Moving into my first year as full time internet entrepreneur is both a stressful and exciting time. I’ve decided that I would document my process by sharing my earnings publicly via this blog. These posts aren’t meant to brag or anything instead I’m trying to use this as a means to help motivate myself to reach my goal of $150k in 2010 while at the same time keeping me publicly accountable. Besides, I know internet entrepreneurs out there making significantly more money than I do (most of them I met at the Elite Retreat). In any case, I believe what I share in these reports will help other part time internet entrepreneurs looking to make the leap full time and newbies alike. While I personally didn’t have the luxury of deciding when to quit my job and work for myself – because I was fired – I am always willing to help out others that ask questions. I respond to every blog comment as well as personal emails. With that disclaimer in place, let’s move onto the earnings continued after the break:

Income Graph:

Analysis

Amazon Associates:

My biggest earner of the month was of course the Amazon Associates program with $5,595.79 at a whopping 90% piece of the pie. I knew this number would drop after my record high of about $13,000 in December but I’m really not that upset with the results. Of course more is always better, but shopping months in particular are always going to be huge (just check out my tips on how to improve your Amazon Associates earnings). My goal moving forward with Amazon will be to continue to maintain a $5,000+ per month earnings window.

Google Adsense:

Google Adsense was also cut nearly in half over December’s level but I’m not too concerned about the results. One of the big pushes I’m working on right now is in spending more time this month really testing and analyzing ways to improve my Google Adsense earnings through minor tweaks (i.e. color, border / no border) as well as mixing up the placement. I’ll of course document this process along with my results so that you can help improve your Adsense earnings as well. My goal for Google Adsense is to reach $1,000+ per month before Q2 and move on from there.

eBay Partner Network:

I’ve been testing this program out and I think it has some potential to be a solid earner, but again like Google Adsense I need to experiment more with placement, colors, etc. I use PHPbay exclusively to power my eBay partner network ads and the plugin works really well. If you’re looking to implement ads on your blog from the eBay partner network I recommend try it out. The price is currently $79.

Private Advertisers:

This is something I’m looking to heavily push in 2010 and what I believe will be my best chance at succeeding in my goal of earning over $150,000 in 2010. I think that using Private Advertisers over programs like Google Adsense and eBay Partner Network will always provide more money because you’re cutting out the middle man. More importantly, if you have a web property that matches up really well with a company that sells a product related to your niche then you can often times find a solid recurring revenue stream. You can also petition them for some freebies to giveaway on your website too . Part of why I went to CES was to network and find people at companies I can build a lasting relationship with. This will ultimately lead to me feeling comfortable enough to sell them on the idea of paying for advertising on my websites. I believe by years end this figure could rival the $5,000k plus I currently pull in from Amazon Associates.

Wrap up:

So my main focus points for February include optimizing both Google Adsense and eBay Partner Network as well as selling more private advertising space. I currently use OIOpublisher to serve ads on my blogs and I use that plugin to help optimize and test my ad space. Without a doubt it’s the best $47 I’ve spent in this space. If you’re a blogger and don’t have it yet, buy it. I may drop Infolinks entirely. At only $42.94 per month it probably isn’t even worth the money when web visitors tend to get annoyed by the double underlink ads. Then again, I see them on all the big websites so perhaps people just have to live with it? There are a few other sales here and there that come in during the month and I’ll try to do a better job of including those in these reports as well i.e. SEObook. But perhaps I’ll set a minimum of a $100 and then if a program doesn’t make that amount I’ll simply leave it out of my reports. What do you think? Want to see it all?

In any case I’m looking forward to next month and hopefully earning more than $6,231.52. My next post will cover a difficult topic for any self employed person and should be a good read for all – How much should I pay myself? After that I’ll give an update to my case study on how I moved this blog from ChrisGuthrie.net to it’s new home here at MakeMoneyontheInternet.com (past coverage here).

Earlier this week I shared the top 7 tips I used to earn $41,438.42 with Amazon Associates in 2009. Today I’m going to show you the 7 worst ways to make money with Amazon Associates. I’m using data from over 40 different tracking codes I used during 2009 so that I can show you with actual numbers the worst ways to make money with Amazon Associates.

