Now I like planning – its so much more fun than doing. I’m quite good at planning too -just ask anyone who has been travelling with me. But business planning is a whole different game – I know the theory:
- Decide what the end is – say $1,000,000 in round figure and by when.
- Work out where you are now – that’s easy just done the taxes
- Work out how to get from 2 to 1
Hmm yeah oops – 3 is kinda the problem in my experience. This blog started as my attempt of at least an online diary of my journey of 100 sites – but got re-named when I figured I was the ONLY person who ever searched for that keyword LOL.I thought that might be close enough to a business plan – I may have been wrong …
Last month I wrote about making $1500 from Adsense and Affiliates this month its pretty much the same – slightly different winners and losers but generally, overall add up to about the same figure. I’m actually fairly happy with that – August is usually a very slow month online and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see my earnings drop, Also this month I was focused on building stuff which will make money in the future – not right now.
Making an income that was real rather than just a joke made me even more determined to plan B – what if I suddenly was the only income earner in the house? What if we move again and my partner can’t get/doesn’t want a job? Plan B has been SEO consulting to small business. I wasn’t going to do it seriously until we moved back to New Zealand – a real-world business needs contacts and I don’t have them here, and yes I know you can do this all online but my potential clients don’t know that!
I must admit though that SEO consulting has some downsides for me:
- you have to do a lot of education with clients – and a lot of definition of roles – no I don’t do flash development or even adwords I do SEO!
- you have to get dressed in the morning
Frankly the second one is the real issue! I thought for a while I might like the human contact – but I came to my senses and remembered that business meetings are not human contact!
So I wanted another Plan B – I way to raise quick cash with a bit more certainity than developing niche sites and better paid than writing articles.
So after some thought and a whole lot more reading I think I am going into the site flipping business. I will build sites, do some other magic stuff to them (SEO) and sell them for a healthy profit. It fits well with my passive income – because if they don’t sell they will probably just sit around and make me money anyways!
If any of your are into real estate investing you will understand the concept of site flipping – a property flipper will usually buy a run-down house, do it up and sell it for a profit. Website flipping is similar – but without the downside risk of mortgages!
Why do I want a plan B anyway? After all my little ugly sites make me money while I sleep right ? Yes they do – but if I needed an extra $5000 tomorrow they wouldn’t be able to deliver on that! Websites typically seem to sell for up to 10 times monthly earnings – so if I had a site making $500 a month – there’s my $5000 . At the moment if we needed that sort of cash we’d use my partner’s income or borrow it – because of our excellent credit – again because one of us has a real job. Flipping sites seems to be the obvious adjunct income for me while I build the passive income empire.
By the way I still seem to have some of you confused about why making a few dollars of passive income is totally exciting to me – much more exciting than earning $1000 in a real job. Check out John’s description of why passive income is the best of all possible incomes to have – his story the same as my story – I was delighted in early June to have hit $100 in Adesnse for the month by the 10th – my partner’s reaction was – *shrug* – in July he was delighted that I made 6 times that in Adsense, in August he was asking me how it was going on a weekly basis! So if you have trouble convincing people – don’t worry they will understand when youstart making the cash!
54 replies on “Do You Have a Plan B to Support Your Passive Income Business?”
I read about flipping sites on another blog by Michelle Adams. She made it sound so easy and so exciting so I am sure you will do well with this. I think I will continue to figure out this keyword business before venturing into new territory.
Good luck site flipping.
.-= Tiptopcat´s last blog ..Earnings For August 2009 =-.
That’s an interesting post – the lady is thinking along the same lines as I am about site flipping except she’s actually doing it. Congrats on your August results – “well chuffed” – you’re English right?
Hey Lis. First of all thanks for the recognition and extra traffic to my site. Much appreciated. Seems like a good deal to me if one were to purchase your sites. If you sold me 5 sites making $500 each per month, I would be investing $25K with you. I get paid back in 10 months if my math is correct. From then on it’s gravy. I would take that over the stock market any day of the week.
.-= Steve Sherron´s last blog ..The Dark Side Of Social Media, Miami Vice Style. =-.
