If you could tell by the tone of my last income report, things weren’t looking all that great.  My income was down for a variety of reasons, and even though April as a whole didn’t turn out too badly, I could tell that a further decline was in store for this month.

As result, I’m launching this personal challenge to see if I can get myself back on the right track.  If everything goes as planned, I’ll have some great things to report at the end of the 31 days.

Let’s get into the details…

What is the “31-Day Workaholic Challenge”?

Basically, this challenge is about one thing: laser-focused productivity and hard work for a period of 31 days.  I feel like my productivity online has been slipping for quite some time (possibly dating back to some point last year), so I wanted to buckle down and turn that around.

For me, productivity is about two things:

1) Eliminating distractions

2) Finding your focus

If I can conquer both of these, I think I can boost productivity significantly.

Eliminating Distractions: Not Easy!

The biggest problem I have with distractions is that there are a couple in my life that I can’t eliminate and don’t want to eliminate.  I’ll call these “obstacles” instead of “distractions.” Those two obstacles are my “9 to 5″ job and my girlfriend.

Obviously, I have to go to work so that I can earn my salary (at least, for right now).  As for my girlfriend – I live with her, and love spending time with her, so there’s going to be a certain amount of that which is unavoidable.

Now that we have these “obstacles” defined, I’m going to put a temporary end to a few distractions that can be eliminated:

• Watching TV - During this 31-day period, I’m not going to watch TV, with a couple exceptions:

• The first exception is my typical late-at-night-before-bed TV watching with my girlfriend.  In my mind, this is dead time that wouldn’t be productive even if the TV was off.

• The second exception is Memorial Day, where I will be off of work and likely marathon-watching the entire (highly anticipated) new season of Arrested Development.

• Video Games - I periodically play various video games on my Playstation 3 system, and this tends to be a major distraction when there’s nothing on TV and I don’t have any real obligations after work.  I actually think this will be an easy one to cut out.

• Blog Reading – Over the course of a day, I probably spend a significant amount of time reading different blogs online (some related to internet marketing, some that are not). Although much of it is helpful and educational, I think it can also be counter-productive.  I’m going to do my best to avoid reading blogs during these 31-days.

Finding My Focus

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I’m notorious for spreading myself thin and juggling multiple projects at one time. I know that this isn’t the most productive way to operate, and this was only further confirmed by a recent podcast from Pat Flynn at SPI (which I highly recommend).

Basically, Pat’s podcast explains that you’re generally more productive when you focus on one project at a time.  Take a project from start to finish (or at least, to a point where you can’t currently work on it further) before starting something new or working on another “in progress” project.

I do have certain obligations with my online business that I’d like to maintain during this focused 31-day period – in particular, blogging here at My 4-Hour Workweek as well as my authority site.  During this 31-day period, I’d expect to write 4 blog posts here (including this blog post), and 1-2 posts on Slow Carb Diet Experiments.  Outside of these obligations, I will be fully focused on one project.

What I Hope to Accomplish

I have two projects in mind for this 31-day period that should take 15 or so days each.  I will not work on these simultaneously - I only plan on starting the second project if/when I fully complete the first one.  If I don’t get to second project during this 31-day period, I’m okay with that.

These are the projects I hope to complete:

1) A new niche site – I want to take a site from start to finish, with most content and SEO work outsourced.  I think I can complete the majority of this within 15 days, but there will of course be some on-going maintenance (for example, you wouldn’t want to build all your backlinks within the first 15 days of the site’s existence).

Although I’ve done work on an authority site  recently (where I write 100% of the content myself), it’s been a long time since I’ve set up a site where I establish the site myself and outsource the content creation.

Given the current state of my online business, I do need some new passive income “assets” in my portfolio.  The goal would be to build something in a low-competition niche with the potential to earn $250-500/month (obviously more would be better!).

2) An information product for my authority site - I don’t think my authority site (Slow Carb Diet Experiments) is going to ever earn much from ads or Amazon affiliate links (until I have substantially more traffic), so I decided that I want to create my own product to sell on the site and via the e-mail list I’m building.

This is lower in priority than the niche site, which is why I will only start this once the new niche site is complete.  I already have some ideas for the product, but have yet to begin writing anything.

What About You?

That’s my plan, and I’m going to stick to it.  The 31-day period will begin when this post goes live, and I’ll provide a full recap once the 31 days are over.

If you’re interested in doing something like this, feel free to write about your plan in the comments – we can all hold each other accountable.

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The 31-Day Workaholic Challenge

Related posts:

1. Batching & Automation Challenge, Day 10: Distractions
2. Let’s Experiment with Laser Focus

Fortunately, there are some new projects on the horizon for me, as I continue to try and diversify my online income portfolio.  If there’s anything to learn from my April income drop, it’s that diversification is so important.  This really can’t be understated.

Anyway, let’s move on to the good stuff…

A Brief Overview of April

Half of April wasn’t productive (the first half, leading up to the tax deadline on April 15th), but I made the most of my free time in the second half.  April (and to be perfectly honest, probably most of May) has been time for me to regroup and reassess my plans.

I knew that my biggest income source, the page that was ranking on page one of Google for “make money online”, would eventually die down.  People ask, “how do you know it won’t continue?” I knew it wouldn’t because I didn’t do anything intentional to get it there in the first place.  Google saw, based on a number of factors, that the page was high quality and highly relevant to the search term.

However, because the keyword is perhaps one of the most competitive keywords on Google, it would only be a matter of time before other sites/pages rise to the top and push aside my page.  It’s not that my page has declined in quality, but there are plenty of internet marketers out there who are doing everything they can to rank for this keyword, and eventually, some of them are bound to succeed.

Sure, I could have made an attempt to keep the page ranking on page 1 of Google, but I never intended that one page to be a significant part of my business.  While there was a lot of earning potential there, I still prefer to find other ways to make money online that extend beyond telling people how to make money online.  Even if that means I’m leaving a lot of money on the table, I’m fine with it.