1. Do not use Amazon.com banner ads: 5% of total 2009 earnings

Even though I made 5% of my total earnings from Amazon banner ads (which is the same amount as the Buy Now buttons I implemented on my websites) it’s important to recognize just how much screen real estate I devoted to their use (most times a 468 x 60 ad and a 300 x 250 rotating ad unit with Google Adsense both above the fold). The reason why I believe these ads perform so poorly is two fold:

a. Web visitors avoid clicking advertisements in general, but I’ve found the Amazon ads especially tend to convert very poorly (all varieties)
b. The ads Amazon does offer are far too general and don’t work well for niche specific websites. i.e. if I was running a site focused on just LED HDTV’s the closest ad I could use is one for electronics.

The most effective Amazon ads I did run were carousel widgets and even those performed poorly when compared to the tactics I know work. One unknown trick is to simply create your own ads for products on Amazon; however, you must email the customer service team to get approval before running them (if you want to play it safe that is, which I always tend to do). The ads I did go through the hassle of creating and getting approval for were even more effective than the carousel widgets, but again none of these solutions were as effective as linking to content within posts my most effective means of earning money from Amazon. In fact, as you can see from the last post I earned over 80% of my total income share based on in content related tactics.

More terrible ways to make money with Amazon Associates are continued after the break

2. Do not use an Amazon store: 1.2% of total 2009 earnings

I used Amazon stores for almost every one of my websites in 2009 and linked to the store via the navigation bar on each respective website. I would also link to the store from time to time when new products were made available for purchase. In the store I’d include products that were related to the niche and include both low priced items and high priced items. I’d also customize the color scheme to match the site in an attempt to make the appearance look seamless. So what I’m trying to get across is that I did everything right that Amazon describes for the best results and I still couldn’t any money. I wouldn’t even waste your effort building a store and instead use the space freed up in the navigation bar to link to “money articles” or categories.

3. Do not display ads unrelated to your niche

This is an obvious tip in my mind, but I’ve seen new and experienced bloggers alike use Amazon consumer electronic banner ads on their blog about puppies (as an example). At the very least display ads related to dog toys and even then that’s not going to make you much money as you can see from my results above. It’s all about staying within the confines of your niche if you want to get the best results. Remember, people came to your blog, website, forum etc. for the topic you’re covering – that’s it! So your readers will respond best to content related to your niche.

4. Do not link to Amazon products in every single one of your posts

You don’t want your readers to think the only reason why you’re writing something is so that you can sell them on a new product (even if that’s the only reason why you’re blogging in the first place). Instead you need to mix up the frequency with which you link to Amazon products in your posts. I believe this can vary greatly by the niche you’re in. If you’re a tech blogger and you cover the latest and greatest products you can get away with doing so much easier than if you’re a blogger writing about how to make a living online. Using this blog here as an example, the only time I’ll link to an Amazon product is once or twice (max) per month and the only time I would do that is if I was reviewing a book like Crush It! (which coincidentally I’ll write a review on as soon as I find a way to get off of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and devote more time to reading).

5. Do not abuse the trust of your readers

Never recommend a product that you yourself would not spend your money on. If you give everything a good review in the hopes of earning more a few sales I assure you that in the end this will hurt you. The more you can build the trust of your readers by recommending great products the better. I’ve had multiple readers refer friends to websites I own because of the free help I’ve provided through the content I publish online or via personal email interactions. These situations could have just as easily gone the other way if I tried to earn an extra sale by recommending a shoddy product.

Wrap Up

As you can tell one of the worst ways to make money online is by using the resources Amazon provides. This is why so many people complain they can’t make money from Amazon’s affiliate program. It would be great to just put up an Amazon store, throw up some Amazon banners and watch the money roll in but it doesn’t work like that. I spent a considerable portion of my time optimizing the best ways to make money on Amazon and time and time again across multiple websites the same dismal results showed through with Amazon banner ads and Amazon stores. Beyond abusing the trust of your readers and going overboard with excessive linking – what are some other ways you’ve tried to make money with Amazon’s affiliate program and failed?

