Tag: online income

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Online Business Rants

Taking A Big Leap – From Online Income to Online Business

Neither of us had the nerve to take the picture in mid-flight!
Neither of us had the nerve to take the picture in mid-flight!

Big U-turn ahead! I started this blog in April 2008, actually it was probably a couple of months later and backdated the first few posts. I’d started working full-time online in the previous October. I didn’t have a clue. I was full-time because I didn’t have a job, not because I was making any money! I was going to be a success by Xmas. Maybe this Xmas?

At the time I called this blog “Passive Income” – because that’s what I wanted, and because I thought “passive income” would be a good term to rank for in the search rankings (it wasn’t – but I got to page 1 before a specific Google penalty knocked me off).

Niche Websites – Rise and Fall 

My best ever Adsense month was January 2011 – I made $1383 dollars. I made the same again in a range of affiliates which ranged from Amazon to The Keyword Academy. In April 2012 the Penguin update by Google which penalized sites which had built links with insufficiently varied anchor text. The next month my Adsense was down to $700.

In August 2013 I made about NZ$46 (say US$38) from Adsense. The penalised sites haven’t recovered, and I haven’t bothered building any others.  I could, and contrary to  what Google would have you believe, you can still get them to rank. But they are vulnerable. And I don’t like having my business being controlled by Google – they  employ more PhD’s than me – they will win.

The view from the top of Waiheke EcoZip towards Auckland, NZ
The view from the top of Waiheke EcoZip towards Auckland, NZ

eBooks Rise and Rise

eBooks on the other hand are the same, but different. I repeated history and started with writing my passion – travel. I make a hundred or two from my books – but the market is small and the competition tough.

If Amazon changes their policies around indie authors, I’ll feel the pain. But not so much. You see the secret to eBooks – for me anyway – came with the success of my quick guide on how to format Kindle books. I wrote the book in frustration – not as a strategy.

On the back of it I launched BookFormatter.com. I started making regular money freelancing – my doing for people what I explained how to do in the book! Never, ever think that giving away technical “secrets” is a bad thing, many people, having acquired the knowledge will happily outsource to a person they trust to do a good job – you know like the author of the book!

I’ve been in this game – mostly full-time – since 2007. In that time everything has changed. Hubpages and been and gone, Niche websites have been and gone (for me). I’ve been a writer and a book formatter, A website designer and an  email marketing consultant. When I started  social media didn’t really matter. The controversies and flame wars happened on blogs not facebook! Search traffic were the committed buyers – now  more and more people buy through social media recommendations.

Working for Passive Online Income

Until this year most of my effort has been basically on building passive income. Ultimately I’ve failed at that. Google changed the rules, my attempts at manipulating the search results failed, and I didn’t have the heart to re-build.  I couldn’t see it working for a many more years anyways. Google is becoming less and less important to informing how people make buying decisions.

Working Online – How Did I Do It?

  • I got paid on shared-revenue sites: Hubpages to BubbleWS
  • you get paid for your skills by others needing your skills i.e. freelancing
  • you get paid for recommending other people’s products (affiliate sales)
  • you don’t control your income because you don’t control the terms of service of the sites that pay you

Advantages

  • takes little skill to get started
  • the rewards can be quick
  • you can learn a lot and make a lot of connections
  • it’s perfect if all you want to do is work online and not deal with hard-core “selling” (raises hand)
  • when it works you really do make money in your sleep – I came back from a 2-month overseas trip with more money in my bank than when I left!

Disadvantages

  • it’s not long-term recurring income regardless of what the third-party promises
  • your income is controlled by terms of service you don’t control
  • as an affiliate you ride the wave up and down of the service or company you’re promoting
  • for mainstream products e.g. Amazon, eBay – affiliate marketing is basically dead because of the way Google now prefers it’s own brands  in the search results
  • unless you’re very, very clever you are building someone else’s brand and not yours

Examples

  • writing for revenue share on sites like HubPages, Squidoo, BubbleWS etc
  • publishing books on Amazon and other sites
  • developing websites which are designed for ranking in Google and getting visitors from search traffic only
  • making money from Adsense and affiliate sales from websites which rank in the search results
  • freelancing via third-party sites such as odesk and eLance

Developing An Online  Business

How Does It Work

  • you offer something that people want, that you can deliver and that people will pay for
  • you develop website, social media etc – with the purpose of getting people on an email list
  • you may use third-party sites like Amazon to get your message/name/brand out there – but the ultimate purpose is to push people to sign-up for your email list
  • you develop a website and an email list that you control. Traffic comes from a variety of sources which include social  media and Google

Advantages

  • control – you control your product and you have access to your customers, if Amazon suddenly decides to offer only a 40% royalty you can decide to move your customers elsewhere
  • you can leverage customers and offer more expensive services and products to a smaller group – you can ultimately make more money with less effort, and it is sustainable
  • developing an online, or mainly online business, costs very little money

Disadvantages

  • it takes far more self-belief and confidence than just  developing an online income
  • it takes some more technical skills
  • it takes more business skills
  • you have to develop some basic ability to explain why your offering may be useful to someone (“marketing”)
Neither of us had the nerve to take the picture in mid-flight!
Neither of us had the nerve to take the picture in mid-flight!