OK Listen up everyone! If you have even the slightest inclination of becoming a funning videoblogger – follow Steve’s link above, listen and weep with laughter – and find another business model the competition is way too hot! I actually think flipping sites is more like real-estate than stocks- property is always worth somthing – stocks not so much …
If you need to build up a wodge of cash fairly quickly, then flipping sites is a good way to go. But otherwise, why not just hold on to them? If you build a website that makes you $100/month, sure, you could sell it for a quick $1000-1200, but if you don’t need the cash in the bank, hold onto it and it will make that in a year – and you’ll still have the site to flog on then if you want to.
.-= Roland@Online Income´s last blog ..How to Make Money on eBay =-.
That’s true Roland but one of the issues at the moment is that I have so many sites its a real pain to keep them all updated with links! And I do notice that if you utterly ignore a site for 3+ months it does drop in the SERPS
Ah, that makes sense. There is a fair bit of of skepticism from a buyer’s point of view when a website goes on the market, because there are a lot of scammers in the website selling game. The number of sites being sold with fake pagerank, that have dropped off the Google map or have been banned (or are due to be banned) from an affiliate programme are phenomenal. A case in point is the rash of eBay affiliate sites on the market at the moment. Ebay changed their terms from 20 August to say you are no longer allowed trademarks in your main domain, and all the affiliates with “Toyota”, “iPod” etc in their domains are selling them on desperately! So by being upfront and honest why you are selling a site and by providing reams of up-to-date earning stats, you can certainly inspire confidence in buyers – and attract more bids as a result.
.-= Roland@Online Income´s last blog ..How to Make Money on eBay =-.
Good points Roland – I am going to avoid eBay sites at the moment because of the uncertaintity of what the new pricing model means for any of us!
Thank you Lissie – I am indeed from good old London town, where it is surprisingly sunny today. Glad you found the link to Michelle’s site. Hope it helps you.
Time for a nice cup of tea I think.
.-= Tiptopcat´s last blog ..Earnings For August 2009 =-.
Hello!!!..I have gone through your website its a good one it has got lots of interesting thing in it. Check my one also..http://www.formakingmoneyonline.blogspot.com
Thanks!
.-= Jhon´s last blog ..Top 10 paying keywords =-.
Really sunny? Tiptocat? All I can see is the sun poking out and whole load of wind down central London!
Though yes I’ve had good luck with flipping niche sites also…while mine dont reach $100 a month (mainly because my adsense is in £’s :p) But they hit £40+ then I flip them.
I agree the issue is keeping an eye on rankings; I have a schedules task in seo elite which does a site a day; if I see a ranking drop I just hit it with some links.
The eventual plan is to outsource as much as possible; so if I see a drop I just get a linkbuilder on it but need to build a bigger capital reserve for that 😉
‘Aim for the stars even if you fall short your still on the moon which damn good 😉 ‘
On a sideline Q I am recently doing a case study on a new seo experiment which partly works with hubpages…however I am having issues with ‘activating adsense’ from my adsense account. did you experience any issue like that ?
.-= Donace´s last blog ..Internet Marketing Tools and Their Marketers =-.
Oh I presume when an English man tells me its “really sunny” that its only partly cloudy and not raining, yet – has the definition changed recently? Sorry I’ve had Adsense on hubpages for 2 years *cough* and a lot has changed in that time! I know these days you have to tell adsense that hubpages is authorised access and on the Hubpages you add the adsense code – but I guess you’ve done that bit!
@Donace
“…however I am having issues with ‘activating adsense’ from my adsense account. did you experience any issue like that ?”
If you refer to the problem of activating adsense for a second hubpages account, you have to contact hubpages support directly. I had a similar problem as I started a second account with hubpages, I couldn’t activate it myself as Google thought it was already activated, hope that helps, SY
.-= hospitalera@Niche Marketing´s last blog ..Synchronize blog and feedburner =-.
Hey SY; nope I only have the one account it still having issues I have contacted hubpages and hopefully it will be resolved.
.-= Donace´s last blog ..Internet Marketing Tools and Their Marketers =-.
Thanks SY – that’s a new feature at HP I have multiple personas there and have had no issue with adding Adsense to them
No plans here unfortunately. When I start making enough to quit my dayjob then it is just about creating that passive income. Damn, I think I have to start planning the future a little.