If you have any questions or would like me to provide some feedback on your own website feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to help.

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed (or RSS email) and follow me on Twitter. In my next post I’ll be sharing my income from January across my network of websites. I’ve decided this will be a routine monthly post that helps keep me focused on my income goals, as well as keeping my books together for my accountant

There has been a debate that rages on around paid directory submissions and whether they work or not for years. However, when I spoke with SEO guru Aaron Wall at Elite Retreat back in October I asked for his opinion and he told me that they still do work, and since he’s the guy that “wrote the book on SEO” to perpetuate the cliche phrase – I took his word for it.

So after I came back from Elite Retreat I paid for directory submissions for a few of my websites from both Yahoo’s directory which runs $299 per year and BOTW.org which runs $150 per year for the directory or $75 for the blog directory. I did see improved search engine traffic from the sites I paid for the links from, but it’s far too difficult to determine whether or not it was as a result of the paid directory submissions or a combination of the other tactics I have since implemented to improve organic search rankings and traffic. With that said, I do still believe they are worth the price and just recently paid to get into the BOTW.org blog directory with this blog MakeMoneyontheInternet.com. The main reason for this post is because I wanted to let you know they are offering 20% off everything until the end of January using this promo code: newyr. So the yearly link only cost me $60 instead of the usual $75 – not a huge savings, but it’s still worth it if you plan to pay for the directory submission sometime soon anyway.

In any case, hope this post saves you a few dollars over at Best of the Web.

Also, I didn’t plan on writing anything else before my follow up post to my article on the top 7 tips that I used to earn $41,438.42 with Amazon Associates in 2009, but because this deal ends soon I had to share it now.

Please note: The above post does include affiliate links; however, as I’ve stated multiple times in the past two years I’ve been blogging – I will not promote a product or service I haven’t used myself and genuinely believe is worth spending money on.

Update: I just got approved and am already in the directory here. The grammar in the sentence they used is off though – I sent them an email to fix it.

The Amazon Associates program was my top earner last year and while I’m in the process of looking forward to achieving new goals in 2010 after getting fired from my job in 2009, I wanted to take some time to share my absolute best tips on how to make more money with Amazon.com’s affiliate program as we move into the new year. This list will be different than any other list you’ve read because to compose this list I used over 40 different tracking codes across the wide range of blogs, websites and forums I run to conclusively test what tactics worked best. So not only will these tips help you earn more money, I can also share specific figures as to how well each tip helped contribute to my $41,438.42 earned in 2009.

This will be a 2 part post. The next post will cover the least effective ways to make money with Amazon Associates, so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed (or RSS email) and follow me on Twitter to avoid the common mistakes.

1. Use multiple Amazon tracking ID’s

If you are using only one Amazon tracking ID for each website you’re running, you’re still making a huge mistake and this is a mistake I’ve seen perpetrated across a vast array of websites. You absolutely need to use multiple tracking ID’s for every single website you run so that you know what is working and what isn’t. Part of why I believe so strongly that this list will be a valuable resource for you is simply because of the fact that I used so many tracking codes during the course of 2009 that I was able to determine exactly what tactics pays out the best and what pays out the worst. In fact, I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing an Amazon tips list without showing proof that my tips do in fact work. The tips I’m sharing may work better for me than they will for you which is precisely why you should not only try what I’m suggesting, but you should also test it with multiple tracking ID’s too (Once inside your Amazon account you can create additional tracking ids here).

Please click the continue reading button for more tips after the break.

2. Bestseller Lists: 15% of total earnings

The bestseller list post has been one of the top posts I run on a monthly basis for almost all of my various blogs and forums. I simply write about the bestselling products within the niche of the blogs I run. I only do it once per month so it doesn’t upset users looking for unique content. Bestseller lists are a form of social proof and they are incredibly strong at convincing people what to buy, which is precisely why Amazon uses them so extensively on their own website. People on the fence of a purchase decision use what others are buying to help make their decision. If you can’t find a bestseller category for the niche your website is focused on, then it’s time to expand your niche. See all bestseller list categories here and yes of course that is an Amazon affiliate link. You’ll see several opportunities throughout this post to thank me for sharing my knowledge by purchasing something on Amazon.com through one of my links that you already planned on doing. Besides, I wouldn’t be practicing what I teach if I didn’t link to Amazon.com with several affiliate links while I’m discussing how to make more money with them right? This leads me onto my next point and most profitable tip.

