Yeah, I know that I’m gonna get an entire internet marketing army after me for writing this blog post. If you’re currently running niche sites or if you’re thinking about creating one, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

I see a lot of people pushing “small niche sites” these days. Most often they are quickly setup WordPress sites (not that there’s anything wrong with WordPress though) with some quickly written articles – most of the time by someone who has know idea of the subject. The sites are most often monetized by Google AdSense showing ads to the unlucky visitors who get sucked in there in the promise of a quick fix to their problems.

Of course niche sites can be much more than this, but this is pretty much the model that I see most people online try to do.

Now don’t get me wrong, this does sound like an awesome business model, I mean create a website in a couple of minutes, create a few blog posts and add Google AdSense through a simple “click to install” WordPress plugin. Most people who have done this before will tell you that the entire site can be up and running within a day.

Usually you won’t make a lot of money from a small niche site with AdSense on (some people are also adding Amazon products through affiliate links) so the real power of the model is to create tons of these small niche sites. Now when I say tons I really mean tons. I’ve seen people with hundreds of these type of sites.

But I really feel that the business model is flawed in some way – more on that in a minute.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve never made any serious money doing niche sites (Disclaimer: I have written an ebook in a narrow niche and selling it through a niche site, but is not really seeing many sales), so perhaps it’s just me who’s being a little bit naive. So if you’re raking in millions on small AdSense enabled websites, then feel free to comment below and call me something less flattering.

To me it just looks like someone is making a ton og money teaching other people to start small niche sites – but most people doing them are making peanuts.

Now I’m all for creating online businesses that can support your desired lifestyle (actually you can work with me in a coaching program very soon!) but when I look at a business model I really need to see how ALL aspects of the model goes together. And I like the business to be a win-win situation where my clients is also getting something of value and not some poorly written 500 word article written by someone with no knowledge of the subject matter besides a few Google searches.

So without any filter here are my thoughts on the business model.

The content is crappy most of the time

Since it’s all about getting traffic to a site so the visitors can click on the ads, and because the business model is about quantity over quality – there is really very little time to create the content.

The entire business models relies on people clicking on an ad and leaving your site, so the content should just be good enough to attract some people, not good enough to keep them hanging around.

You could of course argue that you are giving this content away for free and your visitor is not paying you anything, sure that’s a valid argument – but again I don’t think that makes for a sustainable business since people won’t be coming back to your site once they left it (at least not on purpose).

I know I’m generalizing here, there are exceptions and later I will share my thoughts on what seem to work.

Traffic generation is almost always organic

And this is really a big one!

Since these sites are generating so little profit, you need to rely on free traffic from the search engines (oh… did I say search engines? I mean Google of course ).

Because of this the niches are very narrow ensuring that they can rank well in Google using absolut match domains for long tail keywords.

But let’s face it….
Google’s a bitch and you’ve just based your entire business on it!

With first the Panda update and now the Penguin update (if you don’t know what’s up with all the animals, just know that they’re changes to the Google result algorithm) a lot of niche sites have been killed totally in the search results. Typically jumping from high page one positions to nowhere to be found. Not just a few positions, or maybe a page… No.. Totally off the first 10 pages for their targetted keyword.

Heck I’ve even lost 10-20% traffic from Google to this blog after the Penguin update even though I think I put out some quality content (at least the best to my ability ).

But hey… I don’t blame them though – we should all be interested in higher quality content online.

But since you’re using Google as the only traffic strategy to these sites (since you don’t have the money to pay for traffic with these very narrow sites).

So if you need to create better content and get better backlinks to your site, that means you need to put a lot of hard work into the site (surprise surprise).

And let’s face it… If you can potentiall just make $50-$100 a month and you’re not really passionate about the subject, then why the hell start one in the first place.

We’ve all been told the lie that it’s easy to make money online.

I hate to be the one telling you but that’s simply not true. No… making money online is EASIER than it was to create a business before in the offline world. There is a lower entry barrier because you no longer needs a physical presence, stock and employees, but with that said, you still need to work you ass of before the money come rolling.

So what works in regard with niche sites

Well the first guy that comes to mind when I think of the word “niche sites” and has been responsible for getting it out in a big way is Pat Flynn.

Now Pat is super cool and most like the nicest guy online and he’s made quite a cool site with his niche site on Security Training.

But again as you can probably see if you go through the site, he’s spend a lot of time on the site. Also he had an entry into the niche as his mother has apparently been working as a security guard. So while the initial site could probably have been setup in a day, he has spend a lot of hours on it.

Actually Pat is probably the closests thing you come to a productivity robot and he seems to provide quality content on a lot of different areas (if you don’t know his blog you really want to head over there).

He also have a few other niche sites but they are making peanuts compared to the Security Guard site as you can clearly see from his most recent income report.

I haven’t followed the progress of those sites however, so I cannot tell you how hard he’s working on it.

On a different note you also have Justin and Joe from AdSense Flippers. They are pushing out tons of niche sites, but their business model is really about selling the niches sites (as in the word “Flippers”).

Although they are bringing in almost $3000 in AdSense alone – as you can see by their most rencent income report – I’m looking forward to the one for April to see the results after the Penguin swept the land.

So the new buzz word is…

Should we have a drumroll here?!

Authority sites. Yikes… Don’t even get me started. If someone has a decent definition of the word, please share this in the comments.

To me it’s also just bullshit as my definition is that it’s just a website with quality content with quality backlinks leading in.