Exciting Times

The last few months I’ve done a fair bit of freelancing – it pays the bills – but it’s also done something much more important than that – as a direct result

Freelancing made it obvious to me that there was a gap in the market, and realise that I could help fill that gap.

I’m currently buzzing with a new business venture a business partner and I will launch before the end of the year. We  know there’s market demand. We believe we can fill the gap. We have the skills to make it happen and have identified a launch platform.  Plus it will pretty much use all the skills I’ve learned in the last 6 years – plus a few new ones 🙂

You might want to sign up for the newsletter – in the box that will appear below in a second… There may be a special deal in the offing for subscribers…  Can’t say much else – after all I’m trying to build excitement and buzz. Oh and we are still  making it up!

I’ve gotta say – if I can find the skills to start a business – than anyone can! Seriously.

Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans – may your turkey and shopping go well. And the family thing if you approach it the traditional way!

Categories
Blogging Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Search Engines

Passive Income – There Is Such a Thing – Who Want’s a Business?

Passive Income - New Zealand Style

Had to engage in the conversation here – Leo – says there is no such thing as passive income he argues that we all should be developing businesses not just relying on SEO to climb to the top of the rankings.

Funny how my name has got associated with passive income – as friends pointed out to Leo (and not saying  Leo isn’t a friend  – merely wrong 🙂 )  I would be in for the argument.

Not Passive Income

OK so lets step back. In the dark times pre-passive income – I used to be a highly overpaid IT consultant – I was paid a nice hourly rate by companies who wanted to upgrade or replace software. I used to work on a salary – a “safe” job right. Yup, it was –  I never got fired from a permanent job – but it was huge, huge millstone around my neck.  You see turning up 40 hours a week – even if the hours were somewhat flexible – meant that I could only travel in the holidays-  I only got 4 weeks annual leave so even with creative use of leave without pay, public holidays and anticipated leave – I could only get away for 6 weeks ever couple of years.

I could afford the travel – but I didn’t have the time – the rules around my presence at work were  my definition of hell.

Business or Passive Income ?

I looked at options – buying a franchise is a popular one around here – but it sounded like buying a job to me (told what to do – lots of bosses (clients) and high overheads (franchise fees)) – no thanks.  Plus, again – you have to be in the country to run the business.

Starting my own business – I never considered it to be frank – I  not only couldn’t sell, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to risk my capital and the failure rate for small business in New Zealand is pretty high (and usually that takes your house too).

I started to look at other options. When I started researching my options I came across the concept that you could invest now and get paid later. I could buy property and get paid rents, I could buy shares and get paid dividends (rarely in my country but the principal is still there).

Passive Income Take 1

This was promising – I did quite a bit of research. In the end we invested in property (my partner was already in shares) – and its worked  for us and continue to do so.

Now some will argue property investment, particularly residential, free-standing, older wooden houses, in earthquake prone countries,  is not passive. They will say houses need to be maintained, tenants need to be  found, managed and got rid of.

Yup – and you can outsource the lot! Case in point – house we own in  small town New Zealand.

Passive Income - New Zealand Style

Here’s the rough figures (all NZ$ – NZ$1 = US$0.75 at the moment – but relatively it doesn’t matter).

Purchase price 2003 – $77,000

Currrent estimated value 2011 $150,000

Unrealised capital gain 6.4% a year

Original tenant left a few weeks ago – yup same tenants for 8+ years – never missed a payment – $140 to $160/week for 8 years.

Gross rental  income: $8320 or 10%  cash yield

Gross yield 16.4%/year (yup that’s why we don’t focus on shares very much).

Now the property does have expenses, we  use a property manager,  pay Council rates and insurance, and of course we borrowed the purchase price so there is mortgage interest as well – but time wise its cost us about  2 days when bought the place (one day deciding to buy the place, one day due diligence, signing papers) and now – eight years later we spent 1/2 day, inspecting the property and arranging for someone to give it a good tidy up.

Is that totally passive income? No

Is it bloody close, the way we do it  – yes.   And even we maintained and managed the properties ourselves (and plenty of larger landlords do) – we would have a business giving a us a ful-time income for a very part-time amount of effort. But we don’t that because between the two of us we are crap at DIY and are too soft to deal with ratbag tenants!

Will this property  be passive income for us for the next 10, 20, 30 years?   Should be, likely to be, unless there is a major earthquake in the region – when it won’t be a total loss – but we will probably get paid out and have to walk away at that point.   Is passive income guaranteed – nope.

So if property investment is so great – why didn’t I stick with it? Well we did – but we stopped buying – why? Risk, to make good money on property you need to gear up (borrow) – to do that you are layering  risk on risk – we got to the level of borrowing against asssets that we were comfortable with – and stopped.

Property is an as passive or active income as you design it to be.

Passive Income #2

My second attempt at passive income you are  familiar with, as documented right here. I rank websites at the top of  the SERPS and make passive income from the advertising on them.   Frankly I never started off to build a business online  – a wanted a passive, long term income – and I have that now. Some of my income is from fairly new sites, some of my income are from sites and pages that I haven’t touched for three years.  Last year I inadvertantly demonstrated that I could do little work for several months have not affect my income.