3. Focus on in content affiliate linking: 45% of total earnings

The biggest chunk of money I earned was by linking to products inside the actual blog posts I was writing about. Say for example I was discussing a new product that was now available to pre-order. First I would link to it because it was available for pre-order with no mention of the price. Then I’d show an image and use an affiliate link for that (more on images in the later tips). Then after the image I’d share a few of the products specs but then use an affiliate link titled something like “see full specs” and then if there were other colors I’d link to each one of those individually. Finally, I would end the post with a statement to pre-order it and at what price it was available to purchase at. This is just an example of what I would do for a hot product that finally became available to pre-order, but as you can tell I’ve created several opportunities that have hopefully piqued the interest of a potential buyer to click the link and find out more about the product. By leaving out less information about the product in the first place it creates a feeling that the user should just click now to see more about the product rather than finish reading the article. If you get them onto Amazon’s website then you’re in a very good position because now you get a commission on ANY product that they purchase on the website – not just the one they clicked through on your website.

4. Simply get visitors onto Amazon.com:

Yes the cookie length for Amazon.com is fairly short at only 24 hours, but Amazon spends incredible amounts of money on testing their website and improving their ability to converting people browsing for products into customers. It’s worth mentioning that I exported my chart of affiliate earnings by product category and only 1,367 of the 3,953 items that shipped through my affiliate links during 2009 were from product categories within the main niches for each of the blogs and websites that I run. Granted, the dollar sum of these items amounted to most of the earnings to the tune of 75%, but by getting people onto Amazon.com and shipping an extra 2,000+ items over the course of the year helped to put me into higher earnings tiers which in turn gave me more money overall.

Once a higher referral fee is achieved within the calendar month, the higher referral fee rate will apply to all Qualifying Revenues earned from Qualifying Product units sold by us during sessions initiated through Special Links on your site during that calendar month, including units sold before the new tier was reached.”

– Amazon Associates Operating Agreement

In other words, every time you hit a new referral tier it should be accompanied by a resounding boo yah because you just made an extra .5% (or .25% if you’re up near the top tier) on all of the products you’ve already sold during the month. It’s safe to assume 20% of the income I generated came from items people simply bought because they were about to buy them anyway and I was the guy that got them onto Amazon’s website.

5. Make images clickable affiliate links: 13.8% of total earnings

This tip is what I consider to be the most obvious one, but for some reason I still see blogs that discuss a product and include an image but don’t make the image an affiliate link that takes the visitor to that product. If you are already linking to products on Amazon and including images of them but not making the images an affiliate link – make the change now! To lean on my first point, use a new tracking code just to test how well the image affiliate links perform and I can assure you that you’ll see some improved earnings.

6. Use Buy Now image buttons: 5% of total earnings

If you’re discussing a product that is related to your blog and you’re already linking to it several times within the body of the post as I suggest in tip 3 and using the image as a link in tip 4 then you may as well include a button to buy now.

i.e. Amazon style:

I suggest you test the placement to see what works best, but where I like to use mine is in the upper left hand corner of the post just under the blog post title. You can also use a little thumbnail image of the product just above that as well.