This is simply how a website really should be!

Related posts:

1. 3 methods for identifying niche keywords
2. Free webinar from Niche Profit Classroom
3. Marketing my niche ebook product

It’s funny how that when you look at our western culture we tend to identify ourself with how we make money, what we do for a living, what our JOB is.

Well actually it’s not that funny since we (and I’m using we as a broad term as I don’t see myself in this group of people) tend to spend most of our waking time on our job, leaving very little time to things like our family, our personal well being, time to reflect over life, our true passions and hobbies, caring for friends and personal relationships etc.

But what is the alternative? We need money to survive don’t we?

Before diving deeper into my point with this blog post, I just want to share a study made by a palliative nurse who recently wrote a book called
“The Top Five Regrets of the Dying – A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing”

And yes, as the title goes – it’s basically about what people regrets when they are on their deathbeds.

Regrets of the dying

The top five regrets of people dying are according to the study:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Reference: http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

While all of these points could in it self be discussed, I really want to spend some time with point number 2.

I wish I had’t worked so hard

Isn’t it strange that the thing we are told by the surrounding society to spend the most time on, also turns out to be almost our biggest regret of life?

Isn’t it a failure for us as a society when we continue to tell our young ones that the secret to well being and a good life is to get good grades, get a good job, work your ass of and eventually retire with a false hip, bad heart and a little bit extra in the bank account?

The ultimate currency

For me having worked with lifestyle design for several years now, have radically re-programmed me from these believes and public expectations. Also having two kids and wanting for them to have the awesome childhood I don’t think I ever got, has helped me realize how I truely feel our priorities should change.

I know no longer see money as the true goal to pursue. While sure money can be spend and leave our lives, we can always get more and replenish the money that left us. It’s a replenishable resource!

On the other hand is TIME.

Once time is gone, it’s gone for good. While we can certainly extend our lives a little by living a healthy life with exercise and eating sensible, we really only have a fixed period on this wonderful planet. Until someone invents an “live-forever-machine” TIME is an unreplenishable resource!

So how come that we most of our lives pursue money, in order to get a litte time towards the ends of our lives?
How come most people live after what Timothy Ferriss calls “The Deferred Lifeplan”?

My own conclussion

For me TIME has become of much greater value than money.

I want time for my kids and my family, I want time with my own personal projects that I’m truely passionate about, I want to inspire other people to take action and change their lives for the better and tons of other stuff that don’t involve me going to a boring 9-5 working on someone else’s ideas.

I get time by building businesses where I don’t end up selling my hours. Businesses that scale well and can generate cashflow even though I’m not directly involved in every little thing.

I get time by using outsourcing and have people helping me out with the stuff I’m really not that passionate about or stuff that I suck at and would spend way to much time stressing over having to do it.

I get time by actively choosing what “stuff” I want in my life. While I certainly loves a good gadget as a lot of other people, I really think about whether I truly need something before I buy it, or it’s just another “thing” that will take up space and drain mental power because I have one more thing to care about. Turn your back on consumerism and accept “needurism”

So treassure your time more than money. It’s certainly of much higher value. And think about how you want your life!

When you are on your deathbed, will you also regret having worked too much? Or will you smile and say that you lived a truly wonderful life!

No related posts.

As Timothy Ferriss directs his attention to his other books is the 4-Hour Workweek book dead?

It might be a provocative blog title since the book is still selling quite well at Amazon

(source: Amazon)

But what I mean is that it’s being mentioned less and less and people are searching for keywords relating to it less and less. And when you as me has a blog that’s related to “brand” as you might say. That is something that worries me (although this blog has turned out to be about a lot of other stuff as well, mainly focusing on the business side of things).

As you can see below the “4 hour workweek” keyword is indeed on a downward curve.

(source: Google)

The book is really about lifestyle design, so I guess that a lot people has taken the whole idea behind the book and the values and perhaps ditched the whole “4 Hour Workweek” term. Probably because a 4 hour workweek really is not the end goal. Tim’s book is more of a manifest rather than a recipe, it’s really all about living the way that is right for you and not being stuck in a 9-5 if you all you want is to travel the world with your family.

Tim just shows you that it’s indeed possible to work less and still support your desired lifestyle. It worked for me and tons of other people (just check out all the success stories on Tim’s blog).

Another symptom is the declining use of the official 4 Hour Workweek forums over on Tim’s site. Not sure what the state is now, but recently it was not possible for new users to sign up because of a lot of spam being done. Some time ago I considered setting up my own 4 Hour Workweek forum because I thought that the official ones left something to desired.

While they have still not been updated, I would never be able to compete with the official domain, so I scrapped the idea (although my guy did end up setting up a forum).

EDIT: I can’t post or reply on the forum. How crappy. I’ve been a member for a long time now and have contributed constructively. There has been activity as late as yesterday (15′th of April 2012) but apparently only certain people can post there. So I guess that the forums are dead!

For the record, I still think the 4-Hour Workweek kicks ass

This is not me having a problem with the book, there are a lot of skeptics out there, but for me it has served as great inspiration.

It made me take a look at my life and question if I wanted to work full time on other people’s ideas or take control over my own life and build a business that would support my desired lifestyle. And now with two kids it’s more relevant than ever.

So should anything be done

So why is this even remotely interesting. Well… perhaps it’s not really that interesting to you (sorry – but I’m super excited that you’re still reading ), but lately I’ve been considering moving this blog to another domain name.