What’s long-term income though – will my websites still rank in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years? Maybe, maybe not – but every indication to date is that older sites rank and hold their rankings better than new sites. But one of the reason I have many websites is the same I reason I own 5 rental properties in smaller, cheaper places, rather than just 1 or 2 in the fairly expensive city I live in – diversification. If one of my houses is destroyed or untenanted – it hurts but its only part of my portfolio. If one of websites gets out of favour with Google or that particularly niche falls out of fashion – the others are still producing.

Now from what I am seeing – nothing much has changed on the last Google update – my sites are still ranking in the same place more or less, my Hubpages may be a little down  – but that could be coincidence/seasonal too.  February didn’t match my record January month – but I know my pattern is that once I hit a new income record it takes 3 to 4 months to match it again –  in short I am seeing nothing out of the ordinary in my business.

Leo argues that I really should build a business online – a real business with real clients – but nothing has much changed for me – my freedom is still the most important thing for me – and having to be available to clients cuts into that freedom. Having a few clients is fine (and I do) – but ramping it up seems to be just trading freedom for income – a trade I’m not really prepared to make.

Leo argues that SEO will get more and more competitive over the coming years – it could well do – though I wouldn’t overestimate the ability of corporates to adapt – pretty bloody slow in my experience. He argues that I should establish a “real” business which has real followers and therefore not be dependent on search traffic.  I know a little about this – because this blog gets “real”  visitors not just search traffic.  As far as I can tell though -the people who convert are the search traffic.

What I know is that with my silly little sites – I can make a little money – not a huge amount – sometimes $1/day – sometimes more. But even at $1/day lets look at the rate of  return:

Initial purchase of site: (all prices US$)

$8 for the domain

$10-$15 for content on the site Ti

Total: $23

Backlink articles at say $1/each – maybe 30 -90 articles – say $90

Annual profit $243 … annual costs say maybe $20…

No mortgages, no property managers, no rates, no insurance, no risk of earthquakes…

Passive Income – Is It For You? Maybe Not If …

If You Want to Make a Difference

If you want to make a difference in the world – then blogging ain’t where its at – go become a health worker, or a volunteer in a country that needs the help. An engineer bringing clean drinking water to kids in Africa, a researcher finding a cure for cancer is making a difference, me – not so much.

If You Need Money Now

As I have advised many people – if you need money this month, or next month – or even in the next 6 to 12 months – this won’t work for you – it may, but for most beginners it won’t work. It didn’t work for me – I got a job – it paid, it was a crappy job but it delivered what I needed at the time – cash.

If You Have Huge Income Requirements

I remember when I wrote about making $1000/month with Adsense – that it seemed like a lot of money (I hit that milestone almost exactly 2 years later) – $1000/month is a lot of money to me – its not enough to live on – but I could live on it if I had to – its pretty much what the NZ government pays as a pension for the over-65’s and most of  them seem to do just fine.

About US$5k /month would work just fine for me – but I see people making $10k plus in the TKA forums – frankly that’s nice – but its unlikely to ever be me – because I don’t really need the money I will probably never persue it!   If you really need to make a 6-figure salary – again I’d say get a job – just make sure you have the right skills.

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Plan Review

We Don’t Need No Stupid Badges!

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…

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Passive Income Australia/NZ

Making Passive Income, Record Keeping and Online Income Taxes

Managing Tax Records Across Two Currencies with GST (VAT)

There was a recent thread in the forum at TKA regarding managing your Internet Marketing income which I added my 2c to. I then got quite a number of PMs from people asking me follow up questions – given the thread wasn’t even mine – I guess my commonsense approach to record keeping and taxes are not so common. So here’s what I think is important – your mileage may vary.

My approach is quite simple – I’m not an accountant – though I did pass ACCY101 a million years ago. I have never found a “system” which manages multiple currencies the way I need to – so I developed my own. I use an OpenOffice spreadsheet – but any spreadsheet program which can sum figures and do the odd bit of multiplication will do just fine. The system has evolved over the years – but I’ve never had to start again. If I didn’t have some complex real estate investments I could do my own taxes off these figures – as it is I give them to my accountant.

Having a system to record your expenses and payments is what’s important – once you have that you can do your taxes – or give the figures to someone else to do. But either way you need to provide the basic figures.

Online Income and Record Keeping
Ignoring taxes to start off with – the first thing you need to have in place is a way to manage your online income. Long before I was making enough to worry about tax – I used to track my monthly income – it kept me sane and motivated. If you don’t know what you are earning how do you know how to improve it?

Tracking Income as You Earn it.
So my first spreadsheet was very simple: each column across the page is a month – and ever row was a source of income. As a I got more sources of income I simply added more rows in.

My Original Earning Income by Month Spreadsheet

I split my income three ways:

  • truly passive – ie advertising and affiliate sales
  • not at all passive income – freelancing – one row per a client plus some more general one off stuff I do like hosting other people’s site and generic SEO consultancy.
  • one-off income – from selling domains or websites – which tend to really be windfall income while the other two groups are more ongoing.