So, as I mentioned, I’m somewhat heading back to the drawing board.  I know that my income will be down significantly over the next 2-3 months most likely, but this is probably the motivation (or kick) I needed to get back to working on a diversified stream of online income.

April Income Report

Article Writing

It was a slow month for both InfoBarrel and Squidoo.  Traffic was pretty similar to March, but conversions (particularly with Amazon sales) were down.

I constantly find myself going back and forth on how much time and effort I want to devote to article writing.  On one hand, it’s a fairly inexpensive way to get content online and increase your earnings (and I still think it’s the best way for someone completely new to start out making money online).

However, the longevity of this income source is questionable.  Because you don’t control the medium (i.e. the site hosting the content), you have very little control over the long term success of that content.  Yes, you can always take it down and move it elsewhere, but the very nature of Squidoo and how it’s very different from other writing platforms makes it somewhat difficult to pick up your content and leave.

Case in point: Yesterday, I was informed that nearly a dozen of my Squidoo lenses were locked and unpublished (without warning) because they didn’t meet Squidoo’s new quality filters.  I’ll admit that the content wasn’t very long (usually around 300 words, mixed in with various “modules” such as videos and other media), but there was nothing about the lenses that made them any worse than the 30+ other lenses I have that weren’t locked.

Unfortunately, when a lens is “locked”, it’s very unlikely that you will ever be able to get it back.  The process is manual (requesting the lens be re-evaluated after changes are made), and from what I’ve heard, most of these requests seems to fall on deaf ears.

Granted, some of the blame does fall on me because I obviously didn’t create lenses that were of high enough quality, but the guidelines are very unclear, and I do believe that many lenses (including some of my own) were wrongfully locked.  Read any Squidoo forum (or even InfoBarrel’s) and you will find a lot of people very frustrated right now.

Do I continue putting time and effort into this medium?  I’m not sure anymore… (but feel free to chime in your thoughts in the comments).

Here’s a summary of all my article-related income for April:

Squidoo

• Amazon: $12.80
• Revenue Sharing: $6.52

InfoBarrel

• Revenue Sharing: $9.55

Total Article Writing Income: $28.87

Social Lending

Lending Club

Lending Club, as I mention each month, is one of my favorite online passive income sources, because I believe it’s my only truly passive income source. What I mean by this is, once you select your investments (which doesn’t take more than a few minutes), you can simply sit back and collect the monthly payments which include a repayment of your initial investment + interest.

If you are unfamiliar with Lending Club, however, you should read my post that explains exactly how I make money with Lending Club (including my investment strategy) that I posted a couple months ago.

April finally showed some growth, after the past couple months which were flat.  I’m now invested in 166 loans (+1 from March) and my net annualized return is 5.48% (+.08% from March).

I’ve started investing in some higher risk loans (still mixing in safer, lower rate loans) to hopefully increase my overall return on investment.

If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account. I am an affiliate for Lending Club, so if you have any questions about it, I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments (or feel free to contact me by e-mail).

If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can start with $25 and build from there.  I mentioned this last month, but it’s worth repeating: In the past, I’ve focused on the $25 investment amount to get started, but I do want to emphasize that to really benefit from this form of passive income, you need to make several $25 investments (or larger if you’d prefer) not only to earn more interest, but to diversify as well.

If you simply make one or two $25 investments, you won’t really get anywhere.  You really do need to invest a bit more so that you can earn more and minimize your risk through diversification.

Prosper

In April, I also began investing with Prosper.com, which is another social lending platform similar to Lending Club.  I initially deposited $100 into my account, to invest in four different loans ($25 per loan).  Two were funded in April, and two should be funded in May.

It’s still too early to report my return on investment, but I’ll definitely include updated figures in my monthly income reports, similar to what I do with Lending Club.

Niche Sites

I no longer do anything with these sites, so if they earn me anything, it’s a bonus.  Most of my old niche site domains have expired, but I’ve been keeping alive the handful that still earn enough to make it worthwhile to renew the domain.

• Amazon: $49.17
• Media.net: $0.00
• Chitika: $0.00
• InfoLinks: $0.00
• Commission Junction: $0.00
• Total: $49.17

Authority Sites

Authority Site #1 (Not Revealed)

This site is still sitting idle, but continues to earn a little bit of money.

April Earnings:

• Media.net: $2.70

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My Passive Income Report [April 2013]

Related posts:

1. My Passive Income Report [April 2012]
2. My Passive Income Report [March 2013]
3. My Passive Income Report [February 2013]

As I previously mentioned, April’s income is probably going to show a very large drop from March’s, thanks to a big loss of traffic from one of my top income sources. With that in mind, I wanted to take this time to revisit some of my 2013 goals and come up with a plan to take my online income to the next level.

This will be more of a public brainstorm post, where I’m just going to write about what’s on my mind with respect to my passive income projects.  I encourage you to do the same, either on your own blog, or in the comments below.

Every once in awhile, I find myself in this position – there are so many possible directions to choose from, that I become frozen and don’t take any action.  It’s similar to analysis paralysis.  The best course of action is to try and get everything on the table and come up with a plan of attack.  It’s important to analyze, but not for long.  At some point (soon), you just have to pick something and take action.

Without further ado, I’m going to go through the various “projects” or ideas that I have on the table, and see if I can figure out what’s worth pursuing, what isn’t, and what the priority should be for whatever I do pursue.

Article Writing with Squidoo

The goal I set for 2013 is to write at least 200 Squidoo lenses (i.e. articles).  I have about 60 right now, but of those 60, probably only 10-15 currently have income potential (this is pretty normal).

Last month, I earned about $110 with Squidoo, but all of that income came from maybe 5 lenses.  If I can get to 200 lenses, I think there’s income potential in the $500-1,000/month range, which I’d be happy with from that income source.

Pros: Lenses are fairly quick to create – I could easily do one or two per day.  If I write them myself, they don’t cost anything to create.  In other words, the only investment required is my time.