It would still be the same content and topic, but simply to build my own brand instead of biting the tail of an established brand that is on a decline.

The blog is certainly having it’s own audience now, but I still see traffic to the blog coming from Google through “4 hour workweek” related keywords, so perhaps it’s a bit early for it.

On the other hand, most successful people who are blogging about lifestyle design and changing their lives in order to gain time and mobility as well as money, are doing this under their own “brands”. Perhaps mentioning Tim as an initial inspiration on the about page, but that’s it.

My buddy Eric is currently blogging about niche sites, so I guess that he has sort of the same problem with his domain name that is really close to mind.

Not sure if he has some of the same thoughts, but as Timothy Ferriss continues to release books and the whole marketing machine will be directed further and further away from the first one, we will eventually all have to think about this issue.

So what do you think?

Am I being paranoid here? Should I start my own brand? Have you also created a blog tied closely to another company/person’s brand? Got an awesome idea for a new domain name for this blog?

Let me know in the comments…

Related posts:

1. Do we need a “4-hour workweek” forum?
2. New Danish site about the 4-Hour Workweek
3. List of other “4-hour workweek” blogs

Want to work less and enjoy life more, and would like help with this? Well read on…

Over the last couple of years, a lot of people have contacted me through the contact form on this page.

Some with simple questions on a specific plugin I use on this blog, but most on how to start living their own 4-hour workweek (disclaimer: I work a couple of months each year).

Sometimes it’s been enough to simply point them in the right direction or simply inspire them to take action, while othertimes I’ve worked with them more closely typically communicating over email or Skype.

I’ve basically done this free of charge because I like working with people and I earn my money elsewhere. But I’ve also reached sort of a max on how many people I can manage this way.

So I’ve thought about how I could scale this and help more people. Most of the time I drag people through the same process anyway so why not define this process more explicit than what I’ve done in the past over just over email and skype sessions.

This has lead me to create an online training program where you also get access to me.

The program will help you create lifestyle businesses that in return will reward you with more time and mobility. It is of course inspired by the 4-Hour Workweek book by Timothy Ferriss, but the program will be more focused on the business aspect and getting deeper than the book can take you.

This post is merely a teaser the people on my newsletter list will be the first ones to know since they (that’s you if you are already on it) have already shown an interest in what I do.

So if you want to work with there is good and bad news. The good news is that I will be able to work with much more people and have a much more organized process, the bad news is that I’m going to charge for it.

When that is said, everyone on my newsletter list will get a super low introduction price if they become charter members. This charter member price will only be announced to the newsletter list and only available here, so if you are even remotely interested in working less and enjoying life more, you should consider signing up for my newsletter list (you can always unsubscribe and you get a free ebook as well).

I want to reward those who have already taken action and while the charter member price is probably going to be a bad business move for me, it will make sure that everyone can participate in the fun.

Once I’ve made the offer to my newsletter list, it will be opened up for everyone, but at a slightly higher price.

Besides the paid program, I’m also going to release some video training that you can enjoy even if you don’t want to spend any money!

I’m super excited about this. I’ve been recording videos the last couple of months which has been super fun and I can’t wait to share it all with you.

So look forward to the big announcement about this

No related posts.

And then it happened. This site got hacked! If you’ve visited this site in the last couple of days and have been redirected to some obscure website most likely to end with “rr.nu” or something like that I sincerely apologize!

Luckily I found this fairly quick and I don’t think that this has been going on for more than a couple of days (on and off, I’ll explain a little later), but if you have noticed strange behavior on this site for more than 3-4 days ago I would really like to hear from you in the comments or directly through my contact form.

It has been quite nasty. If you went directly to my site typing the url in the browser address bar, you would see my normal site (and this is basically how I visit the site), but if you came through Google (as the majority of people who visit this site), then you would most likely be redirected to a site that the hacker had chosen.

This small thing makes it quite difficult to actually identify that your own site has been hacked, I will discuss later what you can do to make sure that you’re not hacked yourself (and what you can do if you are).

Getting Access To My Site

The hackers installed some “malware” on my site so they basically could steal the traffic I had. In order to do this, they modified some files on my hosting account (all the php files in the theme I was using).

And this is the first problem, because how did the hackers actually get access to the files on my hosting company? First I thought it was through a file in my theme that I know has been a problem before, but I remember fixing this file a long time ago when I first heard of the problem. I also keep fairly complex passwords on all my hosting accounts, so the idea of someone guessing my password is also not a viable solution.

Then I remembered that my hosting company was recently hacked and they forced a password change to all accounts. Could it be that the hackers had actually created a backdoor at this point?! For now I think that is the most likely explanation.

The problem is that while I can clean the infected files on my hosting account, if I didn’t find the hole that the hackers had gone through there would really be no point as they could just infect my site again.

So what do you do when your site get hacked?! Well here’s what I did and usually the recommended fix.

Cleaning Out the Ghosts

Remove the malware

First of all I needed to clean all the files. My main concern was all my theme files, so I went through each php file in my theme and looked for code that should not be there. The particular malware that was installed on my site had some encoded php code in the beginning of each file, so it was easy to identify and remove it.

I did this on a local copy of the theme on my own machine in order to make sure that the files was not infected directly after I removed it.