Initially I thought that my three biggest earners would be Adsense, Amazon and eBay and that’s why they are highlighted – its never really worked out that way – I generally suck at eBay and Amazon – but I keep the highlighting …I don’t really know why 🙂

This spreadsheet is dead easy to maintain – near the start of the month I login to all my major affiliates and check what I earned for the previous month – note I won’t have been paid yet by most of them – but I look at the earnings.

Managing Passive Income in a Foreign Currency
American readers can probably skip this section. I don’t live in the US but most of my income is made in US$. I decided early on to manage all my income for planning purposes in US$ – I have my goals in US$ I worry about whether my income is going up or down in US$. Now this is different to whether my income is going up or down in my local currency – but I can’t control the exchange rate so I don’t worry about it to much – I focus on the US dollars. Note my paypal account is in US$ – its my cheap foreign currency account really.

To come back to the currency that matters to me – ie the currencies I pay taxes in and spend money in – I have an conversion line to my local currencies. I use a conversion published by my local tax department to keep thing consistent

Tracking Income as You are Paid It
The above spreadsheet worked for several years. Yes I didn’t track expenses (they were too low to mention, as was my income) and yes I recorded income when I earned it not when I was paid it (again something I couldn’t control). But then I started earning more passive income – and I needed to add a second sheet to my spreadsheet – to record income as I was paid it (this is what the accountants call an cash basis). Certainly in Australia and New Zealand if you are a small business or individual you can chose to pay taxes only on what you have been paid – not what you have earned – that’s what I do.

So I added a second sheet to my spreadsheet it looks like this:

Managing Tax Records Across Two Currencies with GST (VAT)

Although most of my income is earned in US$, Adsense then pays me direct into my local bank account i.e. in NZ dollars – where I get a payment (or make a payment) in NZ$ I account for it as such. The US$ payments and expenses have to be converted to NZ$ for my tax records.

I also do work for local clients – who obviously pay me in NZ$. We have a local tax (GST, like VAT or other sales tax) which I need to apply for local clients but not for overseas income.

My local tax department allows you to chose my own conversion rate – so long as its believable and consistent – they also publish monthly figures for major currencies – I use their’s – fewer room for arguments. Whatever you do – be consistent – for your own sanity if nothing else.

Of course if you are earning enough to earn tax you really need to start tracking your expenses – after all why pay more tax than you have to?

All of my direct business expenses are paid via Paypal in US$ including domain registration, membership site subs, backlink services (Advertising), software etc etc.

However there is also the whole other bunch of expenses which are at “home”. These include both paying my contractors (when its from a local bank account), books I buy locally, electornics and furniture for my home office, a percentage of my ISP expenses, my house insurance, my Council rates, home maintenance, power, parking (for local clients) paper and printer supplies – it adds up – and it all comes off the profit BEFORE I pay tax.

I keep records – well I keep the receipts and throw them in an envelope a month – if I needed them I could prove these expenses. (I do expect to be audited one day by the tax department – my business is so “odd” in terms of amount of overseas income and low local expenses I am sure it will blow an automatic whistle at some point).

At the bottom of the page I do a couple of things – I project my annual profit – I take the last 4 months of my NZ$ profit/loss – divide it by 4 and multiple it by 12 – thus projecting an annnual income – its useful a) to shut up those who still think I just play online and b) it gives me an idea when I will have to start paying provisional tax.

The YTD NZ$ is just my total net profit for the tax year. Our tax year end is 31 March – so at the end of March I use the blue column to total all figures for the year and for the tax return.

Online Income and Tax Residency
Tax residency is not always the same as where you live. Often it is – but not always. For example if I – a New Zealand tax resident – decided to move to somewhere with very low taxes (e.g. most of the oil rich nations) – I may be resident in Saudi or Dubai – but I would still be a tax resident of New Zealand. That’s because New Zealand taxes me on my income – wherever in the world I might live. You can in fact be tax resident in two different countries at the same time – but that’s rare.

The above spreadsheet takes me about an hour a month to maitain. I download the figures from my affiliates, I download the month’s data from PayPal and allocate it to the various expenses/income categories that I use in the spreadsheets. I look up the figures on the household bills and use a separate sheet ot itemise them and work out the % that I am claiming.

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Rants

Passive Income and What People Think

Prague Castle, St Vitius, Praha in the Snow, Czeck Republic

Making an online passive income from Internet Marketing is the strangest thing. When I had a job as a geologist few people understood what I did – but no one doubted that I was well-paid for it, when I worked in IT even fewer people understood my job, but they took for granted that I made money. Now I do something really simple – I put up websites, based on topics people search for, I use SEO techniques to rank my sites and I make passive income.

And even now that I make enough passive income to go travelling for 2 months they don’t understand how I make money. That’s OK – I’m used to that. What kinda of amazes me  is that – they don’t believe that I make money either! Now frankly I don’t give a shite whether they believe me or not- my partner believes me – he sees me pay the bills, my bank manager is happy, my accountant is advising me to make provision for tax – but the other people – they seem to think I’m delusional.

Prague Castle, Praha in the Snow, Czeck Republic

If you are starting out this game – here’s some advice. Don’t expect anyone to be supportive or believe in your dream. In may be nice to think those closest to you will be your greatest support – in fact from what I see on the Keyword Academy forums – that’s very, very rare. In fact anyone who has a financial interest in you making some money will probably be loudest in their calls for you to get, retain or focus on, your “real job”, Or an education to the one.

