if I should try some of the tricks of Social Media to use things like Twitter and FaceBook to get more followers. The trouble is, that my experience is, that ranking for the right search terms, is not only easier in terms of time spent, it also gives me far more engaged readers!
I do want to investigate videos and podcasts as methods of promotion as well.
Marketing Budget
Nope no intention of spending anything much on marketing, certainly not going anywhere near PPC! I do pay for editing of my books and cover design – does that count?
Credibility and Risk Reduction
Who do I increase my creditability and reduce my customer’s risk? Basically I think I’ve always maintained my credibility, particularly on this blog, by not having guest posts. I’ve seen so many blogs over the years die a living death by becoming dependent on guest posters.
Selling through Amazon and other “legit” online shops (iTunes, Barnes & Noble etc), is a very easy way to differenate an ebook.
World famous public toilets, Kawakawa, Northland, New Zealand - really, Google it!
Team & Management Structure
Skills, experience, training, retention
Yeah well I think the boss needs to go some 5-star resorts, somewhere warm and learn about planning and better time management. Anyone up for sponsoring that one?
Seriously. I have one full-time outsourced writer who writes my BMR articles. I’ve had him for over a year now and he’s reliable and consistent. Last year, he had exactly one article rejected. I’m keeping him on. I do however want to expand my outsourcing in 2012 as my cash flow allows.
Advisors
Well thank goodness I don’t need a lawyer! My accountant I’m training up to understand my business. A consultant – please God no! A guru and advice? Actually I was just going to delete this section – but I one of the biggest risks in this business is the isolation and the voices in your head! Where do I go for advice?
I’m pretty happy with the contacts and advice I have, I don’t see any significant change in 2012.
Management Systems
my trusty spreadsheet manages my cashflow and income/expenditure in several currency and actual versus cash (because affiliate programs take so long to send cash). It works, I’m not changing it.
I’m currently developing a better system to track my actual output – words or articles and projects they relate to.
Financial Budgets and Forecasts
I don’t do detailed budgets or forcasts, I may add this in this year though as I ramp up. It would be useful to have when I decide to increase my outsourcing budget.
My cashflow forecast is that I need:
7/4/12 – $3599
7/5/12 – $3419
for taxes. We have it, we aren’t going to getting into dispute with the tax man, but I am determined to have that money out of my own business’s cash flow! On top of covering my 1/2 of the household’s expenses (which I have done for 2 years now).
Summary: Internet Marketing Business Plan
Wow that was a bit of a mission! But a useful exercise – I think I still need to drill down and focus on individual sites for their business plan’s – I’m a still a bit vague on just how many sites I’m focussing on this year. But its been an energizing exercise for me, I hope it inspires you too – let me know in the comments!
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:
Dancing Latin, Australian Nationals, 2005
Let’s face it, I probably won’t be going back to looking like this:
Jan 1988, when I was 25, and on a diet!
– but it’s got to better than this!:
Ugly photo! December 2011 - though they did send me a medium when I asked for an XL!
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 dress (skinny girls got nothing to shake!).
So goal is to get fit and trimmer by the time we hit the big 50 – April 2012. Oh and to be able to dance 5 dances @ 1.5 minutes/dance without dying. The 90kg goal would probably take all year.
Income Goals
I have had a consistent goal of US$5000/month for years, I just sometimes wonder why every time I take one step forward, two go backwards!
Luckily though I do keep consistent income records – I know how dire doing a tax return is otherwise! I wrote about my simple spreadsheet approach back in January – and its remarkably flexible – as I add or delete new income streams I add, or hid rows as I need to.
My income hasn’t been so consistent – in January I hit over US$4200, including $2600 in advertising income (the stuff I laughably call passive). That figure was the record for the year, though in November I did at least, finally best the advertising income, coming in at $2700.
What happened? Panda? No, not really, I still haven’t had a single website Pandalized, most of income issues stream from three issues:
Dropping a client who started having onerous requirements, in response to Panda;
Hubpages – reaction to Panda;
Keyword Academy’s slow decline with long-term members.
The client had already squeezed the price so I’d gone from clearing $1500 a month to $1000, for more work. Their new set of requirements would have seen at least a doubling of my time required. It wasn’t worth it, so I fired them in August.
