Passionate Passive Income

The Next Big Thing

2011-04-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

I was having this discussion with a martial arts student of mine, who is also a kindergarten teacher. We were discussing how all these new technological marvels are coming out, and, how I was asking the young martial artists at Shinka what THEY would do with these pieces of technology.

Because, there's the thing: As young and hip and innovative as we all think we are, we simply aren't in their heads. Look at axe cop, or just get a 5 year old to make up a martial arts combo to see what is going through their creative little heads.

My point is, they are the ones who will come up with something that'll actually BE new, and not simply a re-hash of something old.

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts : Richmond's Best Martial Arts School
The Key to Awesome

Rich Dad Poor Dad Book Reviews Part 2

2011-04-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

Rich Dad Poor Dad was my first "passive income" book, and, as a result, I've read most of his books to date in my quest for financial freedom. This is part two of my Rich Dad Poor Dad Book Reviews.

Rich Dad's Success Stories

Surprisingly excellent. I had fairly low expectations of this book, and, next to Cashflow Quadrant, I actually rate it as one of his top books. It isn't as "fluffy" as I expected, and, it has lots of great seed ideas, techniques, concepts, step-by-steps as well as inspiring stories. This one is a keeper, as it not only motivates but informs. Great to go back to with questions.

Retire Young Retire Rich & Rich Dad's Before You Quit Your Job

Forgot to make a new point in these ones. Don't bother.

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing

Good. A little more in depth than some of his other books. Very American-based information. Considerably more useful to read later on in the series, as, you should have some assets to invest with.

Rich Dad's Who Took My Money?

If you have been to a Millionaire Mind Intensive workshop, you've got all the information you'll need. If you haven't, I'd still read the Millionaire Mind before this book, as it is more engaging. (the seminar is generally free, and is life-changing)

"Specifics"
This section is for specific information. These books are less general "did you know you can leverage time?" and more specific "how to do X"

The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing

Is what it says. References are fairly American.

Own Your Own Corporation 2nd ed.

Good info, good reference.

Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver
Like all commodities investing books, fairly useless and outdated by the time it was published.

How to Buy & Sell a Business
Excellent.

Rich Dad Book Reviews Part 1

2011-04-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

Rich Dad Poor Dad is an interesting franchise of books regarding various aspects of financial prosperity, with a heavy focus upon American real estate, no money down, and easy-to-digest accounting.

I would say that Robert repeats himself a fair bit, which, is to be expected so as to make the books all self-sufficient, but, it can be a little annoying to read an entire book with 12% new content.

To avoid these pitfalls (as I have read all of his books) I thought a quick reference guide as to which books to read (and in which order) and which to avoid might be helpful.

These books are also graded with a "buy for future and ongoing reference" or "read once" as, unless you already have a hefty education Jar (see Millionaire Mind), you might not necessarily have the funding for each of his books.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad (The original)
This book has a special place in my heart, as, it was the very first book I read in regards to passive income, time leveraging, and other money making concepts. As a result, it is difficult for me to be unbiased, but, I will say that it is an excellent beginners reference, and, fairly useless to a non-beginner. Good for a single read, however, I have purchased many copies over the years to give to people interested in learning of passive income, so, if you are starting a multi-level marketing team, you might want to buy a few to have around the house to give to your downline.

Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ
A dad more wordy than his other books, but a fair bit of useful information. Tends to lean towards American-only information, but, even as a Canadian, I found this one eye opening.

Why We Want You To Be Rich
Borderline useless. Could have been summarized in the jacket of another book, honestly. But then again, I rarely need "convincing" from my authors. If you are the type of reader who demands countless pages of credibility building, then this one might be good for you.

Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant
His best work, in my opinion. Definitely a great read, full of information that you will repeatedly reference. Buy this one.

Rich Dad's Guide to Becoming Rich Without Cutting up your credit cards
Useless and all repeat information. Kind of like the first book and a few others in a different order.

Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens & Rich Dad's Rich Kid Smart Kid

Great if you have kids. One is more for them, the other for the parents. In both cases, if you plan on teaching kids (students etc) about how to be rich, these are great segues. Also, I highly recommend the game cashflow for this as well.

ABC's of Property Management

Passable. Property Management for Dummies is actually a much more comprehensive guide, if you are thinking of going into this sort of thing. Even if you are planning on hiring someone else, it is a good read so you know what to look for.