I haven’t seen that many people fail in this game – but 95% plus of people who start don’t make more than $10. They don’t fail though because they never put enough work in to have even have tried. I know –  I wasted at least a year – not  working – at the end of it – I’d acheived very little.

I’ve been around long enough to see who succeed and who fail in this game. This is utterly subjective and totally unscientific – but I am convinced that most people that succeed with making a passive income online – do  share some common characteristics:

  • they are bloody minded;
  • they don’t give a damme what anyone else thinks of them;
  • they are out of other options – because of age, skills, location etc they couldn’t get a “real” job even if they wanted one;

If you are worried about what your family/friends/partner thinks of making money online – get a job – this game is not for you.

Now I have some very boring things like goals and objectives and plans to achieve the same.  I have business .

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Plan Review

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

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

Yeah I know – there are nearly 2 months left until the end of the year – but  I am about to hit the road for a spot of independent travel so I will probably have more important things to do than to consider my business position – like spending the loot! Yeah I now make $1,110,223.21 a month in my sleep – and could too – if you would just sign up …

Anyway about a year ago I had some passive income goals for 2010. By the end of March I reported an income of :

Total income of around US$3000/month – of which about 1/3 is passive;;

In the last 6 months (May – October) I earned an average of US$3500, the 6 months before that $3200, and the 6 months prior to that US$2156. My all time record was last month, October, where I was just $8  short of US$4000.  The individual months bounce around but the general trend is definitely in the right direction. Still short of my US$5000/month goal – but not so far off as to be depressing.

But the really exciting bit is that in the last 6 months I have never 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.

I thought about it for an hour or so. I did a happy dance,  and then went out an bought a netbook To be exact an eMachine EME2501915 10.1, 1.60GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB Ram, 160GB Hard Drive, Windows XP Home (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)

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

(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.

Categories
Online Business Search Engines

Shake Rattle and Roll

Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald

Drizzle with a chance of earthquakes in the afternoon…

On Saturday morning I was asleep – I usually am, but I was late getting up and getting online.  I noticed that Skype was flashing a message – it was SY from Hospitalera Blogs asking if I was OK. Hmm I thought yes – why? I turned the radio on – it was talking about the big quake – obviously not  the long awaited Wellington earthquake, and was in fact a huge quake of 7.1 in Christchurch.

Its been an interesting few days – and I don’t just mean the minor earthquakes that we  have had in Wellington (and yes quakes do come in swarms, and no I didn’t even notice them).  Two things came out of this: trends blogging and business continuity and communications in the Twitter world.

Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald
Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald

Trends Blogging

OK in my defence I knew no one was dead – but my second thought was – hmmm wonder what happens if I Google “earthquake insurance New Zealand” -ah I find my own Earthquake Insurance  hubpage (which was written almost a year ago after Hubpages did a disaster hubmob) ranking just below the government site. Interesting because the hub was about earthquake insurance  in the US – but not specifically about earthquake insurance in NZ. So that wasn’t a difficult topic to choose.

When something like a earthquake in Christchurch happens – people want information – and they want it fast.  Turning on the radio was a good start – they apparently started broadcasting about 7am – 2.5 hours after the initial shock.  But finding virtually no information in Google on Christchurch related seismic terms and seeming my semi-related hubs ranking well told me what to write about. Why did I put the articles on hubpages – not here? Authority – I knew I’d get fast indexing and fast promotion – and I have every new earthquake related hub I’ve put up is ranking for at least long tails within 4-5 hours (as fast as the hubpages analytics could tell me).  Now if there were just some relevant ads…


My office before the Earthquake – honest!

Frankly for the traffic stats it would have been better if I live in California – but in real terms I am more than happy to live in New Zealand. For those of you who consider earthquakes as terrifying acts of God – you are right – unless you happen to live in a country with good building standards. Both the dismal Haiti quake and Christchurch’s quake where about the same magnitude and depth and proximity to a city. No one died in Christchurch, maybe 230,000 died with a further 300,000 were injured in Haiti. Three were seriously injured in Christchurch. Now OK the population of Christchurch is 400,000, Haiti had a lot more – but this is all about building standards. And anymore who thinks New Zealand building standards are over the top have probably been silenced for at least a generation.

Oh and there some disasters which are just too easy to predict … Meanwhile – if  I’m not online and there has been a quake in Wellington, I live and work in modern wooden house which is on bedrock and at the top of the hill – I will be fine 🙂

Online Business Continuity

One of the shocking stats coming out of Christchurch is that some small retailers will be bankrupt if their business is out of action for a week. Frankly I’m shocked I had no idea they lived so close to the line.  I’ve already proved that I can ignore my business for months. But what I will lose in an instant in a quake is power – which will stop my modem working instantly – even though the laptop would last for several hours (if it survived being thrown on the floor hmm).

In Christchurch the cell phones stayed up for several hours until the batteries operating the towers died. The traditional phone system lasted through out (though I suspect younger people discovered that there are phones that don’t need power). Maybe I need to remember how to connect via dial up (and a cable..) and/or a cell phone which knows about the Internet. Maybe I need a decent phone which could at least allow me to update Facebook and my blog.