Also, the income expectation is fairly reliable in the short term.  If I create 200 lenses (assuming I do the proper keyword research), I can expect that my earnings will increase by a significant amount.

Cons: The long-term sustainability of Squidoo lenses is somewhat questionable.  If the site comes under scrutiny by Google, it’s possible that many lenses could lose their search engine ranking.  As of right now, if you do good keyword research, you can rank a Squidoo lens on page 1 of Google without doing any backlinking.  If this changes, it may not be worthwhile to create Squidoo lenses.

Also, creating lenses isn’t the most interesting thing in the world.  If I decide to outsource some of this writing, there will be a financial investment involved, as I’d estimate each lens could cost me around $5.

Overall Analysis: In the short term, I think I will stick with this plan.  I may not be able to write a new lens each day, but I think there’s a lot of value in creating whatever lenses I can now, so that by the time the holiday season rolls around, I’ll have a lot of people clicking through to Amazon (which is the primary way to earn with Squidoo).

Authority Site (Slow Carb Diet Experiments)

This is a project I knew would take some time to gain traction, because it’s a blog in the health/dieting/food niche, arguably one of the most competitive and saturated niches.  The reason I still pursued it was because it’s something I’m interested in and enjoy blogging about.  It’s been a lot of fun creating new recipes and writing about them (not to mention, I lost over 15 lbs. on the slow carb diet).

In addition to simply creating new content on a regular basis (I’m aiming for once per week), I think I need to start doing more link building.  I’ll do this slowly and manually – I definitely don’t want Google to penalize the site.

Pros: Writing for this blog is something I enjoy, and if it does eventually gain traction and receive a lot of traffic, there could be a lot of earning potential (through affiliate revenue, my own information product, etc.).

Cons: There’s a chance this site will never make much money. Even if I increase the traffic 10-fold (going from 50 visits/day to 500 visits/day), it’s possible that the increase in earnings won’t be significant.

Overall Analysis: The success of this site will probably not occur in the short-term, so I’m prepared to stick with it while it slowly grows.  As long as I continue to focus both on SEO as well as my social media efforts (Pinterest is huge for a site like this), traffic should steadily grow.

A New Niche Site?

Now we’re entering uncharted territory. Although I have projects in place, I’m always looking toward new projects and ways to diversify my online income streams.

Ever since Google came out with its “Penguin” algorithm updates and ever since I lost my AdSense account, I really haven’t tried any new niche sites.

Although niche sites aren’t what they used to be (you can’t just throw together a quick 5-page site, rank it, and watch the money roll in within a matter of weeks), there are still viable ways to produce quality, profitable niche sites.

Most likely, any site I create would initially be monetized with Amazon’s affiliate program. Before I create a site, however, I’m going to spend a decent amount of time doing keyword research, and make sure that any keyword/niche I get into is worthwhile.

The overall goal would be to create a site where all the content is outsourced.  This wouldn’t be another site like my authority site where I need to be involved with it on a regular basis.   The income potential of a site like this would likely be in the $100-500/month range.

Expected Upfront Costs:

• Domain = $8
• Hosting = Free (I’d use my existing hosting accounts)
• Website theme = Free (I’d use a free theme or one of several premium themes that I already own)
• Content = $70-100 (I’d probably start off with approximately 10 articles, and I’d expect each to cost $7-10)
• SEO = $100; This is my initial budget – I would probably do a bit of backlinking myself as well.
• Total = $180-$210

This site would clearly require an upfront financial investment, but hopefully won’t require too much of my own time.  If all goes as planned, I would hope to make back the initial investment within 3-6 months of the site being fully built and operational.

I know Pat Flynn mentioned something about running a second niche site duel, so perhaps this would be a site for the competition.  I haven’t decided yet if I’d want it to be a public project.

A Kindle Book?

It seems like this is the current trend in the blogger/internet marketing community.  For right now, I don’t think it’s for me.  It’s not that I couldn’t write a book, but I don’t think that it’s something I would enjoy.

Somewhere down the road, if my audience on Slow Carb Diet Experiments is large enough, I may consider putting together a book, but that’s a long way off in my opinion.  Right now, I’m much more focused on writing shorter content that’s published online for free, and building an audience through that content.

A “Real” Online Business

At some point, I may look to combine my “offline” job (as a CPA) with an online business.  I haven’t thought much into this yet, but I could see the potential for being a CPA who specializes in the in the internet marketing/blogger niche.

It’s an area I know very well, and I’m equipped with the right tax and accounting knowledge to really help people in this niche.  This is a very long-term idea at the moment, but it’s something that I have in the back of my mind as a possibility one day.

That’s All for Now…

Thanks for taking the time to read through my fragmented ideas for current and future projects.  It helps me to put everything in writing, so hopefully someone out there will find value in it.

If you have thoughts or feedback on any of the above ideas, please feel free to share them in the comments.  I’m always open to constructive criticism.

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Crafting a Plan for Success [A Public Brainstorm]

Related posts:

1. Crafting a Life Changing Authority Website
2. Experiments with Passive Income – Squidoo Update
3. Experiments with Passive Income – Squidoo

For a month where I did absolutely no online work, March was amazing.  I’ll only tease you a little: it was another personal record-breaking month, but I do have a few reasons to be concerned about how April will follow.

Let’s take a look at the details…

A Brief Overview of March

Unfortunately, the life of a CPA  is such that you basically have no life during the months of February, March, and part of April, due to tax season.  This is something that, no matter how many years I do it for, I will probably never get used to.

It’s one thing to work hard, but to have to constantly push yourself for over two months without any breaks is definitely a grind.  I’m not complaining (even though I am) – I like what I do, even if I’d rather go about it my own way.

What can I say, other than March was a fantastic month, highlighting the power of passive income.  It was comforting to see the money roll in each day during a time when I really couldn’t give my online projects the attention they deserve.

I need to be careful, however - this type of passive income isn’t going to sit there and grow on its own forever.  In fact, there are a couple events that lead me to believe April will be much worse than March.  Even if you’ve built some reasonably nice passive income streams (like I have), you still need to put in the work required to maintain and grow those income streams.