Nano Generators: New Power Source is You!

2011-04-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

Quick note: As batteries become smaller and smaller (as much as 100 times smaller... think car battery to hearing aid size...) via carbon nanotubes, and now, on top of that, we've discovered nano generators, which basically are batteries which are recharged by your skin, or your heart beating...

what inventions will that create and make possible?

Robots yes. Personal cyborg... things...

hmmmm...

The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

2011-03-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

If you look at all of technological history, especially in regards to communication, there have been repeating themes.

The initial stage of creation and resistance, the acceptance and flood of availability as well as opportunity and profit, and, then, the consolidation of providers mirrored by the ability to either filter or control the flow of information.

Monopolies, as well as dictators generally start out great. This is how they get their power in the first place.

Trains run on time, inconvenient rights are bypassed for efficiency, and the products are all decisively better, faster, clearer or whatever.

However, ultimately, as they no longer need to get to power, nor even maintain their power, they are then welcome to abuse their power.

Which... they do.

While some are thinking of how to postpone or even prevent this, a question one might consider asking oneself, is, what's next? What will the new free/radical/out of the box method be of communicating, and how could you get the jump on the profitable section of that timeline...

Mysterious $100

2011-03-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

I think the best part about passive income, is that it is always a pleasant surprise... often from an unknown source.

The other day my wife and I were trying to figure out where a $100 check came from and ultimately, we were never 100% sure. Likely TK2A in some way... but from which vein, we are unsure.

I haven't written in this blog in some time now, as I've been very, very focused on some of the improvements happening at Shinka Martial Arts.

Thanks to all our regular readers continual support. We'll write when we can!

Great Web Hosting

2010-10-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

if you're looking for an inexpensive, affordable, reliable web hosting, startlogic is the way to go.

We're going on year 3 of having Shinka Martial Arts website up and running, and I just wanted to give a positive shout out to startlogic.

The fact that I have 100,000 TERRA BYTES of space is just astounding and amazing. Their service has always been excellent - and their tech support (email) is top notch. Not only do they find the cause of any glitches (which are few and far between) but they also provide details how-to-avoid-in-the-future advice.

Honestly, it is rare to find a web hosting company that, at the end of three years of hosting, doesn't have more bad than good press. But, I'm here to tell you, its been a real treat.

I don't think people do that kind of thing enough, really. Just praise good things.

All of our news is based off of bad things - even our TV shows seem centered around the negativity in the world.

The only good shows (ie Tony Robbins' and Oprah's shows) get cancelled to make way for more Jersey Shores.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant for today. But yeah, if you're looking for an inexpensive, affordable, reliable web hosting, startlogic is the way to go.

Whoever is more committed

2010-07-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you something: Whoever is more committed to their ideal reality in this world, has it.

I heard an interesting story once, where a fellow was very sure that Tony Robbins didn't have any official credentials in the realm of NLP. And, Tony knew that he did.

But the fellow on the other end was so sure that this was the case, that, when he said to call up Tony's professor - Tony got nervous, because of the passion this other fellow had for their argument.

Now, obviously, Tony knew he had graduated from this place and had his credentials, but THE PASSION OF THE OTHER PERSON STILL MADE HIM QUESTION THEM.

If you go into a negotiation and you are simply more committed to something and passionate about something than they are apathetic towards it, you win. Plain and simple.

Use every objection as a reason to find out why they would be so foolish as to not see the awesome that is your idea, and then help them to understand.

Eventually, they will understand... if passion for the idea exceeds the person opposed to the idea's jaded apathy.

Your problems are all money making ideas.
Solutions are money.
Easy solutions are lots of money.

If you can take something that is "too hard" and do it FOR someone else...

Oprah, hi! Read my book :-)

2010-07-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I think Oprah would like my book.

How the heck to GET the book to her... well, I'll let you know.

But, Oprah, if you're reading this... well, I know you have a large amount of money, so offering to send you a free book might not exactly work as an incentive... so... read my book and I'll donate $100 to Kiva.org.

(just let me know you read it :)

I know $100 isn't much in the Oprah scale of finances, but, that's still 4 new businesses we could help launch in an impoverished nation, and you get to read a neat book (which I honestly DO think you'd like) as a result :-)

Yay for win/win/win!