I probably need some more cash too – I rarely have more than $50 in my wallet – and of course EFTPOS and ATMs need power and phone lines! I do actually have a cheque book – it would be interesting trying to persuade a retailer to take one though.

You see frankly if the big one does hit Wellington I’m not hanging around for the aftershocks and waiting for the essential services to be connected. If it hit during the day my partner will probably have to walk home from the CBD – it may take him 3 or 4 hours. Assuming that neither of us are injured  – we will be walking (the roads are a disaster waiting to happen and will be impassible to a cute little urban car) north until we can hitch and find civilization (aka Gin, broadband and power) – probably Levin or Palmerston North.  Our house is fully insured – I feel no need to hang around and protect if from – well exactly what?

Do me a favour – if in future you do hear about a big eathquake in Wellington (100% chance in the new 1000 years by the way) – and you haven’t heard from me online for 24 hours – please link to this post in the forums that are asking where is Lis, and put it on my facebook wall again.

Meanwhile what are your business continuity plans in the case of a natural disaster? Must admit its the first time I’ve really thought about it…

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Rants

Online Income – The Secret to Success Is …

New Plymouth Gardens
New Plymouth Gardens - the road less travelled

Online income is something many people profess to want – but few actually achieve it. Why? Isn’t terribly technically difficult – nope, is there really a secret – yes but not what you think. Online income, passive income whatever is a business – and a business is all about YOU.

I read a couple contrasting attitudes today – which I thought were relevant. Chris posted on The Keyword Academy forums:

To anyone whose article got returned on http://www.brightfluid.com,  I apologize, it definitely isn’t my style. With the craziness going on with the Iraqi government formation and the troop withdrawal, our base is taking a lot of mortars and rockets, and one just happened to nail our internet satellite.

They just installed a new satellite, and I worked through the 119 articles pending, but I know some got returned, and I’m sorry. For the next 24 hours I’m doing hourly submissions to make up for it (besides sleeping of course), so hit me with your best shot.

Just to explain – Chris owns a article directory on TKA’s postrunner system,  and if you don’t approve articles submitted within 7 days they are automatically returned to sender- something some people whinge about a bit on the forums.

Chris obviously has a full-time job – in a war zone – and he’s concerned that he’s let others down … It would be really cool if some of you could add an anchored link to his site … (and yeah I disagree with the US involvement in other people’s countries too – but this ain’t about politics ). Something tells me that Chris is going to succeed in this game.

Also this morning I got a PM through the same forum asking:

I need help and don’t know where to look or ask. I’m half lost in all of this. This is all new to me and I am trying to learn it by myself. I know I am missing several things, but don’t necessarily know what.

Note this was from within TKA – this person is already a member of the site that I push everyone to who tells me they want to make money online.  A site that provides a set of step-by-step videos telling you what to do. I tell people in emails – that they will teach you everything you need to know. If you follow the program you will succeed. But I think I left out a step. So I’m gonna rectify that.

Before you write that email and ask for help (and this isn’t just the above one – I get an email via the contact form at least once a week asking for similar things). And don’t get me wrong I would like to help – but before I spend 1/2 hour of my time giving you free specific advice (something BTW I’ve never asked anyone else to do for me) – I’d like you to spend the time to answer these questions:

  1. Do you really want this? Do you really, really want to walk the road less trodden – ’cause this is what it is. If this is just a fill-in before you get a job, go to College, the kids go to school, – then frankly I doubt that you will be committed enough to make it happen.
  2. Can you deal with being  faced with  blank incomprehension every time you are asked what you do for a living? Do you have an ego wrapped up with what you do for a living – then this is most definitely not for you!  Most people will think I am a web designer!  Can you  handle not being taken seriously: my own partner thought I was “playing online” until he saw the money, I got asked last week “when was I going to get a job”, again, the same person then turned to my partner and said “I guess you have no choice but to have a job!” . For some people even if your business is a success and you pay the bills (mine does) – that will never be good enough. Some of those people will be related to you and you will care that they don’t get it.
  3. Do you want to own your own business. Can you handle the uncertainty of it – the fact that your income will go up or down, and its always gonna be like that ? Can you handle being the ultimate decision maker – for everything.
  4. Do you like your own company? If you intend to do this full-time are you happy about sitting alone in a room, just you and the computer for day after day – believe very, very occasionally I miss the idiots I used to work with…
  5. Are you prepared to take responsibility. Responsibility for your success as well as your failues.  For a long time  I thought I was scared of failure – but I was also scared of success – in the end I was just bloody scared!
  6. If you are doing this full time do you have saving for 9-12 months of living expenses? If you are doing this part-time are you prepared to do this with no financial reward for 12 months plus?
  7. Do you understand that Internet marketing changes all the time?  Do you consider that a challenge or a threat?
  8. Do you realise that you can’t just blindly follow a formula – that at some point you will have to step up and do your own testing and experimenting?