Change passwords

I changed the following passwords

• FTP user passwords
• Database user password

I could also have chosen to change my WordPress administrative user password (my website is running on the WordPress platform – if you’re using some other platform you should still change the password for your user), but instead I opted to simply reinstall WordPress because I wanted to make sure that the hackers hadn’t also changed some of the core WordPress files (simply too many to go through all of them).

Reinstall WordPress and Plugins

While I did have a recent backup of my WordPress database (I revisit doing backups later ), I chose to keep my database as it was (besides changing the password of the database user) and only reinstall the WordPress files. This meant wiping all files on my hosting account. IF YOU DO THIS, REMEMBER TO HAVE A BACKUP!

For me that included in copying the folder /wp-content/uploads/ to my desktop because this folder contained all the uploaded images. I made sure that there was no php files in there that could be infected (some hackers put php files in that folder and it hides among your perfectly normal images).

I also had a backup of my now cleaned theme (since it’s a custom theme that I’ve changed over time).

So I scrapped all the files on my hosting account and reinstalled WordPress (using the old database). I then manually reinstalled all the plugins I was using before (I had written down a list of them), uploaded my theme and my uploaded images.

Then I should be ready for rock’n rolling.

Back From Planet 9

It didn’t take many hours before I noticed some strange behavior on my site again (I watched it closely). Actually it was just the next day, but this could easily have happended after just a few hours (or literally minutes).

Now I had just spend half a day cleaning out after the last attack, so I was quite annoyed by this. I had clearly not closed the whole that the hackers came through.

And this also made me feel a little in despair because while I don’t know how to code in PHP (the coding language behind WordPress) I do know a thing or two about coding and computer nerdy stuff. So if I couldn’t clean out the malware and didn’t know how to close the whole after my elaborate cleaning process, then what should I do?

Going to the Dreamhost

I created a support ticket with my hosting company Dreamhost. Up until now I’ve satisfied with them, they’ve had a few things that made me look elsewhere, but the majority of sites was still hosted here.

It was obvious that I needed some help with this. I also started looking online for other people being hacked this way and infected with the same malware. And I found a quite a few people having this exact issue and mainly people using Dreamhost.

Could This Be a Coincident?

I mean they was recently hacked right? Well waiting for a support ticket with Dreamhost could take a while and I wanted a solution now. Also I kind of expected the first response from them would be something a long the lines of instructions that I’d already done.

So what should I do instead?

Moving Day… Bye Bye Dreamers

Now I was unsure if this was because of Dreamhost or not. I had several other sites there, and perhaps if one of the other sites was infected they could somehow get access to this site. It meant that even if I cleaned this site, the files could still be infected by the other site.

So I moved! Also the fact that I didn’t hear from Dreamhost support (and now after nearly 24 hours I still haven’t heard from them) made me want to at least do something.

I have another hosting account with Greengeeks where I create all my new sites, and while I still like parts of the whole Dreamhost experience better, I simply need an alternative after so many years with Dreamhost.

So I did the whole operation again! This time also restoring the database to the new database server.

I waited… And the malware was back from planet 9! I had clearly NOT closed the backdoor that they were getting in through.

Back in despair… What to do… Can’t even blame Dreamhost (although it started with them and most infected people I’ve seen online is indeed hosting with Dreamhost).

Getting the Shit Fixed

In my search for other people sharing my pain I stumbled across the company Sucuri. And they wanted to take my pain away. First off they had this scanner on their page that could instantly identify if there was something wrong with your site, and since it can be difficult to find this malware (in my case only visitors coming through from the search engines was redirected to the hackers page) this was a quite cool thing.

I strongly recommend visiting their website and trying to scan you own website!

After my latest attempt to clean it out myself with the move to Greengeeks, I chose to pay Sucuri for removing the malware for me. The price is rather low, and compared to all the time I’ve spent on this, I couldn’t turn this down.

So I bought one of their packages and reported that I had a malware problem.

Now I won’t bore you with the details but after just 1 hour and 20 minutes after I had reported this they had cleaned my site. Looking at the list of cleaned files, I think I identified a couple of files that I had not found the malware in myself, so I guess that this was the backdoor. At least here half a day later (just had to sleep a little ) the site is still ok according to their scanners (I had to change passwords again, but this is a minor thing).

By the way, Dreamhost support has still not answered my support ticket although I created it with the second highest priority (the higest one says something like “people are dying…” and though I don’t want my site infected… I can’t quite say that it’s killing people).

Also the cost of me spending time on fixing this again and again is way higher if you factor in my own hourly consultant/coaching price, so I should probably just have gone with Sucuri to begin with.

Any Learning Points Here?! Recommedations?!

Well up until now I’ve been using a simple WordPress database backup plugin. I’ve always installed this plugin on my WordPress sites, but haven’t really had use for it up until now.

But this also made me realize that while the database might be really important, there are several other important files on your server. All your uploaded content (such as images) and the theme itself. Heck just all the plugins. It still takes a lot of time to having to reinstall all the plugins again.

So I ended up buying a dedicated plugin for backups. I have to realize that much of my business simply relies on all my WordPress sites and that they keep running, so why not invest a few bucks in a proper backup solution.

I ended up buying the BackupBuddy plugin that a lot of people online tend to recommend.

And this plugin has quite amazed me. Besides being able to just save the backups as zip files on your hosting account, they can also be moved automatically to places outside your hosting account like your Dropbox folder or even Amazon S3 (the option I’m currently using).

Hopefully you will never need to go through this, even me with a technical background, found myself a little helpless, so if you take nothing else away from this post… at least be prepared.