MLM reviews

2010-07-16T13:40:00.001-07:00

Multi-level-marketing programs, or MLMs, are as diverse as businesses of any other type. There are scams, there are legitimate businesses and there are both ethical people running those examples, and unethical.

Like picking a martial arts school, you can't clump all "Karate people" into one lump, any more than you can clump all "MLM people" into one clump.

I will say this, I seem to attract MLM peoples like crazy. And, for good reason, as I am highly excitable and future oriented (their ideal)

So, I've tried Quixtar (now re-named back to Amway), Isagenix, and a few others, all with similar, lack-luster results in earnings, but, excellent results in mindset from some of the books they'd had me read (ie Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

I will say this: Everyone should try one MLM, for their excellent training, and ambitious atmosphere. Like going to the MMI, or a great martial arts school - simply being surrounded by positive people, in a positive environment with positive goals WILL affect you... positively.

The reason I suggest everyone should try at least one MLM, is because of two reasons.

1) To experience the thought of true freedom, and develop a passion for it.

Regardless if the MLM is right for you long term, it will still fuel future efforts towards that end. You have the potential for greatness, and an MLM is an excellent segue into said greatness. Understand, it could be the tool that establishes that freedom, or, it could simply be a stepping stone. Regardless, I'd say they're excellent teaching tools of leverage.

2) Their training systems. To experience the training methods of some of the better MLMs (The best I've seen is Market America's) is to experience (again) that taste of true freedom. What they teach is basically time leveraging and practicing what you preach.

Capitalizing off of pre-existing habitual activities, and monetizing what you already do. (this blog, for example, is an example of that - I give this advise for free, but, you reading it here makes me a nickel if you click on some of our lovely sponsors on your right)

What I would suggest, is not to go head-first into the first MLM you stumble across (or more likely, are invited into)

Why? Because they are basically all the same. They have different bells and whistles, and different products, and different people, but they basically start by drawing a circle, then two other circles.

SO: Find an MLM that works for YOU. What is YOUR passion? What do you love? I guarantee you there is an MLM out there waiting for you.

From water to protein powder to gas to pretty much any consumable product you could already know about, there are MLMs about them.

Heck, even Deepak Chopra has one, so why not you?

PS - There are also interesting resources, if you have an MLM that can help acellerate your progress.

Fear

2010-07-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Manifestation and fear are a dangerous combination. The phrase "be careful what you wish for" is apt, though I think a more clear warning might be "be careful what you think emotionally about"

Coming to terms with this in my own life has been an interesting process.

"Keep movin' foward"
- Rocky.

TK2A Hardcover

2010-07-12T09:51:00.001-07:00

Its interesting, how putting something into physical form increases the editing and focus behind it.

The eBook is good... but the print book is great.

Even aesthetically, a theme has been developed and its really turning out wonderful. It should be ready this month!

Exciting to have it being put into libraries etc!!!

Shinka Mastermind Group

2010-07-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased with the progress behind the Shinka Mastermind Group.

Its spawned several blogs, several great business ideas, and possibly most importantly, inspired the group to grow and learn in each other's chosen areas, and made the group itself stronger for it.

Look at the list of blogs alone!

Examiner
The Key to Awesome
Passionate Passive Income
Life, Love, And Martial Arts
Top 100 Authors
The Daily Failure
Cool Random Facts
Smell of n00bs
Epic Adventure Blog
Submit a Chapter
Super Awesome Robot
Epic Baby Names
Daily Healthy Recipes
I Eat Vegan Kittens
Weird Daily News
Dance As Though No One Was Watching You
The Girl Who Was Given Wings

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

Outsourcing

2010-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have been learning a tremendous amount about outsourcing, licencing and fabrication.

I'll share my findings with you soon - I'm in the process of marketing my new book AND patenting an invention!

My new Ebook is published!

2010-06-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted this last little while. I've really been working on finishing up my ebook, the Key to Awesome

I'll have to figure out a way to put this up on the blog as a perminant link - but, in the meantime, check 'er out!

A list of multi-tier affiliates

2010-06-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Affiliate Income is fantastic.

The best affiliate income is multi-tier affiliate income. What that means, is that when you sign up for these services due to the below links, they pay me. When people sign up because of YOUR links... I MAKE MONEY (and so do you) and so on.

Usually there's a three tier limit, so, the person you told, if they told a person, I wouldn't make any money, but you still would.