Originally I toughht that I will quit when I make enoung to quit, and have 10 000€ in the bank for urgencies… I think I have to keep that.
.-= Phillip@Need Money´s last blog ..A Short Guide To Writing Long Posts For Money =-.
Lissie,
Another great idea to fit in with your passive income business. What kind of a time frame do you think you would be looking at to flip a site and would you do anything different with keyword selection than if you planned to keep the site?
I have thought about flipping but at this point it would be hard to part with $500 a month after all that work. This would act like a good savings account, though, if you made that money each month until you had to have the cash for dance lessons or something.
.-= Agrande @ MLM Leads´s last blog ..MLM Business =-.
No I do the KW research exactly the same – I think that’s my USP compared to the utlimatetiwtter crap being sold a lot. What I’ve read is that you should flip with 2 months income stats but I am going to trry putting up a new site too and see what happens to it – if its doesn’t sell all I’ve lost is the listing fee.
There are so many ways to MMO it really is hard to stay focused. I don’t know if I would site flip as much as use the passive income to build a large portfolio of sites.
.-= bk´s last blog ..Deep or Wide Online Empires? =-.
I don’t know either bk – I am experimenting!
Site flipping sounds interesting – there are just so many ways to make money online! My problem has been just picking one or two methods and then getting focused – now I’ve settled on my affiliate & adsense projects, so I’m not going to let myself be distracted by anything else until I’m making a very decent income with those.
I have been thinking about the future though – I’m just getting started with my online business really, but am already thinking about an exit plan. I’ll probably keep my sites for as long as they’re making money for me, but eventually I want to accumulate enough money from them to be able to invest it & live off the income (I don’t care so much about a lavish lifestyle – I want financial independence). Then I can spend more of my time doing what I really love (music), without any pressure to make money from it. IM is an unpredictable business – personally, I think that opportunities for making money on the web will just increase as time goes on (especially for those who are adaptable), but I don’t want to be totally dependent on it, so it’s nice to look ahead & consider other options. I see my web business more as a stepping stone (albeit a pretty big one) than the final destination. So I guess I don’t have a Plan B for right now, but I do have one for the future. Put it this way – in 10 years time I don’t plan to still be spending the majority of my time writing articles online!
Cat you are right about too many options online! We already have investments (though i have checked their value recently LOL) – also my partner is elgible a non-means tested pension within 8 years so if I can just make this a $50k/year we are looking pretty good. The main risk for me is that all this income is in US$ and my living expenses aren’t – but I suspect that is something that will change significantly in the next few years. At least now I feel like I have some control over my income – when I worked in IT I was very well-paid it was also very full-time- something that never suited me – I never felt like working more than 20 hours a week – but less would be better!
Can you say a little bit more about August being one of the slowest months online? Is this something most people in the IM experience?
It was distinctly slower for me last year – I guess everyone in the US was on vacation – I don’t if there has been the same general slow down or not this year – I didn’t notice it personally and am not hanging on the same forums anymore. The theory is of course that people surf at work -I certainly notive that US week days are better for me and 3 day US holiday weekends are horrible – fortunately they don’t have too many of them!
I discovered building niche sites as an additional business to selling licenses to my images (photos/illustrations/digital creations). I agree, never put all your eggs in a single basket, diversify your income streams, SY
.-= hospitalera@Niche Marketing´s last blog ..Synchronize blog and feedburner =-.
Aug-2009 was horrible for me. Adsense earnings stayed the same, but affiliate earnings (not in IM) dropped like a rock. July was OK, June was great.
I did a lot of linkbuilding in June, which got a number of my pages ranked on page 1 in Google. But they dropped off the SERPs in July, and were still nowhere to be found in Aug & early Sep. All of these sites were self-hosted WordPress blogs on subdomains.
Exact keyword domains still seem to rank in Google, though. At least, they do if you point a few links at them. Even if you only have one post on the blog, if that post is long and repeats the long tail keyword often enough, and you build a few anchor text links, you can rank (2000 words, exact keyword appeared about 14 times, other keyword variations appeared another 10 times, getting 10 views a day from Google now). I was terribly surprised at how quickly it happened. Now I’ll just have to wait a few months to see if that traffic continues.