Hubpages: I’ve written previously about the HubPages trainwreck – that was July, by November they’d announced that as of 1 January we wouldn’t be able to use your own Amazon ID on HubPages and my secondary, mainly Amazon account, had been pandalized (finally in October). Could I have got it back – probably? Did I try, no. Now the ONLY program I have the option of direct payment with is Adsense: eBay and Amazon are both via their obscure “HPAds” program. Why is this a bad idea?
they get access to all my sales data;
they pay by Paypal which has a very bad exchange rate, and has its own issues;
I drop at least a tier of my Amazon sales percentage because of the loss of the HubPage’s Amazon sales.
Do I have a plan? Hell yes – but I can’t write about it here – sign up for the newsletter below – if you haven’t already – all will be revealed.
The Keyword Academy: From an affiliate point of view its not been good – my best month was March, but my commissions have been is slow decline since then. Why? Because people who have been members for years have quit, and although I still get new sign-ups they haven’t compensated for the losses. Why? I think two reasons:
Panda has worked very well for Google’s actual intention – which was to scare the crap out of would-be Internet Marketers. There has been massive change, and there have been casualties.
TKA has moved away from the “recipe approach” of do this, do this, wait this long, this will happen, to a much more robust method of actually training people how to build a business online. That’s scary for many people, and although TKA was never a quick fix – its now an even more scary proposition of work and effort, and engagement, which send some people running for the hills.
Income Goals 2012.
Well having just read The 10X Rule I had to cross out my $5000/month income goal- and ended up with a $50,000/month income goal! OK let’s revise that a bit – what I am able to make (on a good month) is $2500/month – so lets aim for $25,000/month!
Gulp! – I guess that’s what’s called massive action!? And that in essence is what I need to do. After watching other people succeed at making more money than I do. I’ve figured it out. My problem isn’t the writing, or the keyword research, hell I seem even to be able to sell the odd item.
My issue is that I’m a dilettante – I’m an amateur, I’m doing the right thing, but not enough, I still keep on chasing after shiny stuff. I’m over it. I feel great when I focus and actually achieve something. So that’s what I’m going to be doing!
2012 is gonna rock!
And its all gonna start here – because I have finally decided that if I’m getting serious about this business, this girl needs a business plan! So keep an eye out – because if any of you are struggling with the same stuff as I am – you probably need one too (and you can steal mine for free!) .
East Harbour Regional Park, near Wellington, New Zealand
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.
East Harbour Regional Park, near Wellington, New Zealand
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 times. End of story. Really. Sorry guys, but the girls need to know, it doesn’t have to be bad!
We started off the year enjoying the snow in Europe, and coming back via KL for a few days of heat. Later, we had a great three week break in Phuket and Koh Samui, Thailand in August. The low-cost airline war has finally hotted up big time for New Zealand with heavy airfare discounting to South-East Asia.
I became a Z-List Blogger, complete with a Manifesto and decided to lose my insecurities and to start chasing my winners as far as making money is concerned.
What Did Not Go Well in 2011
My partner had on-going knee issues for the most of the year, which meant, for the first, time we had to pull out 1/2 way through a competition we’d entered in September. The net result was predictable: my weight went up – by how much I don’t really want to know. I don’t have any other exercise that I really enjoy – so when we are not dancing the weight goes on!
I have seen more of South America than I have of New Zealand. We decided to go to Northland before Christmas, I’d never been there, and my partner taught there a long, long time ago. It started off OK, but then the rain set in. If it rains in most parts of the world, there are alternatives. With due regard to the NZ tourism industry- you don’t go to Northland for the museuems! We came home early. And about it being the tropical north ? No, its not, if you can’t swim without a wetsuit in December, its not tropical, its a marketing lie!
Hubpages – I think I’ve said enough on that topic!
Partly because of HubPages and partly because I lack focus and am the Queen of Procrastination, my advertising income has basically flat-lined this year. As I fired my last freelance client in August – that means that I am currently sat looking at my lowest bank account balance for years!