The best part is, YOU DO NOT LOSE ANYTHING... WHEN I MAKE MONEY.

So, you basically get to reciprocate to the people who tell you how to make money, at no cost to you.

Win/Win/Win...Win!

So, you want a list of these amazing affiliates do you?

Very well, in nor particular order, they are:

Maximum Survey *****
Awesome. They give you nearly $25 p/referral... and $1 p/referral for every referral they refer. They compensate you okay for the surveys themselves, too.

Survey Savvy ***
This site is "okay" - it depends on who you are.

Personally, I've only made about $20 in about two months. Though that was on a single survey, as that's the only survey they've sent me in that time (except for one other one, which I didn't qualify for)

This is just my experience, though. I don't think I'm a much sought after demographic for surveys. You might get one every day for all I know.

Also, there's a somewhat long process of filling out free survey-like questionnaires, so that they have a personality profile with which to match you against potential surveys.

Still, its worth signing up, just to be on their list. The paid surveys are quick and painless, and the potential to make a quick $20 is always a nice thing to find in one's inbox.

Blogvertise
I've made a whopping $7.50 on this site. Again, though, that's off of a single blog. That one took a whole 2 minutes to do, so I'm a huge fan of this. It does require having a blog, and writing an article in which you mention some related products. (I wrote about purchasing Diablo III characters)

You don't have to endorse their products, though. You can be as harsh/negative as you want towards the product. All they care about is the fact that you link to them to increase their SEO (so your artistic integrity isn't biased, simply your choice of subject matter)

Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar *****
This is a life changing, awesome event, filled with multi-tier affiliate income opportunities. Their products are fantastic, and their sales presentations very compelling. I take Shinka Students every year, as I find it an excellent way to upgrade a student's mindset, and improve their lives!

___________________

I've also included a few others.
While these are not multi-tier, they do offer multiple levels of income.

Lulu
This site provides a fairly good commission on sales, and, also is an excellent site for you to upload any content you think would make a decent ebook. Again, residual income. The biggest check (at this writing) that I've gotten from my published books is $88, though, on average, its closer to about $8 p/month. Not bad though, considering the books were already written and just sitting in my hard drive collecting bytes.

Threadless
Not a writer? How about a funny artist? This site is similar to Lulu, except they deal in tshirts. Again, you can get modest commissions (I think I've gotten a few payments of $5 here 'n there, very sporadic) but if you get a shirt "published" you can make quite a bit of money. (As yet, my ideas have been rejected, but perhaps you'll have better luck)

What people will need in 3-5 years

2010-06-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

Innovative child-learning interfaces & games based off of this technology mixed with the 3dh (3d TV without glasses via spherically polarized screens)

Start thinking now, kids. There has to be the first "Super Mario" made by somebody.

Solar power & LEDs

2010-06-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

One of my investing partners was looking at some of the new green technologies, including some LED plans, and I got to thinking...

What if we were able to create bright enough LEDs, or sensitive enough/efficient enough solar panels, that we were able to power those LEDs with 99% or less than the energy generated by the panels powered by the LEDs to begin with?

Is such a thing so far fetched? A light-powered generator that powers lights?

This wouldn't so much be for local power (clearly, we have the Sun, which should be fine).

Instead, think about the space-travelling applications, or, even subterranean applications. Places where sunlight cannot reach, where fuel/electricity is scarce.

I imagine a huge, bright dome with mirrors and solar panels and a super bright LED in the center... a power source for some large, space faring ship, or an underground living area.

Too science fiction, or possible?

"If an idea is at first not rejected, it has no future" - Albert Einstein.

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

Intellectual Property's new Frontier

2010-06-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

There's a trend on the internet which is pure brilliance. Create a space, and allow people to fill it with their creative ideas, and everyone shares the profit.

Likely Ebay & Youtube were the firsts of their kind, after that, threadless & lulu became the next ones that I personally had heard about. (the most recent, is veer)

The uprising of ideas of this nature is fantastic.

It allows every day joes to create passive income opportunities, and people with innovative ideas to become millionaires.

The concept is this:

Create an niche idea that would require a huge amount of content.

Say, a collection of photos of angry people yelling; or people getting splashed by cars as they drive by.

The more creative the better.