March Income Report

Article Writing

It was a relatively good month for my article writing accounts, both at InfoBarrel and Squidoo.  I’m excited to finally get back to writing for these sites and seeing if I can get this income stream up to something respectable.

Squidoo has recently gotten a bit stricter with its quality guidelines, which has led to a few warnings on some of my lenses.  I think it’s mostly a result of the number of Amazon affiliate links I’ve used compared to the amount of content I’ve written.  This is something I’ll need to correct and monitor going forward.

Here’s a summary of all my article-related income for March:

Squidoo

• Amazon: $95.49
• Revenue Sharing: $18.22

InfoBarrel

• Revenue Sharing: $11.59

Total Article Writing Income: $125.30

Social Lending

I’ve changed the heading of this section of my income report from Lending Club to “social lending” because I’ve finally decided to test out other social lending platforms.

Starting in April, I will begin investing with Prosper.com, and once I start to see results, I will be reporting them here along with Lending Club.

Lending Club, as usual, remains one of my favorite online passive income sources, mainly because (as I’ve said before) I believe it’s my only truly passive income source.  If you are unfamiliar with Lending Club, however, you should read my post that explains exactly how I make money with Lending Club (including my investment strategy) that I posted a couple months ago.

March was a fine month, as everything held steady.  I’m now invested in 165 loans (+6 from February) and my net annualized return is 5.40% (same as last month).

Although this is a very solid return on my investment (certainly better than I’d earn on a lot of other investments, with relatively minimal risk, in my eyes), I know it could be better.  Per the suggestion of someone I recently talked to, I’m going to start investing more in higher risk loans that pay interest in the 12-15% range.  Yes, these are riskier, but I will still be selective about which ones I choose, to hopefully minimize the risk.

If you didn’t get a chance to read my post about how I use Lending Club, you can watch this quick video that explains how it works:

If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account. I am an affiliate for Lending Club, so if you have any questions about it, I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments (or feel free to contact me by e-mail).

If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can start with $25 and build from there.  I know in the past I’ve focused on the $25 investment amount to get started, but I do want to emphasize that to really benefit from this form of passive income, you need to make several $25 investments (or larger if you’d prefer) not only to earn more interest, but to diversify as well.

If you simply make one or two $25 investments, you won’t really get anywhere.  You really do need to invest a bit more so that you can earn more and minimize your risk through diversification.

Niche Sites

I no longer do anything with these sites, so if they earn me anything, it’s a bonus.  As I’ve said before, for the sites that have stopped earning, I’ve been letting them die off once the domains expire.

• Amazon: $27.56
• Media.net: $0.18
• Chitika: $0.00
• InfoLinks: $0.00
• Commission Junction: $0.00
• Total: $27.74

Authority Sites

Authority Site #1 (Not Revealed)

I’m still not doing much with this site, and the traffic continues to hover around a paltry 0-10 visitors per day.

March Earnings:

• Media.net: $0.29

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My Passive Income Report [March 2013]

Related posts:

1. My Passive Income Report [March 2012]
2. My Passive Income Report [April 2013]
3. My Passive Income Report [February 2013]

Expect to see March’s income report, along with my regular weekly content, shortly after April 15th.

I hope everything’s going well with you.

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I’ll Be Back Soon…

No related posts.

I’m generally not a fan of February from a reporting standpoint – you only have 28 days, so to maintain your regular monthly results, you need to be a lot more productive.

Surprise, surprise…I was not very productive, thanks to my very busy work schedule during tax season.  That didn’t get in the way of having a great month, fortunately.

I’ll share all the details below…

A Brief Overview of February

Even though I was so busy during February, there were a lot of good things that happened. For one, I had another solid earning month despite doing very little work.  That’s the beauty of passive income, of course. There was also some really good news from InfoBarrel, which I’ll share below.

The major drawback of February was that tax season really kicked into high gear, and will remain that way through the middle of April.  This is something that really kicks me every year, because as much as I’d love to be productive with my side projects, I can’t always get myself to do work after 12-14 hour day (including my commute time.)

The best part about February?  Another record breaking month!  Highly ironic, considering it’s the month in which I spent virtually no time on my online projects, along with the fact that it was 3 days shorter than last month (my previous record earning month).

February Income Report

Article Writing

Beginning in March, InfoBarrel is finally “back in business” for me.  They finally released their system that allows you to earn money from AdSense without having an AdSense account.  Effectively, you will get the revenue from 75-90% of the ad impressions on your articles (percentage varies based on your article contributions for the month).

Most of my articles aren’t ranking like they used to, and I haven’t written new ones in a long time, but I should still be able to earn a little bit of money each month now from here (a far cry from my original plan to make $2,000 per month with InfoBarrel).  If you’ve been wanting to make money from articles and don’t have an AdSense account, now is the perfect time to sign up with InfoBarrel and start writing.

As for Squidoo, I’ve taken a break from writing new lenses until tax season is over, but I continue to earn here.  Currently, I am up to 65 lenses (+6 from last month).  

Here’s a summary of all my article-related income for February:

Squidoo

• Amazon: $18.58
• Revenue Sharing: $1.87

InfoBarrel

• Chitika: $0.17

Total Article Writing Income: $20.62

Lending Club

Lending Club, as usual, remains one of my favorite online passive income sources, mainly because (as I’ve said before) I believe it’s my only truly passive income source.  If you are unfamiliar with Lending Club, however, you should read my new post that explains exactly how I make money with Lending Club (including my investment strategy) that went live last month.

February was an okay month, despite the fact that one of my loans went bad (which is why my return dipped slightly).  It doesn’t bother me much, because I know it’ll bounce back within a few months.

I’m now invested in 159 loans (+4 from January) and my net annualized return is 5.40% (-0.40% from last month).

I’m happy with this return even if it is below Lending Club’s advertised average, because it’s a much higher rate than I’d earn in a bank account, CD, or other relatively safe investment.  Keep in mind that there is some risk involved (I’ve had a few borrowers default on their loans), but with all of that considered, my rate is still 5-6%.