Frankly most make money online blogs won’t tell you this – but the vast majority of people can’t make money in this game.  My first serious mentor told me that – and he was right. I’m border line – I nearly didn’t make it – I had no actual experience or natural ability in this game. Oh I understand the tech, the websites, enough html and css. That’s not the issue – the issue is self-belief and having a business plan. Anyone with a background in commission selling or successful MLM – will  do way much more with this business much faster than I did.

To the rest of you – you have a chance – but only if you really, really are prepared to throw all your preconceived notions out, forget about the sensible and logical thing your years of experience in education or being a good employee has taught you. If you’re not then – cut your losses – get out  – get a job – or take up a hobby –  that’s not so bad – its what most people do. Isn’t it?

New Plymouth Gardens
New Plymouth Gardens - the road less travelled

Hey you’re still reading – must be stubborn…

Over 16 months ago, I wrote about the turn-around point in my business, not the moment  that I understood keywords, or understood  how to optimize WordPress, or how to find backlinks – but after I started believing in my dream.

In the next 3 months I doubled my online income. That wasn’t because I some how magically wanted it enough or any other “The Secret” bullshite – I stopped worrying about whether this could work and did the bloody work to make it happen!

I’ve said it before : I’m writing it down here so I can refer to the post the next time I’m asked :

If you have no money and no clue about earning online income:

  • answer the above questions;
  • still here? Enrol in TKA (handy affiliate link at bottom of post in blue box) and actually study the core videos
  • find some keywords – build hubpages – they are quicker and easier to rank and make money from than anything else I know

If you have money, no time and no clue (aka a J.O.B or a partner with a J.O.B):

  • answer the above questions;
  • still here? Enrol in TKA (handy affiliate link at bottom of post in blue box) and actually study the core videos
  • buy some domains and hosting and  install websites
  • learn the basics of the business and then invest in learning to outsource, preferably everything, but starting with the writing.

If you have money, time and no clue:

Pretty much the same as above but you should be seeing results way quicker because you can afford to both reinvest in your business and learn it all at the same time.

The secret to success with online income – there is no secret – its just a lot of hard work.  But you do “meet” some cool people along the way.

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Australia/NZ

Is Lis Lost Down Under?

Taranaki Egmont New Zealand
Mt Taranaki taken from New Plymouth

Life is for living has always been my motto – its one of the reasons I now own my own business rather than make obscene amounts of money as an IT contractor.  Being that miserable isn’t worth any amount of money. And sometimes going to work just seem too trivial to be bothered with. Unfortunately my online business has felt a bit like that over that last little while!

Taranaki Egmont New Zealand
Mt Taranaki taken from New Plymouth

Well life went from interesting to worse really. After I wrote that post (when we had sold the house, and my partner’s mum had died) – we found a new place we liked and bought it. There was gap of about a month between during which we stayed with friends – which was very nice and saved us a fortune. In the 4 weeks we stayed I managed to write-off our car by running  it into a bus – no serious damage to me but the back is only just about recovered from the whiplash now. My partner’s uncle died in Australia so he  had to fly over for that funeral (its only 4 hours flying from here though – slightly shorter than if we’d still been in Perth).

My partner then ended up having an angiogram (he’s OK – but it was seriously scary for the few days it took him to have it done).  It could have been stress (duh!) .That was rock bottom really.

Then stuff started improving:

  • We bought a new(er) car (NZ has a wonderful deal where we import used Japanese cars with low mileage so we are now driving a 2005 car for less than US$7000 (NZ$11,000) )
  • We took a long weekend and gave the car a run  to New Plymouth (I’d never been) and even got to see the mountain (unusual in winter).
  • We moved into our new house, we unpacked (mostly).  We bought new toys like a dryer and a digital video recorder thingy that will watch TV for you (yes I know about video tapes but I couldn’t be arsed connecting it really -and its really hard to buy tapes now). Eyeing up a new thin TV and some furniture to put it in but the credit card is over-tired this month LOL
moving house - too many boxes
Don't you hate unpacking!
  • We moved into our 5-year-old townhouse to discover that insulation really does work, even in Wellington, as the weather was seriously cold even for us, that we really did like the place (I am never sure once I’ve bought somewhere), that it’s super convenient , and we really don’t need to do much redecorating.  And the vegetable plot even seems to be growing non-weedy things (I understand they are called Brassicas).
bassicas in the garden
IThey are growing - so I hope they are Bassicas not triffids!

Stuff has been happening on the Internet Marketing front too – but I might save that for another post – and no it won’t be as long this time! Too main points though:

  • no – I haven’t given up on the Keyword Academy Case Study – and although I haven’t built anymore links my rankings are basically holding from my last update.
  • if anyone is still considering the The Keyword Academy – the price has dropped back down to $33/month (after the first month @ $1) – if you signed up under the $67 rate – check your email and follow the instructions to get your fees retroactively reduced.
  • I have decided to work smarter not harder – more details soon.
Categories
Online Business Passive Income Passive Income Australia/NZ

Passive Income Online – Where Has Lis Been?

Sorry I don’t usually do purely personal posts of Passive Income Online – so you may want to skip this one – unless you were wandering what happened.  Well first off from the online point of view – nothing bad has happened – in fact its looking like a record breaking month on my passive income goals – and I mean truly passive income because I have really done very little focused work this month.  We’ve had a month of it.