Next, create a portal for people to submit their content, and promise financial reimbursement when clients pay to use the images (often different costs for amounts of usage)

Next, market this portal to:

A) People who would have the content to submit

B) People who would want to purchase the content

Passive and beautiful, the archive takes care of itself. Hire people to screen/rate/price content, and update the site as necessary.

Which begs the question: What does the world need a lot of, that a niche of people could provide...?

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

Sir Ken Robinson

2010-06-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've really become enamored with Sir Ken Robinson. His way of passing on knowledge and ideas is masterful.

I first heard about him in an area that I was quite passionate about (do schools kill creativity) and now, I've become enamored once again with his new material.

I've only heard him on TED, but I plan on reading his books now, as well.

Check him out

Molecules of Energy, (Dumps continued) and a Shameless Groupon Plug

2010-06-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already heard of Groupon get on that sucker asap. Weather it be to sell, or to buy, its great!

(yeah, that's that)

So, conveniently, I was watching this TED talk, on rearranging fuel molecules. It doesn't have any answers, but, it does pose some pretty interesting questions which aligned quite nicely with the million
dollar dump project. I like his line about not running out of stones. We'll continue to refine fuel sources and improve upon them. A simplified but, accurate description of things.

I like the idea of refining things into super-things based on nature's same methods.

Million Dollar Dumps

2010-06-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

Random concept idea.

So, y'know how in the World Wars, they'd melt down kid's metal toys and whatnot for the metal to make their guns/bombs etc?

So... what if in the future something similar happened with oil?

Those who owned the landfills... or possibly the technology required to sort said landfill into various parts (metal/plastic/organic) would make quite the fortune.

As far as I can figure, you could make a (don't freak out) flesh eating/organic material eating parasite type thing, and separate the rest with a big magnet.

Heck, the parasite might even be able to make usable soil, and then you could sift the whole thing. 100% usage of viable resources.

If not a money-making idea, an environmentally awesome one at least.

(I know this type of musing is a little off topic, but I'm curious as to your thoughts)

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

How to make money off of good credit (somewhat passive income)

2010-06-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

For those of us who have excellent credit, there is an interesting passive income option that's been getting some great press lately, called "Credit Card arbitrage"

What is credit card arbitrage?

Credit card arbitrage is where you take a low rate balance transfer promo offer from a credit card company and invest it in something that will hopefully give you a higher return.

How do you do it?

The beauty of this arbitrage is the simplicity.

Apply for the credit card offering the 0% balance transfer/cash advance.
Once approved, write a credit card cheque to yourself and deposit it into a high interest rate savings account or a GIC.
Before the balance transfer offer expires (usually 1 year or more), pay back the credit card in full.
Note, NEVER make any purchases with the credit card as they will charge you with regular interest.

This process will enable borrow money at 0% and keep all the interest that it generates.

Options on what to do with the money

In order for it to be called arbitrage, you need to make a profit from the deal. However, in my opinion, guaranteed profit is the recommended route to take.

Here are some options:

Place it in a high interest savings account (I love ING, myself) (note, if you decide to open up an ING account, use the "orange number" 15517875S1 and they'll give you $25 for opening a savings account!
If the time line is long enough, you can place the funds into a 1 year GIC (4.5% @ PCF, 4.65% @ ICICI).
You could use the money as an interest free RRSP loan. The only issue being that you will have to make up the difference between what you owe and what you get on your tax return. Even so, your tax return will probably not get to you in time to pay back the balance, so you would have to ensure you have cash on hand to pay back the loan in full.
Placing the money into the stock market for 1 year is too risky for my blood. However, for those of you willing to take the extra risk to put the money in the markets, go nuts!

Implications

For those of you who don’t know already, interest income is taxed 100% at your marginal rate. For more info read my article about how Canadian investment taxation works. So if your marginal rate is 40%, then 40% of your interest income/profit will be taken by the government at the end of the tax year.
The second biggest drawback of this strategy is the potential draw down of your credit score. If you borrow the maximum balance on your credit card and keep the balance for a period of time, your credit score can be affected. The solution? Only borrow half of your credit limit eh?

Great how to reference on blogging income pt5

2010-06-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.

What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

Thanks again to Steve for the great content! Go click on some of his links! :-D

Great how to reference on blogging income pt4

2010-06-10T03:20:00.000-07:00

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:

Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)

Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.

These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.

Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). This web site is hosted by ServInt. I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host. What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane.

Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.