7. Focus heavily on shopping time periods:

If there is one time of the year that everybody shops it’s November and December. Thank you marketers for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Free shipping day, Boxing Day (yah what’s up Canada), you name it. If you are not telling your readers about good deals for products related to your niche during these times of the year then you are missing out on a huge money making opportunity AND doing them a disservice. I spent hours finding and creating my deal posts with genuinely great prices on products I know are good. Thanks to that effort I made back to back income records with Amazon.com’s affiliate program and numerous personal emails from people thanking me for finding them a good deal. I can assure you that if there is one time that you should embrace your hunger to make more money on the internet it is during the holidays. (Yes I recognize how terrible that sounds, but it’s true)

I hope these tips help you out and I would encourage you to share your comments below. My next post will cover the least effective ways to make money with Amazon Associates and you won’t want to miss it. Subscribe to my RSS feed (or RSS email) and follow me on Twitter

Oh, and if any of these tips help you make more money you can buy me a gift to thank me on my Amazon wish list. And again, no need to ask because yes of course that is an affiliate link as well – I may as well get paid for that too right?

I run a wide variety of websites ranging from product reviews to video game forums, but one commonality spreads across everything that I do – when dealing with people over email there is always a feeling of disconnect. With all the advances in technology it’s become increasingly easier to communicate online and there is almost no real reason to meet up with people in person. These days I experience this feeling of isolation even more now that my morning commute is 20 steps away from my bedroom and the only people I talk with are online or over the phone. My desire to connect with people in person has been strong enough recently that I decided to go to Las Vegas for CES early this month. During my time I learned 5 advantages of in person networking as compared to doing it online or over the phone:

1. Legitimacy:

If you go to a conference to cover it on a blog or website you run it adds legitimacy to your blog. When I paid $6,494.03 to go to Elite Retreat I knew that it would help lend credibility to what I write about on this blog. After all, why would I spend over $6k to go to a conference if I wasn’t making enough money to cover the expense? Likewise, I went to CES so that I could report live from the event and show the readers my operation is more legitimate than they may have thought before.

2. Strengthen Old Relationships:

Going into CES there were about twenty marketing reps that I knew I wanted to meet face to face. These are the people I had been communicating with over email for 6+ months (or more) and I knew that it would improve my relationship with them by meeting with them in person. This also builds on my previous statements of adding legitimacy. They may have had questions about the fact that I was a solo blogger in the past, but knowing that I spent about $1,000 to come down and see CES first hand should make them take me more serious for future requests (i.e. direct ad buys).

3. No Gatekeepers:

When you first call a company asking for demo equipment to review (or even worse – the person in charge of buying online advertising space) it’s very tough to get to the right person in charge. The administrative assistants are trained to not pass through calls to many individuals unless they are given a compelling reason. But when you are at an event like CES you are speaking directly with the PR agents and marketing managers in charge of promoting their products, so it’s in their best interests to listen to what I have to say and take my call in the future.

4. Forge new relationships:

Even though I have had the opportunity to work with many companies, I still haven’t worked with everyone. By going to CES I was able to surpass many of the roadblocks that stood in my way as a solo operation and start to build relationships with new companies that I can turn to at a later date for clarification on a product they’re releasing or for demo equipment. I knew going into the event there were about 10 primary companies I wanted to speak with and I not only spoke with them, I’ve already begun dialog about potentially doing direct ad buys (more on that in the future).

5. True relationships pay dividends:

Am I advocating that you try to be friends with people just because of what they can do for you in a business sense? No of course not. But if you look back at the past advantages I’ve listed off there are now over a hundred people that I can go to and ask questions that I would have felt uncomfortable asking in the past such as: “I know we’ve worked in the past before, but I was wondering if you could provide me some contact info for the person in charge of media buying” or “Hey, I had an idea for a joint promotion where (insert company name) could give me a few units of product to give away on my website” etc. These are the types of tough questions that it’s very difficult for the person on the other end to say yes to if the only contact you’ve had in the past is over email and a couple phone calls.

Wrap up:

If you have an opportunity to go to a conference highly related to the websites you run I suggest you take it. As long as you know it may take some time for your initial investment to pay off you’ll be more than happy you did it. In fact, I already have a lead on a company that may be willing to pay my way to the next CES and they’re asking for very little in return.

What do you think? What have your experiences been like with conferences?