Have you been hacked to in the past? Experiences with Dreamhost? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

No related posts.

Regular readers of this blog have probably noticed that I really like to focus on productivity (and more productivity) and getting shit done. It all boils down to that I’m a DO’er. The downside is that I really suck at planning and usually jumps right into the action without much preparation.

While I do remember a few situations where more planning would certainly have worked wonders, the “just do it” strategy has worked really well for me.

I believe that all people are different and some people perhaps favor planning over actual doing. This is actually a pattern that I’ve seen in a few people and also the topic of this post.

Is there some small kind of tweak or secret that can make people who are perhaps a little low on getting things done up and perform like crazy?

DISCLAIMER:
Notice that by “perform like crazy” I mean getting things done! I really hope that we agree that eventually something must be done and you cannot just sit and brainstorm/plan/prepare/think forever. Implementation and action should always follow up planning. Hereby not saying that I don’t think that you should plan, if this is something you feel for, by all means… plan. Just remember to timebox the planning so you know when you should actually start doing something so you are not caught in a never ending planning/brainstorming phase.

People are passionate but are not taking action

I’ve met and talked wth several people who are clearly very passionate about a given subject and can talk forever about the subject, yet they never seem to follow up on this passion and do anything about it (other than talk about it that is).

This is of course not you…

It could be as simple as creating a blog or perhaps starting a small business where they could start focusing on what they were really passionate about instead of their boring 9-5 job.

Yet even though they would love to just follow their passion and only work with the subject all year long, they seem to be stuck where they are.

I of course acknowledge that not all know how to easily setup a website or how to generate profit on your passion – but surely if you were very passionate about something you would try to figure this out, wouldn’t you?!

Also… there are a lot of people who are indeed trying to do this, the pure number of blogs online are solid evidence of that, they are not all geeks or techies.

This has always left me a little puzzled, someone who says that they really want something and can talk passionate about the subject for hours, but does nothing to follow up on it.

As I like to help people follow their passion (and generally enjoy life more…) I started looking into their situation, and for most of them it turned out that…

The same people are working really hard in their 9-5 job?!

This was kind of strange to me. Someone who in their own time on the subject of what they were really passionate about, didn’t really get anything done, but at the same time were really productive in their 9-5 job. Not that everyone hated their 9-5 but they clearly enjoyed talking about what they were passionate about more.

So this left me intrigued. What was the secret ingredient that was different in these two contexts?

Well you can certainly say something about that you have more energy in the timespan of 9-5 while your energy might drop a bit after you’ve had dinner and are ready to start working on your own – but still… If someone was truly passionate about a subject, wouldn’t a little energy drop stop them?! I don’t think so.

Then secondly, was people afraid that they would be fired if they didn’t do a good job? No not really. Most of them felt pretty safe in their jobs and didn’t really think of being fired? Some of them even felt that they could easily get a new job if they were to be fired.

So where has this lead me? Well… it has nothing to do with fear, if anything it has to do with praise.

The secret of productivity

So what is the difference?

It’s a little word called “accountability”!

In the 9-5 job people are expecting them to deliver! If they don’t deliver, they will be held accountable both by their boss but also by their co-workers. You cannot sit at lunch and just say “well… I didn’t do shit today and I don’t think I’ll do anything tomorrow either”.

People EXPECT you do to something at work and you simply follow through on their expectations. In the same process you also gain their respect and recognition something that is normally pretty damn important for human beings.

So how can you become more productive

GET ACCOUNTABILITY (outside of your own brain that is…).

Team up with someone who perhaps would also like to work on something outside of their job and be each other’s accountability partners.

Schedule weekly phone/skype sessions where you discuss what you did the previous week and what you’ll do in the next. It really doesn’t fell that good to always be the one to say that you didn’t do what you agreed on the last time.

Heck… Instead of just one person, find a whole group of like minded people and have them all act as accountability partners.

It’s always easy to promise yourself something and end up “forgetting it”, it’s much more difficult to “forget it” if you’ve committed yourself to doing it infront of a bunch of other people.

So start commiting yourself openly to others, and if you’re serious about you passion, find accountability partners who are in the same boat as you are!

Related posts:

1. My secret formula to Hyper Productivity

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how you could find free images that you could use on your site. I can spare you a click to that post and tell you that I recommeded that you use flickr.com and searched for images with the creative commons licens.

Well, now I’ve found something MUCH BETTER

Before I knew about this, I typically paid way too much money on sites such as Dreamstime.com for stock photo that I could use. There are tons of other sites like this like istockphoto.com, GettyImages and so on…

I originally chose Dreamstime over the other because they were somewhat cheaper. You could normally get an image in a lower resolution suitable for you blog post or website for for $1. This has kind of worked out for me, but lately the prices have shot up. I now find it hard to find good photos costing less than $3!

In a world where I can get all the music I want on Spotify for less than 10 bucks per month and all the movies and series I want on places such as Netflix and Hulu for 7 bucks per month paying $3 for a single image in a super low resolution is simply way too expensive!.

I’m not quite sure what has happened to the stock photo pricing for the last year or so, but at least personally I feel that they have gone up instead of going down such as every other digital product out there.

So… When I saw these outrages prices I was faced with the choice of either shutting up and paying the price OR trying to find an alternative. And yet again I started out by going to Flickr, but I ended up just browsing through holiday photos – the stuff that gets uploaded to Flickr is mostly personal stuff and IMHO there isn’t much stuff you can really use for anything.