Overall its been a frustrating year – financially I’m looking at a hole in April unless I can up my income quickly to pay my taxes. I have some hope with that as several of my Adsense niches are strongly seasonal, I think, as this is the first year I get to see the pattern!
Looking forward? Well that’s my next post! Haven’t figured out the details yet – but I’m reading, or re-reading these books which I’m finding helpful:
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 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.
Picture of this C-List Blogger Living The High Life, Chaweng Beach, Ko Samui, Thailand
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?
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!
View From Our Hotel Window, Royale Chulan, Kuala Lumpur
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 2011 (my anniversary date with Keyword Academy and my birthday). Oops looks like I will have to revise that LOL. Even my long-time goal of US$5500/month is starting to look reasonable – that would mean about US$4000/month in passive income. I can now see that happening this year – so long as I stop my obsessive stat’s checking and go back to work! Especially when I consider that my income has jumped while I’ve been on holidays – I thought I might resent working while I was travelling but instead
Why that figure – it would cover all our regular household expenses (so long as the US$ doesn’t completely collapse). That’s called freedom – for both my partner and I. Coincidentally it would also be about what I earned as a highly paid, bored, stressed out, IT professional – that would be sweet revenge!
So How Can You Make $2500 / month in Passive Income?
I don’t flipping know – I don’t know you – but I can tell you what has made a difference to me:
understanding I wanted a business not a job. Freelance writing is a job. Developing websites for other people is a job. Developing your own websites which produce more income even when you are on holiday – that’s a business.
outsourcing. Hiring a writer not only freed up my time – it made me become more organised because I had to tell him what to do – like duh!
having a range of sites in totally unrelated niches – sites I thought would be winners – no traffic. Sites I thought no one would EVER buy THAT online – they buy – go figure. I’m too stupid to figure this out in detail – my fool proof method of knowing if there is traffic for a keyword – get to page 1 and see if there is!
learning to believe my own stats – rather than what people are saying about the death of SEO, Google changes, Supersite, niche sites are dead, etc, etc. The best information on how to grow your business will always be found in understanding your own statistics – maybe I should write a post on that!
I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a paid placement – but I really do credit the forum over at TKA for being part of my success – I really don’t think I would have have hung on this long without the help support and I get there. I rarely ask for it – but just seeing people going thru the same stuff as I am is so incredibly useful and encouraging. Lets face it – few of us have anyone in the “real world” who understand why we play on the Interwebs all day – its nice to have some online friends who do.
Thanks for listening – now I have a lot more work to do…
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 …
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 had less than 40% of my income from passive sources (Adsense and affiliates) – the percentage jumped to 60% in October.
I’ve taken to looking at a rolling 3-month and 6-month average to predict my income and tax liabilities – it seems a much better indicator than just looking at my monthly income.
But there is downside. I don’t live in the US – I can’t spend $US – I have to convert them into NZ$ – and NZ dollar is now pushing 80c to the US$ – it at around 65c at the start of the year 🙁 . I can’t do anything about my Adsense income which is direct deposited at the day’s rate into my NZ account.
I can use my PayPal account as a US$ account – but I hate leaving too much money in there – I have heard way too many stories about people having PayPal accounts frozen for no good reason and they are not a bank so there is no protection for my money there (and yes there are protections for people’s bank deposits in my country).
Internet Marketing While Traveling or a Full Time Income While Working Two Days a Week
As I mentioned we are going travelling. Now I’ve thinking quite a bit about how I was going to manage the whole thing of working while I am travelling thing. Lets face when faced with a warm beach and cheap eats and booze in Thailand – what would motivate me to be working? Well yesterday I found that motivation.
Every week or so I run Market Samurai to update the rankings on my sites. I also keep an eye on Google Analytics to see what keywords people are using to find my sites. I haven’t put a new site up since April – but I wasn’t getting anywhere ranking most of the sites either. At the start of November I spent half a day finding the sites which were anywhere in the top 100 with a focus on the sites which were showing me nice cost per a clicks or where I was getting traffic but wasn’t in the top three yet.