Now that I’ve settled into my new home and have had time to think about going into 2010 as a full time internet entrepreneur I thought it would be best to write some specific and measurable goals for the new year. I’ve split these up into professional and personal:

Professional:

1. Earn over $150,000 across my network of websites
2. Spend at least $50,000 on quality domain names to be developed
3. Work at least 5 hours a day for a minimum of 25 hours per week
4. Hire at least one full time writer

My first goal of earning $150,000 in 2010 will be tough, but I make $410.97 every day of the year I’ll earn more than $150,000. Because I watch my earnings every day I can make sure I keep tabs on where I’m falling short. I also want to spend at least $50,000 on quality domain names. I believe in buying quality domain names and then developing truly great websites for them. I’ve also found that since Oct 13th when I got fired from my job last year I found it difficult to work more than 4 hours a day at a time, especially since I was making more money than my day job where I spent 8+ hours a day working. I know that if I devote at least 5 hours a day or more to work that should help me to achieve my primary goal of earning $150,000 in 2010. I also know that I will need to create a ton of content for the websites I’m creating so I need to hire on a full time writer to help with content creation. I haven’t decided if I want to hire on a native English speaker or if I should just opt for the cheaper $500 a month overseas writer instead… I’ll cover this in more detail when I get there though.

Personal goals are continued after the break…

Personal:

1. Buy a house
2. Donate at least $10,000 to charity
3. Cook an entirely brand new healthy meal once per month
4. Work out at least 2 times per week
5. Re-Learn Spanish well enough to carry on a conversation with a native speaker
6. Go to Disneyworld with my wife
7. Read the Bible at least 30 minutes a day (I love me some Jesus)

My wife and I would really like to stop renting and move into a place we can own. I also happen to believe that housing prices have near bottomed in the area we’re looking – Washington. I know there may be some difficulty in getting approval for a loan since I am self employed but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. If I can reach my primary goal of earning $150,000 in 2010 then I don’t see why I can’t donate at least $10,000 to charity. I believe that living in America with the opportunities we have available requires us to give back to those less fortunate than ourselves (specifically people in other nations). I also want to try and expand my food horizons by cooking a new unique meal once per month. In the past I’ve cooked before, but it’s always been the same 3 or 4 meals so that’s why I wanted to lump this goal in there. Along the same lines of healthy food I also would like to get into better shape. I’m not overweight or anything, but my lifestyle is so inactive that I am terrible shape. I already got a gym membership about a month ago but have still not gone yet (so I need to work on this one ASAP). I also would like to re learn the Spanish language in 2010. I spent 2 years in high school learning Spanish but I have since forgotten most of it. My brother speaks near fluent Spanish so I hope to carry on conversations with him for practice. I’d also really like to go to Disneyworld with my wife this year too. She finishes graduate school in the summer and has a month long break before going to do her six months of unpaid internship work so I would like to fit it in there. We have yet to go on a vacation with just each other in the 3 plus years we’ve been married so we’re long overdue. Lastly, I need to spend more time reading my Bible. I’m a Christian, but often times I don’t act like it and I believe that reading my Bible daily would be a great start in the right direction.

Wrap Up:

I’ve done my best to make them as specific and measurable as possible so that when 2011 rolls around I can easily go through and evaluate them. I also believe all of the goals I’ve written are feasible and when I look back on the year I can be quite satisfied when I was accomplish them. If you haven’t written goals for the year I would suggest you do (even if you don’t post them publicly). Just keep in mind the importance of writing goals that can be specifically measured otherwise it will be difficult to determine how well you did in the year.

What do you think of my goals?

This is Part 1 in series of posts where I will document the results from moving my old blog at ChrisGuthrie.net to the new URL here at MakeMoneyontheInternet.com

I’m going to document this blog move as a case study and share how long it takes for the search traffic to bounce back. In the past I really didn’t get a lot of traffic to ChrisGuthrie.net especially because I didn’t write very often; however, I did still have a few search keywords that continually brought me traffic every month. With that in mind the main thing I’ll be looking at is to see how long it takes for these ranks to recover or if they’re lost for good.

Here’s how I moved my Wordpress blog

I followed the steps on this great guide by Yoast; however, the 8th step didn’t work in his guide didn’t work so I used the .htaccess code mentioned in this guide to finish up the move.