.-= Calvin@Oil Rig Jobs´s last blog ..Oil Drilling Rig Jobs – Why Look For Entry Level Roustabout Jobs And Offshore Drilling Rig Jobs? =-.
I’d agree with you re exact matchs – they work for me very well and have consistently for at least 6 months.
Hey Lis, I like your thinking! This is a great post, it’s not often we hear much about ‘active’ income streams in the ‘make money online’ market.
I LOVE passive income. Making money while you sleep is the best way to make it isn’t it! BUT there’s no harm in creating some nice chunks of cash whilst you’re building the passive side of your business.
The ‘problem’ of maintaining a lot of sites made for passive income is real. Time is limited and it’s easy to lose track and or momentum when overwhelm sets in once too many pots are on the stove top! Outsourcing is a next step for me in that regard but even that can be a full time job just finding the right resources that can do the work and are trustworthy…worth it in the long run but it needs a good deal of due diligence IMO.
Your blog seems really interesting, I’m looking forward to reading over some of your previous posts. 🙂
.-= Michelle Adams´s last blog ..Wooing You To Vote! =-.
Hi Michelle and welcome – yes outsourcing is on my list too – but is a bit of step up as far as actually getting my shit organised!
I would not sell a site that is making me $500 a month; having a few (10-15) of these will solve your monetary problems for good. I never really understood selling a passive income producing website for fast cash. The difference between real-estate marketing and internet marketing is that owning a piece of land will not generate you passive income, it can grow in value and you can get a lot out of it some day. Passive online income will give you a paycheck regularly and you can also make it grow in value if you ever decide to sell it.
.-= Josh@Get Money Now´s last blog ..The Basics Of Getting Money Online =-.
Josh,
The problem is that TRUE passive income (where you just kick back 100% and relax on the beach) does not exist. At the very least, you need to hire a manager to handle your businesses, then you monitor your manager to make sure he doesn’t botch things up.
This is true whether or not you are in stocks, real estate, MLM or internet marketing.
For IM, there is no such thing as a website that produces traffic on its own without requiring any maintenance. It doesn’t matter how you drive traffic – PPC, SEO, articles, etc – at the very least, you need to keep on monitoring the performance, otherwise you will find that your traffic can suddenly dry up … as I discovered to my horror a few times. This is why my current income sucks, because Adwords, Google, Clickbank, EZA, ArticleAlley, etc changed various rules and the way they do things. It’s a good thing I spread my eggs around several baskets, otherwise I would be totally screwed rather than just partially screwed.
I was never into Ebay and Squidoo, and earned virtually $0 from Amazon, so I was not affected by their recent changes (this year). But I heard that lots of other people suffered major drops in income.
Getting back to the point, I can understand why Liz and others like her might want to sell off some of their sites. No matter what, some of those sites will decline in the profits they make unless work continues to be done on them. If you have 10 money making sites but can only manage 7 of them, it is only logical to prune the three least productive – whether by the amount of cash they bring in, or by the amount of work that needs to be done to keep them productive, or some combination.
Liz,
Will you be posting the sites which you intend to flip over here? I don’t have much spare cash, but I might be tempted to pick up some good deals. At this point of time, I would be willing to pay $50 for a site which makes $10/month, provided I don’t need to do much upkeep on it. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to pay $5000 for a $500/month site right now. If things go as planned, I won’t have enough free cash flow until next year.
.-= Calvin@Oil Rig Jobs´s last blog ..Oil Drilling Rig Jobs – Why Look For Entry Level Roustabout Jobs And Offshore Drilling Rig Jobs? =-.
I have a number of rental propeties – even bare land requires that you pay council taxes and mow the grass ffrom time to tim – the rentals are a lot more labour intensive – even though they are entirely outsourced to property managers – we are serioulsy about selling some of them…
Its not black and white -basically I can make money holding or selling websites – as the old guy said “kow when to hold them, know when to fold ’em”
Site flipping is how Ed Dale made his money, isn’t it? I understand he sold 38 sites for $5 million in 2004.
But I think he had really nurtured them, and they had serious age and traffic before he sold them.