Sold House in Khandallah

First we finally sold our house in Khandallah (BTW ranking #2, #3 behind the major Real Estate Institute in the country – just wondering how much an Agent will want to pay for the site …). Got pretty much our price in a very slow flat market which was freaking out about the budget (now been and gone). We move out in a few weeks. Where to – who knows I’m  no fan of bridging finance – we may have to rent for a wile or we may win the tender that closes today – something will happen.

I don’t know how it is in your country – but in New Zealand the Internet has been a game-changer for selling your own home. The standard deal is you pay around 4% plus tax to an agent to “market” your property. They will probably charge you for advertising on top of that – but even at that rate you are looking at NZ$20k for our  place (US$14k). I paid for advertising too – it cost NZ$160 for 2 large signs complete with photos (we are in a cul-de-sac these were essential and an agent would have charged for them anyways). We spent NZ$300 to advertise on Trademe.co.nz – eBay didn’t bother opening in NZ – Trademe is  the local equivalent – but  actually has fair fees and is the only way to buy and sell garage sales stuff here now.  We wasted NZ$500 for one colour photo ad in the Saturday night newspaper – I tracked how many came from that ad to the website – about 3. The Trademe add had over 2,500 hits in the 2 1/2 months it was up. Many people found it from the sign as well because its a neighbourhood people like to stay in because of the local restricted zone school.

There is still several glossy magazines that vendors pay to advertise their homes for sale  in (only available if you have an agent) – it does a great job in advertising the Real Estate Agencies. Its fun to flick thru from time to time – but now I’m serious about buying a house – I use Trademe which allows me to easily see the new listings in suburbs and price brackets of interest.

About a week after the house sale – my mother-in-law (well we’re not married but there’s not a short way to describe the relationship in English) – Jeanne Malthus died.  Its not normally my policy to name and identify my family here but  I’d just like to make sure that Jeanne’s tribute page stays #1 for name – and that link should do it.   I think its a very nice development that Funeral Director’s now run tribute pages for clients. Hopefully they have a lot better chance a longevity than the Facebook versions!   Jeanne  was a lovely lady who was one of the generation who remembered when home phones were a special thing (her father was a policeman so he had one – that was unusual in small town NZ at the time) – who lived to learn how to send emails and read friends and her (other) son’s  blog.   My father died over 15 years ago – before the Internet became common – but he grew up in a world without indoor plumbing and died while still selling computers (in his 80’s).  To anyone who thinks that change and progress is bad – really should read some more history – Dicken’s was wrong –  we live in the best of times.

See I told you this post really had nothing much to do with Passive Income. I’ve done very little work this month. So to all of you who are just starting off this making passive income online caper and wondering why you’ve only made 2c after writing 10 articles – its because this business is the ultimate in delayed gratification – you will get paid months down the line – not now – later. The money I will bank this month  came from work I did a year or more ago.

Categories
Making Money Online Passive Income

Passive Income Online: Best Posts of 2009

An Online Business in 2009

Well this seems to be the tradition at this time of the year to look back at your “best of” posts of the previous year. In fact its not a bad idea because internal linking is really a good idea – and hey some of your visitors may even find some benefit.

An Online Business in 2009
An Passive Income Online Business in 2009

To (mis)-quote Dickens it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

My optimistic 2009 goals are a fairly embarassing example of now NOT to goal set – they are too vague, not tied to abig picture aim really – but at least I had some. I did at least realise that yes, you can make $1000/month with Adsense

This post was pretty much when I hit rock bottom with my hopes for making passive income online – I figured out that all the options were worse than bad – and oddly enough once I understood that  if I didn’t believe in my business no one else would things really turned a corner – mainly because of one my worst written posts ever!

May was the month of the infamous 100 hubs challenge and although I boosted my hubpage earnings significanty. They have since dropped quite a lot – not without first making me quite a few thousand dollars though! I intend to revive some of my formerly successful hubs – possibly as mini-sites or on Infobarrel

As the year progress I slowly realised that I had to more and more treat this online adventure as an online business (one of my better posts I think). I’d even worked out that I could build a legitimate online business  and sell stuff online without feeling like I needed a shower!

By the end of September I actually had some online income which needed management! By October I had written my first e-book on buying and selling websites

At the end of the day –  Ican’t imagine a better lifestyle than the one I have now – it is definitly worth trying to make an income online.

Good ideas I still use

Keyword Academy – I still use their prinicpals for keyword research – in general – I am not totally convinced on their backlink startegy but if that program had been available a year earlier it would have saved me a year of heartache and made me a lot more than the cost of membership!

An Alternative to WordPress – anyone who has more than 2 or 3 blogs will no that WordPress needs constant updating – not the content the bloody software – Mystarterblog is ideal for easy to maintain, niche blogs

If you can’t be bothered reading all of Grizz’s blog  (allow a week) – then Janet has summarised his methods in her Nomad’s Guide to Make Money Online

Online Backup – this really does work seamlessly – after the initial setup – any file I add or modify is backed up the next time I’m online – for free!

Not such good ideas from 2009

Entrecard destroys your search traffic

Today Blog Scam

So have you done a year summary for your blog? If so feel free to leave a link in the comments below!