There is no need for you to update your RSS feed as I’ve already done this on the backend (side note: don’t try to update the Feedburner URL as that won’t work, you can only update the source URL. You’re stuck with the Feedburner URL unless you want readers to resubscribe hint: don’t do that).

Why I made the move

By now you may be wondering why I would choose to move my blog to a new domain in the first place. Well, I made the decision to move my blog to a new domain for several reasons.

1. No one searches for “Chris Guthrie” (well, actually 27 people do per month)
2. I was annoyed that I couldn’t convince the owner of ChrisGuthrie.com to sell me the domain name (my last offer was $1,500)
3. When people arrive at my blog it’s not entirely clear what it is I do until you read some of my content
4. The Chris Guthrie character drawing is one of those things that says to readers “Don’t take me serious” and puts me in a hole that I have to dig out of with the quality of the content I write. Or in the worst case scenario leads them to leave the page before they even see what I have to say.
5. There is no potential for selling in the future (not that I care to, but I like to have my options open)

I am using the character for a new project I’ll be starting soon and will document on this blog a different case study. I plan to have a lot of fun with that new project and am flying to Las Vegas for CES next week partly because of that project (more details to come).

There are other reasons why I made the move, but the list above consists of the main ones. Either way I am very excited about the move and the opportunity to start blogging on a more regular basis now that I’m officially self employed. In fact, I’ve been holding back several ideas that I’m very excited to share in the coming weeks. In my next post I’ll share my highlights from 2009 and my goals for 2010 so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Long time readers may remember the post I wrote back in January 2008 where I outlined my goals for the year. Looking back on that post I can only think to myself – too bad I didn’t know what I know now. The goals were almost laughable. So when 2009 rolled around I was the first to call out how unbelievably unsuccessful 2008 was from a goal achievement perspective. I gathered my thoughts and wrote out a 2 year goal towards self employment with an end goal income target for the year of $32,000 (the starting salary at the job I used to have)

Goal Success:

Well, of any goal I’ve ever set out to accomplish this one means the most. Based on my earnings for the past several months I’ve decided that it’s safe to call this goal a success 1 year and 5 months ahead of my original schedule! I am making enough now to officially quit my job errrr, oh yah I was fired so I didn’t have to quit after all. In any case, Boo yah!

Game Plan:

I’ve decided that I will take $3,500 a month as income from my websites during 2010 to pay our fixed bills and it should leave some left over for other random expenses that crop up. My wife is still finishing out her masters program and unpaid internships until December 2010, so I only need to make $42,000 during the entire year to cover our bills. The rest of the money earned will be kept in the business to buy more domains, websites, coding help, etc. So as long as I can continue to earn more than $3,500 a month we should be fine.

Why I didn’t share this news earlier:

I’ve held off on writing this post for over two months now because after I got let go fired from my job October 13th I had begun searching for a new job. I know employers look up potential candidates by searching them online so I marked a few of the posts on my blog private that illustrated how much I hate working for someone else and plan to quit in late 2010 hah hah. But after half looking for a few weeks I decided that the timing of getting fired was for a reason. This was the gentle shove (well maybe a kick) that showed me it’s time to do my own thing and I couldn’t be more happy about why lies ahead than I am right now.

Why was I fired?

To this day I still have no idea why I was fired. I had already helped to achieve my full year sales target 3 months ahead of schedule and I also had numerous awards. I am near certain that it was because my outbound rep that I partner with on deals wanted me to work more than the regular 40 hours a week my salary requires. But the pay wasn’t really all that great in the first place and I was much more focused on building my online empire than putting in extra hours to earn just a little bit more commission.

Looking forward to 2010

I am looking forward to 2010 and a full year of self employment and an opportunity to do even better. In fact, I will be moving this blog to a new domain in the next week or two. You shouldn’t have to subscribe to the new feed, but the reason for the change is that I wanted to pick something that was more focused on what I do online and not just my personal name. (More details on this new URL soon)

I have several exciting posts, case studies and more to share in the coming weeks and months so be sure to stick around. It’s very good stuff.

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