If you didn’t get a chance to read my post about how I use Lending Club, you can watch this quick video that explains how it works:

If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account.  If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can deposit a small amount (investments can be as small as $25) and become familiar with it. I am an affiliate for Lending Club, so if you have any questions about it, I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments (or feel free to contact me by e-mail).

Niche Sites

Once again, my mini-niche sites are no longer an area of focus, so I just let these sites sit and earn whatever they can.  If they stop earning, I will let the domain(s) expire.

• Amazon: $7.57
• Media.net: $0.08
• Chitika: $0.00
• InfoLinks: $0.00
• Commission Junction: $0.00
• Total: $7.65

Authority Sites

Authority Site #1 (Not Revealed)

This site is finally earning again now that it’s indexed in the search engine after my mistake last month.  I haven’t added new content to it for a long time, however.

February Earnings:

• Media.net: $7.73

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My Passive Income Report [February 2013]

Related posts:

1. My Passive Income Report [March 2013]
2. My Passive Income Report [January 2013]
3. My Passive Income Report [April 2013]

Sometimes, however, the real stress isn’t about what I’m doing at my job – it’s what I’m not doing outside my job because “I’m too busy.”  I have projects that I’d like to be working on, but at the same time, I also want to enjoy what little free time I have outside of work (which tends to happen when you’re working 60+ hours a week).

So how do you fight this urge to simply say, “I’m too busy”?  How do you maintain productivity with your side projects when your “real” life is consuming most of your time? This post will be short and sweet, but hopefully it’ll generate some good discussion.

I’ll be honest – this post is kind of selfish.  I’m writing this in the hopes that I can figure out how to get myself back to being productive while I’m really busy with my “day job.”

Here are some of the ideas and ramblings on my mind…

Fighting the Urge to…Enjoy Your Free Time?

I think this is the most difficult part for me when it comes to being too busy.  I’m all about working hard, but when you’ve been working hard for 12 hours in a day, it’s hard to come home and keep working when you know you don’t have to.

Furthermore, we all have things we enjoy doing: watching TV, playing games, hanging out with friends and family. When your day is cut short, you need to make the difficult decision of what you cut out.  Sometimes, because you’ve already been working all day, you find it a lot easier to cut out the extra work.

Mini To-Do List

This is something I need to get back to doing.  Having a to-do list, even if it’s small, can really help you stay accountable to getting something done.

When you break down your goals or tasks into bite-sized pieces, they’re a lot easier to tackle. Maybe all it takes is creating a one-item to-do list each morning before you go to work, so that when you get home, you know exactly what you need to do.

Sometimes half the battle is just figuring out what, of the many many things on your list, you should work on.  And often times, you find yourself throwing your hands up in the air and deciding not to do anything, because of the overwhelming list of things to do (I know this happens to me).

Here’s a good Tim Ferriss quote:

“Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.” – Tim Ferriss

Revisiting Goals

One thing I often forget to do is revisit my goals.  Sometimes when you’re feeling unproductive, all you need is a glance at your goals to whip yourself into shape.  As I look at my 2013 goals, I realize I have a long road ahead of me.

As much as I’d like to, I don’t think I can put them off until after April 15th (the tax deadline), so I need to find a way to do something each day (even if it’s really small) that helps me inch closer to my goals.

Look Back to Things that Motivate You

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with your goals – hopefully your goals motivate you.

But there are other good motivators out there.  For example, I love reading about Pat Flynn’s success story with his niche site that started out as a little informational site about security guard training and has now blossomed into a vast resource that earns him over $3,000/month.

Stories like that are incredibly motivating (to me), and sometimes that’s the push you need to become productive again.

What About You?

I told you this post would be short and sweet! (I’ve got work to do.)  What helps you to become motivated when you feel like you’re too busy to do anything outside of your real obligations (regular job, etc.)?

Please do share in the comments – thanks! 

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“I’m Too Busy.” Sound Familiar?

Related posts:

1. How Much is Your Time Really Worth?

What is Lending Club?  It’s basically a platform that allows individuals to loan money to other individuals (also known as “peer-to-peer lending”), with Lending Club as the middle man, making sure that your risk is properly identified before you make an investment.  They do everything from running a credit check on the borrower to verifying the borrower’s annual income, to make sure it’s relatively safe for you to loan them the money.

Of course, there is some risk involved, but you’re compensated for that risk by earning a nice interest rate on the loan (investment).  If you read my income reports, you’ll see I currently earn around a 6% annualized rate of return on my investment, and the average rate of all Lending Club investors is around 9%.  There’s a lot more to it, which is why I decided to write this guide and show you my strategy when investing on Lending Club.

Setting up Your Lending Club Account

Before I actually go into the investing strategy I use, I figured I should probably briefly touch upon how you actually set up your Lending Club account in terms of what you should be thinking about.

First of all, it’s free to create an account.  You can sign up here and set up your account with all the required information.  Lending Club is a secure/reputable site, so you can trust them with your sensitive information.

Upon setting up your account, you will want to make some kind of deposit so that you have money to invest.  For people that are unsure of it, I usually recommend making a $25 deposit – that’s the minimum amount you can invest in a loan, and it’ll allow you to get your feet wet.

Walking Through the Investing Process

I’m going to go through the basic investing process here so that you get an idea of how it works and so you can do it yourself.

Determine Your Tolerance for Risk

Before you even start looking at the available loans to invest in, you should first think to yourself, “how much risk am I willing to accept?”  If you feel like you’re a bit more conservative, you may decide to invest in loans that seem very safe, but also don’t pay a high interest rate.

On the flip side, if you’re only using a small % of your investing portfolio for Lending Club, you may decide it’s worth being a bit more aggressive - in which case, you would target loans that offer a higher interest rate.

No matter what your tolerance for risk is, the process will be the same.  Even if you want to be more aggressive, you still want to make smart choices.  After all, the end goal is to not only make money, but to make enough money to compensate for the risk you are taking on.