In October I made record figures (for me) with both Adsense and eBay. Yesterday I ran the same sites – I saw green (meaning rankings had improved) almost everywhere. Now whether the links I build with Postrunner or the more recent links I’ve built with Build My Rank I didn’t really care. The result was I was seeing an awful lot of “nearly there” sites rankings on the 3rd and 4th pages. I couldn’t just assume that the keywords I thought would work – would be OK for over two months. I needed to be more in touch. I needed to be able to run Market Samurai while traveling.
(For size comparison purposes its sitting on top of my HP ProBook 4510s – lovely laptop but way to large and heavy to travel with.)
Seeing all those nearly there keywords meant I suddenly was motivated to factor in working a couple of days a week when on the road. Well that’s the plan – how its actually going to work in practice when travelling with a guy who is definitely in holiday mode because his J.O.B finishes on Friday – not sure, I’ll get back to you on that.
I hadn’t meant to post this today – some other keyword is higher on my priority list – but I found myself, having just reviewed last year’s tax returns from my accountant – sitting there with a big smile on my face. I had just redone my projections for this year – I was in the money – I was going to owe the government so much tax that I’d have to pay provisional tax too – YEAH!
I see people on the Keyword Academy forums asking when? When will I make money? How long will it take? The answer is – it depends – and really you do need to just plain do the work for 6 – 12 months. Then as you start to see the results (and remember making your first affiliate sale or hitting your $100/month Adsense payout amount is absolutely the most difficult part of this whole business).
Carpe Diem
Seize the day for the non-classicists. If you have been thinking about signing up for Build My Rank cause I am not the only person reporting great results from it – you may click thru on this link an then be disappointed to notice that its closed for new sign ups, but you can sign up for the wait-list. The owners seem to be making a genuine effort to keep the quality of the network high my not having too many posts get posted to each site a day. They will reopen again – but whether the price has gone up then (and frankly it should – they could easily be charging at $129 or $149 or limiting the number of domains you can link to) – I don’t know. Sometimes its just not a good idea to hesitate too long – I have a policy of buying fast and canceling/getting a refund fast if it doesn’t work out.
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!
Dancing Rumba on my 48th Birthday April 2010, Nelson, New Zealand
Now I did indeed write down my Passive Income Goals for 2010 so perhaps I should see whether I am quarter of the way there yet!
After all I only had three goals:
US$5000/month – $3000 of which would be passive (e.g. affiliates) income;
develop a website trading business;
develop my own products.
OK – so what have I actually achieved in the first 3 months of 2010?
Total income of around US$3000/month – of which about 1/3 is passive;;
lost the enthusiasm for the website trading business – frankly it would be just as easy to sell niche sites on The Keyword Academy forums where there seems to be a constant demand;
the whole own product thing hasn’t inspired me yet either – though I am thinking about doing some Frugal Theme skins – possibly just to give away for people who sign up with my affiliate!
So I’m not too unhappy with the way my actual gross revenue is going – though I am now starting to track my expenses as well to make sure they don’t start creeping up.
Tracking my Business Growth and New Zealand Taxes
I am still using the simple spreadsheet I described in my October post – for the end of the tax year I added up the income over the last year , converted to NZ dollars, and came up with a figure which strongly suggested I should start worrying about provisional tax! For the record I have no understanding of people who whinge about paying tax – I am bloody delighted to be paying tax – it means I am making some money!
Mind you my next step was to register for GST to minimize the tax I was paying by being able to claim 12.5% (soon to be 15%), discount on anything I buy in New Zealand. Then I bought a rather nice 21″ monitor!
I don’t know how they do it in your country, but in New Zealand (if your business is small enough) you get to choose whether to pay provisional (estimated) tax on what you have earned or what you have been paid. Given that most affiliate programs pay sometimes months in arrears I chose a payments basis – which means I now have to run my accounting on a cash (payments) basis for my accountant – though I still will use the actual earning figures for my planning and personal gratification!
The irony of course is that people who skip paying taxes are also skipping the ability to legitimately deduct their expenses – even expenses they have anyways like rent and power and Internet!
What I am Planning for the Next Quarter
I am trying to get my passive income up a LOT for the second half of this year. My partner is not very happy with his current contract – I’d like to replace his contract income and give him the option of not working. That would be the equivalent of an extra US$7500 /month that’s a lot for such a short time frame.