This lead me to do a little more research and did I find something good. Oh yeah:

Photl.com

http://www.photl.com/
Almost a half a million images in their database as of writing. The lowest resolution image is free, yes… absolutely free! And the lowest resolution is actually higher than the lowest resolution at Dreamstime that usually ended up costing $3.
Higher resolutions can be bought extremely cheap. Think $1. Fantastic!

Kozzi

http://www.kozzi.com/
Another fantastic site with 30.000+ free photos. Here you can also get hiqh quality images for free. Apparently they make their money of advertising.

And yes, if you wonder about the image on this blog post… It’s from Kozzi . Hope you could use this small trick.

If you know of any other great sites to find free stock photo please let me know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. How to find excellent free images for your website
2. Change of blog theme and lessons learned

Lately I’ve been recording quite a bit of video, mainly “direct to camera” so I wanted to briefly discuss what my tools are in my video production studio

My goal with the videos was to have as professional quality at the lowest possible price. I guess it’s the 80/20 thing setting in. Yes you can spend tens of thousands on professional grade gear, but what if you could get the same quality for way less.

My First Ventures Into Online Video

I’ve owned a Flip Mino HD camera for some time now. It’s an excellent small pocket with great quality video compared with the price let alone the size. I basically chose it because it won most test on image quality over other cameras and because it was small.

When I bought it I was still on my trusty iPhone 3G that certainly didn’t have any video capabilities to show for (well… it did do video… but nothing you could use for anything).

But as I wanted to do more than just small videos of me in the pool I quickly realized the shortcomings of this wonderful gadget.

I also found out why most other people wanting a similar small sized camera had begun to buy the Kodak Zi8 instead of the Flip camera series (even though the Flip Mino camera looks more snazzy).

It had external microphone input! While the video quality of the Flip Mino HD were really good, it only had the internal microphone and that is a no go if you want to do anything other than just small fun videos.

So I was now in a position where I could buy something like the Kodak camera (or something similar) or I could step it up a bit. I chose the last… Also because I’ve already wasted money on one pocket camera so I didn’t really come home to the girlfriend and have to explain why I needed yet another one (you know girls simply don’t understand gadget unless they come with flowers ).

So I went on the look out for something a bit more professional. Really my only requirement was that there was an external microphone input.

I quickly found a new Panasonic range of cameras that seemed to provide the best quality/price ration. I knew I didn’t want to go pro, but I also didn’t want to save a few hundreds and then be stuck with some crappy cheap consumer “play” camera. So I chose something in the middle.

DSLR vs. Video camera

When I started to look at video cameras I quickly also found myself looking into DSLR cameras. They have now become so good (and cheap) that many people are using them for professional video cameras. I’ve even seen TV and music videos being shot with DSLR cameras (although probably the top of the line stuff).

THe advantage of buying a DSLR camera instead of a video camera was obvious. I would also get a really good still photo camera for the same price.

But as I started to look into this category of cameras, I found a few things that didn’t quite resonate well with what I was gonna use it for.

1. Manual focus when in video mode (I could work around that since I was mainly going to use it for direct to camera, but most of the time it would require a second guy acting as a cameraman
2. Most cameras I looked at could not record much more than 15 minutes per take making it pretty much a no go for me as I also had record hour long seminars
3. No built-in stability compensation. Not really a problem for me as I was gonna use it mounted on a tripod, but it would still make it a problem if I had to use it without
4. They become really hot. Not sure that’s a problem – but it’s clearly that they weren’t designed for long term use

So for me the DSLR (at least at the time I was looking into this) was a no go, but perhaps in the near future I’ll go the DSLR route.

So I ended almost ordering the Panasonic HDC SD800 but realized that I couldn’t find anything about an external microphone input which was really my only requirement, so I went with big brother Panasonic HDC SD900 instead (together with a 32GB memory card)

After I had bought the camera I also got rather inspired by Smartphone Video Producer where this guy basically shows you how to get quality video production with the video camera in an iPhone. If I had seen this site before I’ve purchased the Panasonic camera I might have thought twice.

Because this leads me to…

The Secret of Good Video

The secret behind good and professional video is not the camera. And that’s a strange thing as this is usually the most expensive thing in the setup.

NO – doing good video is all about good lighting and sound.

And that is also the fact being teached by the smartphone video guy. If you have great sound and lighting no one can see that it’s recorded on an iPhone 4 (or similar smartphone).

So realizing this… now… – and having spend good money on the camera (and therefore could not see myself suddenly going over to recording on my iPhone) leads me to how my finished video production studio looks like.

Video Production Studio Elements

Video camera

Panasonic HDC SD900


This was the camera I bought. I produces good looking video. To begin with I recorded in Full HD but this gave me big files of the “MTS” format which is a killer to work with on my mac. So I quickly started recording in a lower resolution which the camera can output in MP4 format that is much easier to work with as it does not have to convert it first (which can take hours with the MTS files on my 2 year old MacBook Pro – “Hey Rasmus… a good excuse to go out and buy a new MacBook Pro….” => Exactly ).

Also I’m gonna use them for web use only, so while it would be nice to have them in Full HD there is really no need. Good sound and lighting is much more important

Microphone

Sennheiser FreePort Presenter Set


As sound is really important and I’m doing direct to camera, I wanted a clip on mic. First I bought a cheap one from China as again I’m an 80/20 guy figuring that I just need something that is good enough. And the mic was also “good enough”. The sound quality itself was fine, unfortunately there was so much “static background noise” that I threw it out and realized that I had to spend a little more than $15 on the mic.