Browse Available Loans and Consider ALL Available Information

This is the most challenging part of the process, because you’ll have a lot of information and different loans to sort through. Here’s a sample of what it looks like when you are browsing available loans:

The Loan Rating

The first column basically shows you the quality/rating of the loan along with the expected interest that you would earn if you invest in the loan.  The ”A” type loans are the highest quality – this means, the borrower probably had his or her income verified, has a great credit score, little to no history of defaulting on loans, low outstanding debt, etc.

The “G” type loans (not pictured in the list above) are the worst.  There’s a lot more risk here, but the interest rate they offer can be 25% or higher.  I typically stay away from these, but that doesn’t mean you should if you’re willing to take on a little bit of risk with a smaller investment.

B through F obviously fall somewhere in between, and you of course should evaluate each loan individually before making a decision.

The Term

The term is the period over which the loan will be repaid to you (loan payments are typically made on a monthly basis).  Most loans are 36 months (3 years) but there are some that are 60 months (5 years).  You’ll notice in the image above that the loans that are 60 months give you an extra bonus.  The loan second from the top shows “+3.52%”.

What this means is, you’re getting an extra 3.52% for allowing the person to borrow over 5 years instead of 3.  Again, this is all tied to risk – the longer the loan will be outstanding, the more uncertainty there is (what if they lose their job in 4 years?), so therefore, there is more risk.

FICO, Amount, and Purpose

These columns are pretty straightforward.  The FICO score is the person’s credit score (to learn more about how the FICO score works, look at this Wikipedia page).

The amount is the total loan amount that the borrower is requesting.  As an investor, you will (most likely) only be investing in a small portion of that loan, starting as small as $25.  Even though your investment will be small, it still important to consider the total amount the person is investing, and the purpose for which they are going to use it.

For example, if I see a loan for $50,000 with a description that says “Credit card debt consolidation“, there are some red flags that go up in my mind.  This person has racked up $50,000 in credit card debt that they have not been able to repay yet, and they are now turning to Lending Club to try and move that debt into something with a lower interest rate. It’s smart on their part, but do you want to invest in someone who racked up $50,000 in credit card debt to begin with?  Doesn’t sound like a financially responsible person to me.

On the other hand, if the person needs the money for a home improvement or something else like that, and their credit score, etc. looks good, I might be more inclined to invest.  As I’ll explain later on, you’ll be able to click on the loan and read more about it beyond the one-line purpose shown on the screen above.

% Funded and Amount / Time Left

Social, peer-to-peer lending is an interesting thing.  Not only are you trying to make an investment decision based on the characteristics of the borrower, but you can also take a look at what other people are doing.

For example, if there is a loan listing that expires in 10 hours and is only 5% funded, there’s probably a good reason for it, and perhaps you should stay away from it.

On the other hand, if there’s a loan that people seem to be quick to invest in and is almost fully funded well in advance of the loan listing’s expiration time, that might be a good loan to look into and see if it’s something you want to invest in.  These aren’t metrics that should necessarily drive your investment decision, but they are additional signals that can help you determine whether or not it might be a good investment.

Looking Deeper into a Loan That Interests You

Once you’ve identified a loan that looks interesting (based on the metrics shown on the summary page), you can dig deeper into it to see more information.  Here’s an example of one that I looked at:

I would rate my interest in this loan as moderate.  There are a few things I don’t like, but given the fact that the interest rate is a whopping 15.80%, I can’t expect it to be perfect.

Let’s analyze the loan by first looking at some things that I like:

• 15.80% Interest rate - This is what first got me interested in the loan.  Part of the reason it’s so high is because it’s a 5-year loan, not a 3-year loan, but that alone isn’t going to stop me.

• Verified Income - Lending Club has verified the borrower’s income (which they don’t always do), so that’s a big plus for me.

• Good employment record - This person has been employed for the past 10+ years and I can even see who the current employer is.

• No delinquencies - In the past two years, this person hasn’t had any delinquencies (i.e. no issues repaying debt).

• Credit score is good (not great) – This borrower’s FICO score is 695-700, which is considered fairly good by most standards.  It’s not great, but it’s good enough for me to have some trust in this borrower.

• Social signals - This shouldn’t be weighed too heavily, but I like to see that the loan is already 67% funded with 10 days to go.  It tells me that many other investors have decided to invest.  And while we don’t know how smart the other investors are, it’s still a somewhat positive signal.

• Renter - Depending on your perspective, this could be good or bad.  With someone at this income level, I like knowing that this person doesn’t have a mortgage to worry about.

Now, some things I don’t like as much:

• Purpose of the loan - The total loan ($19,750) is going to be used to pay off existing debt.  This always leads me to ask, “how did the debt become so great to begin with?” This leads us to a further question: “If this person continues to build up additional debt, will they be able to continue paying down our loan for the 5 year duration?”  No one knows for sure, which is a big reason why the interest rate is what it is.

• Relatively low income compared to loan - Assuming the $3,683 gross monthly income is only around $2,700 or so after taxes (this is only a guesstimate), the monthly loan payment represents almost 18% of this person’s income.  Again, this is okay, but it’s not ideal.

Overall Analysis 

Even though I’ve only listed two negative points compared to 7 positive points, the two negative points are very significant.  This is the type of loan I would invest in a small percentage of the time (maybe 10-20% of the loans I invest in).  It’s okay to take some risks, but you have to keep your entire portfolio in mind and how it relates to your overall risk tolerance.

Determining an Amount to Invest

This is going to be based on your personal preference, but I like to strictly stick to $25 per investment.  This way, I can be sure that my portfolio is diversified.  Inevitably, you will eventually run into a bad loan and the borrower won’t pay it back in full.  When this happens, your risk will be minimized if your loan amount was only $25.

If you have a lot of money to invest, you might consider increasing the loan size to $50 or $75, but that’s not something I’ve done due to my portfolio size (under $5,000 right now).