More realistic might be to make sure I can cover our total household expenses – I’ve been paying 50% since the beginning of the year – so to pay the lot would be around another US$2500/month – bringing my total monthly income to US$5500 – that’s a bit more realistic I think. So long as the US / NZ dollar exchange rate stays in my favour.
A Note About the Photos
I like taking photos – and I particularly like my new fancy camera, but I don’t really want a separate photo blog like Sire’s Scenic Adelaide or Todd’s Picture a Day blog about Iraq, weather and kids.
So I decided my long-suffering readers needed to see them, after all proper professional type blogs always have very sophisticated and shiny photos which mainly look like they came from the same stock photo source. Mine are at least unique! After all don’t you get tired of all the perfect I think some of my photos should be forced upon my loyal readers – so – I started adding them in – around the time I moved back to New Zealand.
Sometimes the photos are a play on words, sometimes they’re allegorical, sometimes they’re random – you get to figure it out! If I actually have real screen shots to illustrate a point I’ll use those. But most of the time waffling on about passive income online isn’t that much of visual topic – so hence – the completely irrelevant photos!
Having just added all the thumbnails back in after swapping themes – it stuck me that not a lot of passive income blogs feature photos of Wellington and Australia – so you might have been wondering!
What About You ?
Its not just slackness that has meant I haven’t talked much about my income recently – when I was making under $200/month from Adsense and Affiliates I wasn’t too worried about sharing that fact. Now I was a little worried that I sound a little arrogant talking about it – but I know the frustration of many beginners who wonder if they will ever see any believable income figures – which are over sabout $10/day – the level at which many bloggers quit at.
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.
Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ
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 about what is a backlink I can just point to this post – handy eh?
In fact iwas a little sore at Allyn calling me “missy” so I was sorely tempted to link to him with a click here but I thought if I gave him a good link – he might build some links to my post too. That’s something that Allyn doesn’t mention – but is worth pointing out I think – that apart from backlinks the 0ther thing that is helpful in this business is having friends. I suspect that a lot of people who are trying to make money online are quite solitary by nature – but the reality is that having friends online is a lot easier than having them offline – you just start linking out to people you genuinely like (pssh want to see a cool picture of Ur’s Ziggurat?) or even that you think may eliminate some confusion from your readers (online cash and info domains) .
So headon over and listen to Allyn’s rant about backlinks and think about what my link from here is worth to Allyn Am I Donald Trump or just some Kiwi Missy with a Website? Am I Bob Villa or Jane Doe (you will have to watch his videos to figure it out!) And Allyn WTF is a green screen – are you going to be doing Avatar 2 next ? And dude you need a chair – or more comfortable pants I reckon!
Meanwhile back with me – January has been complete crap – its a bit better now that I figured out what was wrong. I was on a big downer about being home again. It happens every time I come “home” – I get as closed to depressed as my normally fairly bouncy personality can manage. Whatever the opposite of being a homebody is – I am it! This time I didn’t even really want to come home (crises in my partner’s family) – so its been worse.
And running your own business and being pissed with life is not a good a combination – even my improved version of time management hasn’t helped. This has though – More Time Now – I don’t know the author or his blog – I found the link while aimlessly surfing the web (no TV at the moment so surfing online instead of channel surfing) – and its quite a useful – I think – well it gave me something to think on anyways – which is unusual for my cynical self -its free -no affiliate links that I can see – worth a read if you struggle with time management
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 is concerned;
Public accountability – that was one of the reasons I stated this blog so that I could report and measure progress – after all I totally get about having goals and even about setting up SMART goals No the goal setting wasn’t the problem.
I decided to record all the time I spent online and look at the time wasted. I found a free online time recorder system called SlimTimer that I recommend – the only problem with it was that it couldn’t tell me to turn itself on when I conveniently “forgot” for a week or two!
I tried to get my head around GTD (Get Things Done) system – but frankly it seemed like I’d have to study for a week to even get to the start – it appeared more a way of life than a way to boost productivity – I wasn’t sure that I was ready for a way of life!
Pomodoro Technique to Rescue?