I basically wanted the cheapest clip on mic from one of the more established names in the music/recording industry. As I have a small music studio I knew about Sennheiser’s products and found this set to be the cheapest one on the market. I think I paid approximately $200 for it here in Denmark.

It’s a complete set with lavalier mic, broadcast and receiver unit. It doesn’t attach to the video camera (like on the horse shoe) or anything, but for the price it’s awesome sound quality.

Lighting

PhotoSEL LS21E52 Professional Softbox Studio Lighting Kit


Next on my list was lighting. Again I didn’t want to spend a lot but wanting the minimum viable solution that would look really good. There was a number of good lighting kits in the Amazon.com store, but being from Denmark it’s much easier to buy from the Amazon.co.uk store that unfortunately didn’t have the same big selection of light kits.

I did however find the PhotoSEL kit that was quite reasonable priced. I started with one kit, but quickly realized that I needed more lighting. So currently I’m using two kits (which is four lights) and I’ll probably buy some smaller lights to ensure better background lighting in the future.

Tripod

Hama Star 63 Tripod


Not sure if I should list this as well, but it’s kind of the last piece of the puzzle and it was cheap

Screenflow vs iMovie

So what about editing your movies you might ask!

In the beginning I was editing my movies on iMovie but it’s a pain to work with. They “tried to make it super easy” but they failed miserable. I mean who has ever heard about video editing software without any timeline.

So currently my process involve editing my videos on Screenflow which is really a screen capturing application, but has much better video editing capabilities than iMovie (at least the 20% that you use 95% of the time).

After I’ve done with the video I export it and run it through Handbrake a fantastic free application for converting videos into MP4.

So what now?! What’s all the video for

Well, I’m glad that you asked (and you actually sticked to the end of this post).

I’m currently working on an online private coaching program. Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions on how I manage to not having to work all year, and since I mainly saying the same things over and over again I figured there might be a better way.

So if you are someone who is passionate about changing your life and willing to take action, then I would really love to work with you.

You’ll probably hear more about it on this site when I’m ready, but if you want to be absolutely sure to be among the first to hear about it, you should consider joining my newsletter (and get a free ebook at the same time).

If you got any inputs on the whole video setup thing, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Now with video blogging (well, soon anyway)

Yeah I know… This might sound like one big ass rant… But I absolutely hate when people use the words “have to” or “should”.

If you’re a person that uses these words a lot, then don’t worry, I don’t hate you or anything – but chances are that you are not really that much in control of your own life as you might like to think.

Throughout our lives we’ve been indoctrinated with what is expected of us and what lifestages we should all follow in order to “have a normal life”, and we’ve learned to say things like “I have to do XYZ” or “I really should do ABC”.

Stuff like “I should go to school” or “I should be working for the man – getting a steady paycheck” or “I should really call my mother in law”

Let’s just get that big fat rat out in the open!

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING!

Instead you can choose to do something. That might sound like “same same” to you, but there is one big differentiator. If you say “choose” you put yourself in control instead of someone else really determining whether or not you should do something.

And if you are in control, then you can choose not to do XYZ.

“Are you crazy Rasmus” – you might ask… “if I don’t ABC, my boss/wife/mother-in-law/insert-more-terrifying-beasts-here will most certainly KILL ME!”.

Sure, that could be a consequence, but notice the word here. Consequence. When you have the control you can weigh out the different potential outcomes, risks etc and determine for yourself if you believe if you feel that you can live with the consequence.

If you “had to” then you “had to” and then you would have to eat the consequences in any given outcome.

So if you start substituting the words “I have to…” and “I should…” with “I choose to…” you will put yourself back in the driver’s seat of YOUR LIFE!

And isn’t that’s where we really want to be?

BONUS: Can’t

If you say that “you can’t do something…” well guess what happens. Your brain will automatically shut down and spend brainpower somewhere else (I mean there are plenty of areas that could use some extra brainpower right )

But! If you tell your brain that the situation is really doable, your brain will like a miracle start looking for solutions, because guess what… That’s what our brain is doing. Finding solutions to stuff we throw at it – whether that is riding a bicycle and coordinating our limbs at what first seems like an impossible action or inventing the next line of smart phones.

So when you say can’t you are really speaking the truth… You can’t and you won’t be able. But if you tell your brain it can be done… You most likely can!

Ahh… so glad that’s over

So what are your thoughts here? Have I stretched it a bit too far this time? Let me know in the comments…

No related posts.

So we’re on the border to a new year and it’s always a great opportunity to look back and evaluate what worked and what didn’t and to look ahead and make promises.

And while I don’t really believe in new year resolutions (if you want to change something – you should do it NOW), I certainly believe in setting goals for one self.

And if you don’t want to any read more about my highs and lows in 2011 and my goals for 2012 let me just take this opportunity to say HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011

So looking back at 2011 I’m really not that proud of my progress, although a lot of things certainly happened, I still feel that I should have accomplished more. But before I talk myself totally down, let’s see what actually did happen.

We (my family and I) started out the year in our house in Thailand – so that was great. While Denmark was having snow and ice – the only place we could find ice was in our drinks .

And while we’re on family – 2011 was also the year where my girlfriend got pregnant again (the second time that is) and we expect a little baby boy here in the beginning of January.