If you start out by depositing $500, don’t feel like you need to get out there and invest in 20 loans right away.  Take your time, and only invest if you see loans that you like.  It doesn’t hurt you to have a little bit of cash sitting idle while you wait for a good loan to appear.

Reinvesting

Even though most loans are three years, you’ll generally start to see money coming back after the first month (because the borrower typically pays the loan back on a monthly basis). Each payment you receive will consist of both principal (i.e. the money you’ve loaned the borrower) and interest (the compensation you receive for lending the money).

Eventually, that repaid principal + interest will accumulate to $25+.  At this point, you can take the money and reinvest it in a new loan.  I am constantly reinvesting the money I receive, so each month I’m able to invest in new loans without actually depositing more money into Lending Club.  I’d recommend doing this if you want to maximize your rate of return.

Streamlining the Investing Process: Filters

Lending Club allows you to save filters so that you can always see the loans that match your preferences (loan rating, verified income, etc.) and don’t have to set them each time you log in to look for a new investment.

You should set your filters to match your risk tolerance and other preferences, but in case you’re wondering what mine looks like, you can see it pictured on the right.

You don’t want your filters to be too restrictive because you might be filtering out good loans that you’d actually like to invest in.  Your best bet is to only filter out the types of loans that you definitely would not invest in.

Here are the key aspects of my filters (as pictured to the right):

• Lending Club has approved the loan application.

• Show loans of ALL grades.

• Show both 36 and 60-month loans

• Debt to income ratio must be 25% or less.

• Exclude the loans I’ve already invested in.

• Must have NO delinquencies in the past two years.

• Credit score must be at least 695.

Conclusion

There you have it – that’s my investing strategy and how I make passive income with Lending Club.  There’s nothing too exciting about investing in loans – it’s like investing in a CD or stock.  You put the money in and sit back while you wait for the investment to pay off.  In this case, I believe the return is nice given the risk involved.

Once again, you can sign up for free here, and get started with as little as $25.  If you have any questions at all, please leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

If you decide to invest, best of luck, and hopefully you find it to be a great source of passive income like I do!

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How I Make Money with Lending Club (My Investing Strategy)

Related posts:

1. Review: Lending Club – A Great Source of Passive Income (and a free $25!)
2. Revisiting Passive Income With Lending Club
3. My Blog and Passive Income Experiments Update [July '10]

Once again, I beat my earnings record as everything that was doing well in November and December continued into January.  I’m excited about all the different projects I have in play right now as I look forward to a big year in 2013.

Without further ado, here’s the January report…

A Brief Overview of January

I was excited to find that January was my best earning month so far because tax season has officially begun and, as usual, I will be quite busy with that.

During this time of year, I usually work 60+ hours a week (which includes Saturdays), leaving very little time for my online business.  I’m sure I will get through it just fine though, as I have for the past few years.

Also, I just ordered this Chromebook, which I’m very excited to begin using.  The laptop I currently have is great, but it’s still kind of bulky to carry around (it has a 17″ screen).  I want something I can easily travel with and work on while I’m sitting in bed, so I think having the Chromebook will add to my overall productivity, especially when my free time is limited over the next few months.

Not only is it small and very lightweight, but it’s completely cloud-based.  It won’t completely take the place of my current laptop (and desktop), but it’ll give me more flexibility.  If anyone has used a Chromebook before, feel free to leave a comment about it – I’m curious to see what other people think.

Anyway, let’s get to the numbers. 

January Income Report

Article Writing

Good news from InfoBarrel - they are working on a system that will allow you to earn money from AdSense without having an AdSense account.  In essence, they will share with you a % of the revenue they generate from ads on your articles, similar to the way Squidoo does (except it’ll be much more direct, without a complicated tier/ranking system that Squidoo has).  I’m very excited for this development, and can’t wait for it to be implemented.

As for Squidoo, I’ve been hard at work creating new lenses in my spare time.  Currently, I am up to 59 lenses.  As you may recall, my goal is to create at least 200 lenses this year.  I don’t expect to create too many over the next few months, but should have no problem hitting 200 by the end of the year.

Here’s a summary of all my article-related income for January:

Squidoo

• Amazon: $5.56
• Revenue Sharing: $6.31

InfoBarrel

• Chitika: $0.10

Total Article Writing Income: $11.97

Lending Club

Lending Club, as usual, remains one of my favorite online passive income sources, mainly because (as I’ve said before) I believe it’s my only truly passive income source.  If you are unfamiliar with Lending Club, however, you should read my original write-up.  I wrote it a long time ago, but it still applies today.  Look for an updated guide sometime this month about my investing strategy with Lending Club.

January was a solid month, where my rate held steady.  I’m now invested in 155 loans (+2 from December) and my net annualized return is 5.80% (No change from December).

I’m happy with this return even if it is below Lending Club’s advertised average, because it’s a much higher rate than I’d earn in a bank account, CD, or other relatively safe investment.  Keep in mind that there is some risk involved (I’ve had a few borrowers default on their loans), but with all of that considered, my rate is still close to 6%.

If you’re interested in trying Lending Club, you can sign up with this link and get a free account.  If you’re unsure whether this type of investing is right for you, you can deposit a small amount (investments can be as small as $25) and become familiar with it. I am an affiliate for Lending Club, so if you have any questions about it, I’d be more than happy to answer them in the comments (or feel free to contact me by e-mail).

Niche Sites

No movement here, which has been the case over the last several months.  I’m basically just letting a handful of sites sit and earn what they can.  If at some point the projected annual earnings is less than the cost to renew the domain, I’ll let the domain expire (as I have done with most of my mini-niche sites).

• Amazon: $23.55
• Media.net: $0.00
• Chitika: $0.00
• InfoLinks: $0.00
• Commission Junction: $0.00
• Total: $23.55

Authority Sites

Authority Site #1 (Not Revealed)

I learned a somewhat valuable lesson with this  site over the past couple of months.  If you remember, I originally took down this site because I thought the .ME domain was interfering with the site’s ranking, and thought a .COM domain would work better.