Several people of a forum a frequent mentioned they had found the Pomodoro Technique helpful – even though they usually struggled with focus – sounds like me I thought – I will give it a shot – oh and the comprehensive e-book is free – even better!
The system was developed in Italy by a guy who is now an IT Project Manager – but at the time was a student. Its well worth reading the e-book becuase it acutally explains the science behind why it works – with references eve – a slight change of pace to a lot of what you come across these dasys. Any – in essence the Pomodoro technique is:
start working on your first task – work on it for 25 minutes then take an approximately 5 minute break;
repeat until you have down 4 1/2 hour “pomodoros” (named for the kitchen timer from Italy);
then take a longer 20 minute break.
if an urgent interruption comes along (say the sudden urge to check your email) – you right it down on an urgent list and keep working. (It will either become another real pomodoro in its own right or it will be a quick task you do in a break, or you forget about it);
if a really urgent thing comes along – house burns down or similar – you abandon the pomodoro and have to start again with that particular pomodoro;
each task should be at leas 1 pomodoro (30 minutes) long – no task should be longer than 5-7 pomodoros – either group similar tasks together or split larger tasks down to fit this criteria.
My current implemenation of it looks something like this:
write a list of everything you need to do (I tend to work in a “this week” or “this month” list);
put the top priorities on today’s todo list – with a box per a pomodoro – in black – which get ticked off as I do them. If I have underestimated the time required which – I seem to do more than I realised – I re-estimate by adding more boxes in red so I can see where I under and over estimate. If I have an interurption I use a ” ‘ ” symbol to note it.
At the end of the day I retrospectively fill in what I did over the day using Slimtimer and tag the activities as pomodoros – meaning I can easily see just how many hours of my so-called 10 hour days I was actually doing focussed “pomodoros” (4 or 5 at the start!)
Initially what I found that basically focussing for 1/2 an hour isn’t that hard – in fact it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. My issue seems to be more the time wasted in between pomodoros – but I can work on that.
Pomodoro – without the Kitchen Timer
The original is with using a tomatoe shaped wind-up kitchen timer – your grandmother may use one – I personally thought that was what the micowave was for. And in the midst of packing I certainly was not going to buy a kitchen timer! Fortunatly there is a software solution for that. Initially ithought I wanted a silent timer – but in some way I find the annoying ticking sound actually makes me focus – not sure if that will work long term but I have it turned for the moment.
Options for the timer abound – I ltried Pomodeiro and FocusBooster both of which are free and run on the Adobe Air (so will work across most operating systems). Neither really deals with the reporting on the amount of work done though – or not in format I liked. There are quite a number of Pomodoro apps for Macs but the only software I found came close for Windows was PomoTime – I really like this software – again free and a very cute interface unfortunately it had a couple of major flaws for my use: only 7 items on a ToDo list a day and only one ToDo list a day.
However the developer did respond to my comments so mayit will be upgraded.
UPDATE: PomoTime has now been upraded I am using it in preference to manual method I described below – up to 12 items on the daily todo list seems to make all the difference – try it you may like – and its free!
Pomodoro without Software
So currently my sytem looks something like this:
A long todo list – about a week’s worth – on paper.
Daily todo list – using the paper system described in the original Pomodoro e-book. Different colours when I underestimate tasks – which I appear to do more often than I thought…
Slimitmer – to retrospectively fill in day – using tags to count tasks with pomodores – result can t rack total hours and total hours of pomodores a week
What Pomodoro Technique Has Taught Me So Far
not as many internal disruptions – haven’t had to cancel a pomodoro over the first few days;
the ticking actually seems to work! Although wish I could disable it during the breaks;
I badly underestimate how long keyword research and installing sites takes.
So what do you use for time management – have you heard of the Pomodoro technique before – like it? Used another technique that you’d recommend.?
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!