My plan B for the moment is Affiliate Marketing. I’m using Squidoo for affiliate marketing of physical products (the type you find on Amazon and Argos) and Hubpages for Adsense. This month (early days I know) the affiliate marketing is actually pulling in more than the Adsense.
Site flipping does sound like a great idea though – especially if you set up lots of domains now, while it’s sill early days on the net, and then cash-in in say five years time.
Ed Dale did a series of videos on YouTube about buying and selling websites a few years ago (I found them by browsing YouTube). Here’s the video on the biggest mistakes people make when selling their sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btNiq6dl4dI
There are a bunch of related videos by him about buying and selling sites – well worth viewing
That’s a really interesting video- I’d found it before – he talks about not revealing your niche – but that’s impossible on flippa cause you have to link to the site – and I definitly seem some downsides on that.
Hi Lis,
I’m all about having a plan B .. and a C, D, E, and F while I’m at it. The main problem comes when we get so caught up in tending to our “backups”, that we forget to give plan A the attention it needs and deserves.
… that’s probably the main reason I never got into site flipping. I actually bought a couple of excellent ebooks on the subject last year. Read them, intended to use my new knowledge; but never got a round to it. lol, story of my Internet Marketing life.
Like you, I do have a few too many domains … that I just don’t have time for. I look forward to hearing your experiences in the flip world. Even after that though, I probably still won’t get into the game. It strikes me a bit too much as being like selling used cars … and I already know I’d be horrible at that … I have a long track record of paying too much for my cars, and selling them too cheaply.
hmmm, on second thought, with my bad judgment, maybe I’d better not follow this subject too closely … I’m libel to end up being one of your suckers … umm, I mean customers. 😉
.-= Todd’s Tips´s last blog ..An Easy Way To Reward Only Your Blogging Friends With DoFollow Comment Links =-.
You know it just occurred to me -in the shower where the best thoughts are – that I am quite confident i can sell websites which is hilarious as I too could never be a used car salesman! Ido OK selling my own cars though – so long as I am not desparate to sell – and that’s the trck though – what’s the worst that can happen? The site doesn’t sell, I keep it and make more money with it 😉
BTW I thought you were “retiring” from IM to concentrate on the day job? – Nice site too.
Hey Lis,
I do agree about “what’s the worst that could happen?” … in any sales situation, unless/until you ask the question, the answer is already “no”.
As for concentrating on my “day job” … it’s not always by choice … I’d say that when it comes to my “work” online, I occasionally take involuntary vacations … but online marketing is too much fun, I can imagine ever totally giving it up.
lol, and please don’t give me too much grief about my “pretty” site design … it’s primarily a “social blog” 😉
Todd
.-= Todd’s Tips´s last blog ..I Had No Internet For Five Weeks =-.
That is one pretty site if I do say so myself LMAO!!!!
.-= Vic´s last blog ..Action Slider WSO =-.
LMFAO now that’s just plain argumentative Vic! I actually rather liked Todd’s social site layout – I think someone told me a long time ago that’s its good to have a legit flagship blog – a bit like Todd’s really – think it was you actually 🙂
LMAO!!!! Geezz I really like it I was serious, it is one pretty site I wished he would remove the credit from the footer but besides that the site has flagship written all over it.
.-= Vic´s last blog ..Action Slider WSO =-.
Hey Vic,
Actually, I just put that theme on there this morning … didn’t get around to removing the wordpress link in the footer yet.
Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
Todd
p.s. there is definitely a danger to “pretty themes” though … when I sat down this morning with my to-do list, I wasn’t even planning to work on that blog at all … just kind of ended up there.
p.p.s. and actually, getting this conversations back to Lissie’s original subject … nice pretty themes probably would come in handy on those sites you plan to flip though. Just let me know if I can be of any assistance on that front, when you get to it.
.-= Todd’s Tips´s last blog ..An Easy Way To Reward Only Your Blogging Friends With DoFollow Comment Links =-.
Yes I think I have a solution to nice pretty themes for the design challenged and which you can legally sell on with the site – stay tuned!
Ha, I was just over at Todd’s and commented that I liked the pretty theme, LOL
I think some theme authors let you buy a developers license at which case you can sell the themes if you have modified them, I dunno. But in the case of Todd’s theme he is using, those are great themes for 19.95 per year, so you could just build that into the price I think.
now off to increase my passive income for the day!