Personally we also moved to a new house here in Denmark (as of 1. of December) so the last part of the year was pretty much spent packing and unpacking – talking to banks, lawyers and so on.

But what happended on the business side, well besides me growing my businesses in Denmark, I also got much more targetted on what it is I really want to do (more on this later). So during 2011 I’ve spent time terminating projects that was taking too much time but wasn’t really getting me in the direction I wanted. Some of it was business that gave me money and some of it just took my time.

I worked six months as a consultant as I’ve budgetted and as part of my focus, I’ve actually transferred some of my clients to other freelance consultants. Was this necessary? No I could have kept the client. Didn’t I earn money on the clients? Why sure I did. Good money actually – but the fact remain. If I still have to work some months each year as a consultant, I really just want to do so for ONE client, I don’t want to go around having to work a week or two on that client and then jump to another client and then to a third.

It’s really too much “client maintenance”. These kind of clients also usually tend to think that I’m “always available” so when they have a small one week task, I can just get to work immediately. NO – even though my hourly rate is higher with these kinds of customers – I prefer just one client buying my services for 3-6 months in a row.

When that is said, I do not expect that I have to work 6 months as a consultant next year as my cashflow looks currently (but if I get a really interesting job I might…. “no Rasmus – bad dog…. Remember the focus… no more IT consultancy…” )

But what didn’t work then? Well I was going to launch a big online membership site together with a friend in Bangkok and while we’ve certainly worked on this – and even launched a beta program – we didn’t get to launch as planned in 2011. When that is said!! We’ve worked up some really interesting JV partners, we’re in a market where a lot of money is being spent, and we have a really interesting niche product with an angle where there is not much competition, so I’m really optimistic about this in 2012. Currently it looks like we will be able to launch in February, but let’s see after a planning session in new year.

Also I know that I like taking it slowly (kick back and relax and everything ), I did expect that I would be able to do more “products”. I did a couple of information products (ebooks – one I wrote myself and one modified PLR product), but not really something I had my heart in – and I mostly did it to get some experience with the whole process.

One of the ebooks (it’s in Danish) is something I really expect something from. I know that the product is solid, and again we’re in a market where a lot of money is being spent. Even for a small market like Denmark. The main problem is that the niche is targetted women, and let’s face it… I’m a guy. So I’ve had some trouble with the marketing. I’m totally aware of this, and I need to redo the marketing part (not the product). The problem is that I really want to do some video marketing but I need a woman to record the sales video. Unfortunately my lovely girlfriend is not up for the task, so I need to figure out what I could do then.

If this was an English language product, I could just have used something like fiverr.com (a lot of voice talents will do almost anything for five bucks. And if that didn’t cut it, go somewhere like elance.com.

But it’s not only the video, it’s also all the site graphics, product “package” and so. But because this product is not my #1 priority (I’ll get back to that in a moment) I have put this off for now. I guess that I will come back to this later in 2012 – I still think it’s a great product.

Lessons learned…

I’ve learned that when I do partnerships I really need to be the one being in control. I’ve helped out on a few projects where I was paid a percentage of the revenue. Not that the idea or implementation of that idea was bad, but I can just see that I work best when I’m calling the shots and can set the direction.

I can also see that I really need to focus on only one or two things at a time. I way too easily sidetracked and I certainly no stranger to the shiny objects syndrome. So that is why I’ve found it necessary to cut out a few projects and put other projects on standby for a period.

Bu what is my current focus then?!?

2012

I did “coach” a few people in 2011. Some people contacted me through this blog, while other people came from my network. This was mostly something I did without charging anything, basically because I’ve found out that I enjoy working with people, inspiring them to take action and help them pursue their own dreams.

So I thought why not do an online coaching program and be able to help even more people? I mean… I kind of tell people the same things anyway. And this way I might also make a little money at the same time, although I currently do not expect this to be my primary source of income. So I started in November creating the content, and I should have started recording videos in December, and while I did succeed in recording some of the content (two out of six core modules) most of the month went with our moving process.

So I’ll continue to record videos in January although also this month might go past quickly as our baby son is planned to be born in the beginning of January. Hopefully I will be done with the content in January and start the launch and marketing process in February. If you keep reading this blog and/or if you’re on my newsletter list, you’ll certainly hear more about it. Unfortunately I cannot reveal much more right now, however I can say that it’s all about following your passion, working less and enjoying life more…

So as you might see, I expect to have two membership site launches in the beginning of the new year!

Other news for 2012

I’m starting studying for a NLP Practitioner certification (that’s Neuro Linguistic Programming). I love to develop myself and learn new stuff, and being my own boss enables me to do these kinds of courses and events that a “normal” employer might not have found relevant for my line of work and therefore didn’t want to pay for or give me the time needed for it.

Also I’ve begun to brainstorm ideas for a book, it’s still way to early to say anything more about it, but I certainly hope that I will be able to write one in 2012. While it’s not so much of a goal because I’m still very unsure about the whole process so……

Argh… Who am I kidding… IF I DO NOT TELL MYSELF THAT IT’S A GOAL – IT PROBABLY WON’T GET DONE…. So.. infront of the entire world! I promise to write a book in 2012 (a real one… not “just” another ebook ).

You can hold me accountable!

So that was about it… What are your plans for 2012? Is this the year where you quit your job and pursue what you’re passionate about?

Related posts:

1. 2010 Looking Back