Passive Income Planning
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 – you have no background knowledge to make a reasonable plan. Ten years later you may have the basic knowledge (preference for medical speciality, costs involved and lifestyle of that particular speciality, know how much money you need to earn, have a partner or not etc) to make some sort of reasonable plan. If you don’t understand how to make money blogging or how to make money “placing google ads” (both search terms this site has been found for in the last month – I suggest you forget the big picture and go read How to Make Money with HubPages
Last week though – while I was surfing rather than working – I came across a planning post which actually sounded like it might be useful – it was over at The Art of Unconformity- Unconventional Business Goals. To be honest Chris’s business model is nothing like mine – I don’t want a book contact nor do I want to be recognised public speaker and coach. Nor do I want to go to every country in the world – for the sake of crossing it off the list! Those are all his goals. What I like about him though is that he’s an excellent writer, and a lot more transparent about his business model than most. His planning model made a lot of sense to me. I took a couple of days and really thought about my goals for 2010. Now I am still a reluctant goal setter and I certainly am not doing it for any thing else in my life apart from my business (finding nice beaches with warm water – seems to happen anyway doesn’t need a written plan!). But for my business I came up with three key goals:
Passive Income Goals 2010
Make a consistent profit of US$5000/month of which at least 60% ($3000) should be from residual income websites e.g. affiliates, eBay, Amazon and Adsense
Develop website trading business to improve diversification of income sources
Develop my own products to improve diversification of income sources
I am sure someone will point out that US$5,000 is not very much – what about planning for the future blah,blah. Well I already did that – my partner and I have property and and the (rare) winning stock picks so essentially all I am looking at doing is replacing an income not building a nest egg. I am not supporting any kids either – I’ve heard those are expansive! We own our own home. We don’t need flash cars or new clothes – though our dancing and travel habits don’t come cheap! Oh and the goal is in US$ because that is what you get paid in on the Internet – the exchange rate I can’t control – the fact that A$ has appreciated 30% against the US$ in the last year hurts – but there is nothing I can do about it. You goals have to be within your control – I’d love to plan to win the New Zealand Ballroom Champs next year too – unfortunately that’s not in my control either (too old, too fat, not enough talent etc).
For me the most useful part of the planning exercise was what is not on the list – I spent all day thinking about and researching the market for starting a local SEO business for New Zealand small businesses – in fact if you want to go for that niche knock yourself out – you will have to educate your clients but there is hardly any competition targeting the SME sized market and at the newspapers and Yellow Page advertising rates leaves plenty of room for a profitable service which will save your clients money. Why am I telling you this? Because I am not going to do it. The more I thought about what I value about earning income online:
keep my own hours, control my own time;
answerable to know one except the Google Gods;
dress optional
Would have been severely impacted by working for clients! The more I looked at the streams of income I did have – and matched them against my income goals – made me realise that I was nearly there – in the last five months I’ve averaged $1300/month from passive income sources. In November my actual income (including freelancing and it probably won’t hit that level for a few more months) was over US$4500 – an all time record for me and pretty much what I would make in a professional job in New Zealand. I didn’t need the distraction of starting another business, certainly not one that impacted on mycore values of being answerable to no one!
Its obvious writing it down now – but I have been thinking about the SEO thing off and on now for a year – now I have come to a decision about it and can move on.
So – I do actually think that if you are just starting off online you don’t need a detailed business plan. )Pan to spend little to no money on gurus and a lot of time on educating yourself. Find one approach which sounds liek it might work for you – and then take action, rinse and repeat.
If however you have been in this game for a year or more – I do think you might want to take a look at Chris’s approach to planning and try out his spreadsheet – you may be surprised at the results – I was!
And I like the idea of doing an annual plan for your passive income business in December not January – why?
December is often an outlier income-wise for many people – looking at Dec to Nov figures rather than Jan-Dec figures will minimise the feel good/deep despair effect those Dec figures will have on you;
December is often a disrupted month workwise (even if you aren’t moving countries!) – go with the flow and do a plan instead of trying to stick with the routine;
SEO : in January everone else will be googling “passive income goals for 2010” – or so I hope!
I had to cross out my $5000/month income goal- and ended up with a $50,000/month income goal! OK let’s revise that a bit – what I am able to make (on a good month) is $2500/month – so lets aim for $25,000/month! 
and discovered 
(Actually mine has this year’s processor which is slightly faster – but it was as close I could find for my American readers – NZers – head down to Bond&Bond or Noel Lemmings NZ$398)
– lovely laptop but way to large and heavy to travel with.)