Then, I changed my mind and decided to put all the content back onto the .ME domain.  After over a month, I realized I wasn’t receiving a single visit from the search engines, which was extremely odd.  Even though Google doesn’t seem to like the site, I would always get at least a few hits per day from Bing/Yahoo.

As it turns out, when I decided to put this site back up on the .ME domain, I forgot to check one critical setting within WordPress:

My site wasn’t being indexed in the search engines because of this setting! Nevertheless, I fixed it, and now I’m receiving traffic again (although it’s a very small amount).

January Earnings:

• Media.net: $0.21

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My Passive Income Report [January 2013]

Related posts:

1. My Passive Income Report [February 2013]
2. My Passive Income Report [March 2013]
3. My Passive Income Report [April 2013]

Although you may see my earnings (or lack thereof) in my monthly income reports, you don’t really get to see what’s happening behind the scenes.  Progress has been slow and steady, but continues to head in a positive direction.

Given the fact that my Slow Carb Diet Experiments site is in the health & diet niche,  I expected things to move rather slowly, but I’m still confident that I can continue to get the site to grow.

Here’s what’s been going on with the site…

Traffic Update

Traffic is what I focus on above all other metrics (earnings, etc.) because traffic is the source of everything good when you own a blog or website.  No traffic means no….anything.

For along time, my traffic growth was pretty flat.  Every day there were between 30-50 unique visitors, and it didn’t seem like that number was growing.  Recently, however, I’ve noticed an uptick in traffic thanks to a lot of sharing via Pinterest.

Here’s what the traffic looks like since the beginning of this past December:

As you can see, traffic has more recently been in the 60-80 visits per day range instead of the 20-50 I was used to seeing over the past few months.

Given the length of my posts and the fact that most of them are recipes (i.e. they are shorter in length), I think a bounce rate of 61.75% isn’t too bad.  I think the average visit duration is a bit lower than it used to be because a lot more of my traffic is coming from Pinterest.

Pinterest traffic is high quality (because most people are essentially bookmarking your page for future use), but when they initially visit a recipe (for example), they’re not actually using it yet.  Therefore, they don’t stay on the page as long.

Here’s a breakdown of my traffic over that time period:

It’s clear that I haven’t yet made much progress with search engine rankings.  Google has provided about the same amount of traffic as Yahoo and Bing, but I’m actually ranking better for my target keywords on Yahoo/Bing.

Most of my Google traffic is from people either Googling my URL or “slow carb diet experiments”, which I of course rank #1 for because it’s the name of the blog.  Otherwise, Google hasn’t yet been kind to the site.  I can’t help feeling like there might be some kind of over-optimization penalty in play either with my on-page keyword density or the anchor text of my backlinks.

Pinterest has been the best traffic source for the site, and to me that isn’t surprising.  Food-related sites tend to do very well with Pinterest, assuming you can take good pictures of food. One of the things that has really helped me gain more traffic from Pinterest is this plugin, which makes it really easy for people to pin various images within each of my posts.

Earnings Update

Ultimately, this is what everyone (including myself) is interested in.  It’s great that the traffic is increasing, but is the site earning any money?

Up until recently, I made no real attempts to monetize the site outside of a handful of Amazon affiliate links placed in random places throughout my posts.  Now, I’ve started integrating ads from Media.net.

Earnings have been minimal, but given my traffic numbers, the Media.net ads are probably doing just as well AdSense would have done.  I placed the ads on the site earlier this month and they have, so far, generated about $4.00.   Obviously, that’s nothing to get excited about.

It’s important to keep in mind that the food niche isn’t necessarily a hot niche for ad revenue. I suspect I will need a substantial amount of traffic to start earning anything respectable from these ads.  Also, I can test the ad placement and design to see what might give me better results.  Right now I have one ad block within each post (near the top), and one tower ad in the sidebar (“below the fold”).

I thought Amazon would do a lot better, but so far, it’s been a disappointment.  Over the past month or so, the site has generated over 250 clicks and only one sale.  It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that this conversion rate is really bad.  Again, this could be niche related – people who are browsing recipes may not be in a buyer’s mindset.

Nevertheless, people are always buying from Amazon, so just getting them to click on the link is really most of the battle.  I plan on sticking with Amazon for awhile longer on the site, because I still think it can do a lot better than it has been.

The Mailing List

One other way I plan on making money eventually with this site is through the mailing list I’m building (via Aweber).  Currently, I have about 40 subscribers.  When it’s all said and done, I think any real money I make with this site will be with the list.

During the holidays, I can point people to a post that contains lots of Amazon affiliate links (such as “Top 10 Gifts for Amateur Cooks”), and if I eventually come out with my own product (be it an eBook, a course, or some other digital product), the list will be the key to making sales.

Overall Thoughts & Looking Forward

While progress has been slow on this authority site, it has so far been my favorite site that I’ve built.  Cooking has become a real hobby of mine, and even if I have trouble actually sticking to the slow carb diet, I enjoy coming up with new recipes that taste good and fit the rules of the diet.

People always say to “follow your passion“, and it’s become so cliche that I feel weird even mentioning it.  The reason it’s important to write about things that genuinely interest you though is because you will continue to work at it even when things aren’t going well. If my authority site was about something I had no interest in (such as women’s handbags), I would’ve easily given up months ago.

I still believe this authority site has a lot of potential as long as I continue to build the traffic and e-mail list.  The only way that’s going to happen is if I keep cranking out new content, and that’s definitely something I plan on doing.  In such a competitive niche, persistence is probably the #1 factor that sets the leaders apart from everyone else.  

Anyway, enough about me.  How is your authority site doing?  Leave a comment below!

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An Update on Traffic, Earnings, & More [Authority Site Duel]

Related posts:

1. Niche Site Duel – Update #3: Earnings, Rank, and Traffic Update
2. Crafting an Effective Content Strategy [Authority Site Duel]
3. Finally Revealed: My New Site & The Authority Site Duel