AL
.-= Allyn´s last blog ..Natural Links And Online Friends Help Us Get By! =-.
LOL Vic – its your reputation you see for combative comments!
Calvin – exactly – I have several sites which have traffic but which I struggle to monetize – now I could – but the topics are deadly dull to me – but to others its their passion – I am curious to see how much people will pay for their pasion.
I am thinking about doing another site to support sites I have for sale and for advertisign and to -hmmm – build my list LOL. Its not a secrete its just not done yet – I’ll advertise it here when it is!
This is the true strength in Passive Income. I am working at it as and when I have time around my main job. The idea I have (crazy I know!) is that the money I will be earning after a few months or more will be considerable. If every hub/infobarrel I create makes £2 and I am able to create even 10 a month after a year I will have 120 articles which will earn £240 a month. This is equal or more than what many people will earn in a week. Whilst this may not seem like a lot, for a part time job I consider it to be quite good.
The real benefit is as you say the income is passive. Therefore even if I stop writing online and other online earning activities, I will continue to be earning money.
.-= Matt Green@A Little Extra Money UK´s last blog ..Monthly Update – August 2009 =-.
Realistically Matt not every hub will make you that amount – or even anything – that’s just how it goes – also remember you should be spending more time on getting links than writing hubs!
Yeah Lissie I realise that as being the case after doing some work. However, I predict based on my last 4 or 5 hubs (the ones I have created since I have started using SEO, keyword tools etc) that it will be a reasonable average to aim for. I expect I won’t reach that target – but I would rather set a £2 per hub target and miss it slightly (say £1.75) than set a £0.50 per hub target and just reach it (£0.60). It may sound weird, but that is the way I work (I work best if I set myself targets).
Also I have been spending quite a lot of time on backlinking recently as without backlinks my hubs are practically worthless. I tend to do this in bursts though – will write some hubs, and then do loads of backlinking. Not sure why I do this – it’s just the way I find I work best!
.-= Matt Green@A Little Extra Money UK´s last blog ..Monthly Update – August 2009 =-.
Matt, that’s great but what if HubPages and/or Infobarrel folds?
That prospect doesn’t worry me too much because I’ve already made enough on my Hub articles that I feel I’ve earned a fair whack from them. However it’s a good example of why you need a Plan B, C or D.
.-= marisa wright@The Pointe of Life´s last blog ..Padding for Pointe Shoes #3 =-.
That is a very good point Marisa, and one which I have considered. The fear of having all my eggs is one basket was why I moved from just Hubpages to Infobarrel as well and I also plan on writing for other revenue sharing sites soon. In addition, to protect myself from the loss of Adsense revenue for whatever reason I have started to write hubs which incorporate Amazon capsules to earn a bit more money.
I am planning on setting up a couple of websites and blogs in the not too distant future, although my technical ability when it comes to websites is quite limited and so I decided to learn how to walk before I could run (by using hubs/infobarrels etc). Also I am using my hubs/infobarrels as research to judge whether it is worth creating an individual website for a particular topic. Hopefully in 12 months I should have over 100 hubs/infobarrels, a couple more free blogger blogs and at least one hosted website of my own/in partnership with a couple of very good friends.
.-= Matt Green@A Little Extra Money UK´s last blog ..Monthly Update – August 2009 =-.
Good morning. Is it possible to make money at home by using adsense?
I have already google ad sense Ads on my webpage but I dont have readers click my ad on my blog either. I think ive made about $0.20 today. Thats pretty bad.
seem it is hard to make money online, i have a blog for 3 years, but i have not got any money from it, i try on affiliate, ads programs, but i have not got any yet :(, in clude my Adsense, there is no income 🙁
Its not easy to make money online – it takes time to build your businesss – just as in the real world – and very few people make a living from just one blog …
You really have provided a good information there. And regarding your main question. Do I have a plan b to support my passive income? Of course I do! I would not quit this business! One thing that I have learned that relying in a single source is not good. So I have a successful blog or website, I can always have more. Moreover, the more sites I have more earnings, if one of those fails, there will be another in reserve.