Commenting on blogs is an interesting topic. When blogs first started popping up, leaving comments on popular blogs was the best way to gain traction and possible traffic. Every single blog about blogging was telling us to leave comments. It was a thing the thing to do. You had to leave blog comments.

Now things have changed a bit. Zen Habits and Seth Godin’s blog have disallowed comments. Many other sites have followed suit. It’s not rare to see comments disabled on a blog now. It’s no longer trendy to have comments allowed on a popular blog.

Where do you stand when it comes to blog comments?

The biggest problem with blog comments is…

You’re always writing for those that speak the loudest. You’re always worried about the critics. You worry about the outliers. You don’t think about the reader that’s actually applying your tips. There are readers that will consume your content, enjoy it, and never leave a comment. There’s no particular reason for them not leaving a comment.

Your readers are amazing. You just have to remember that someone complaining about an article doesn’t represent your whole audience. One person could just be having a bad day and in desperate need of a vehicle to vent on.

You can’t let this one person prevent you from posting or allow you to get distracted with a useless argument.

We also need to stop looking for things to react to. There’s always going to be someone to respond to or some email to check out.

Are you always looking for something to respond to?

I am.

I get stuck in this nasty cycle. It’s easy to get caught up with this. You always want someone to communicate with and someone to argue with. You can go on your own blog or other blogs and argue for hours. You can dissect the article. Mock the blogger. Disagree on a certain viewpoint. And go on and on.

I have to say this…

Stop reacting. Start creating.

When you create content that’s polarizing or leads to a plethora of reactions, you shouldn’t stop or get nervous. You keep on going. Reacting can easily take you in the wrong direction. Constantly creating keeps you focused.

Reacting is dangerous. You’ll never win. Someone will always be mad at you. Someone will always disagree or complain about something.

There’s also the time issue.

It’s really simple to spend a whole day on busywork and never really get anything done. This happens far too often for most of us. We respond to comments. Get distracted by comments. We let comments on our blog and other blogs dictate our days and how we spend time.

Screw that. Don’t let time slip by you. You can’t always be caught up in what others are saying on blogs.

Watch how you spend your time because creating awesome content will always trump everything else.

Should you forget about blog comments?

Nope. I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong. I love interacting with readers. I enjoy reading comments and replying as well. I also look forward to feedback.

The problem is that feedback can be crippling. Think of all of the people that will read an article, thoroughly enjoy it, and then walk away without leaving a comment. Those are the people that we forget about. There will be those that leave a positive comment with a few words of encouragement. Then there are those that complain.

Have you ever been afraid to post an article because of the potential backlash? It has happened to all of us. We hide our best work from the world because we’re afraid of what will be said in the blog comments section.

I suggest that you focus on pumping out quality content. Don’t let a few nay-sayers prevent you from putting your best work out there.

What are your thoughts on blog comments? Do you engage in discussions on other blogs on a frequent basis?

I have discussed the topic of having a Plan B on this blog a few times. Recently,  I explained how much I would need in 30 days to pay off my bills if I was going to lose my job today. What I barely discussed yet is what would I do with my time?

Working on my online company

Yeah… that’s the easy answer and you are probably thinking about something similar to these options:

Find another job

Grow my side gig

Become a freelancer

These all sound like great ideas, but that’s BS…. Why? Simply because there is no plan attached to it! If I do some stupid math, I would resume my situation with the following equation:

10 hours / week of work = $9,000 of gross revenues per month

50 hours / week of work = X

X = $45,000 of gross revenues per month

Repeat after me: “FORTY FIVE THOUSAND PER MONTH”.

This is the most unrealistic number I’ve ever heard out loud… oh wait! I know people making this much online… Mike… listen to me… just quit your darn job!

I won’t quit my job right now because I’m a cozy coward. A cozy coward is someone who doesn’t have the guts to leave his comfort zone to get his hands dirty again to work on another project. I would rather enjoy my wine on the terrace than type like a crazy maniac on my computer in my basement.

Nonetheless, if I had a choice between keeping my day job and leaving my company or leaving my day job and keeping my company, I would chose the latter. Maybe this is what I’m waiting for to make the big move. This thought crossed my mind recently and I thought “Darn! I’m so not prepared to work 50 hours/week on my company… what would I do???”

How Can I Use My 50 Hours Per Week?

Ah! This is what I need to do! Plan my 50 hour weekly workload to make sure it will result in something that makes so much money that I could live a crazy life. The key here is not to increase the amount of time required to manage my online business but to use the extra 40 hours in a manner where I could make a lot more money. You read that on this blog many times: focus on value-added tasks. If I can’t make more money with these hours, I’m just as good as dead.

The key here is to work 10 hours per day from Monday to Friday. If I start at 7am, this means I finish at 6pm (with an hour of lunch). It’s darn hard but it’s feasible. We don’t call being an entrepreneur a sacrifice for nothing, right?

I know myself very well and know that when I’m creating something, I work all-in. Therefore, I could focus on just one specific task each day. For example, my schedule could look like this:

Monday: write all my blog posts

Tuesday: work on niche sites

Wednesday: produce comments, emails and promotions

Thursday: work on an eBook

Friday: tweak my sites (SEO, design, conversion rate, etc).

This sounds like a good plan for someone who can jump from one thing to another. But it doesn’t sound like a real plan for me. I would rather focus on a narrow set of things…

A Weekly Routine

Here’s what my weekly routine would look like:

Monday

Take the 10 hours to generate content for my blogs for the week. Ideally, write 8 blog posts during that day.

Friday

Tweaking day!

Focus on improving conversion rate on existing products,

Study website traffic,

Plan for new ideas,

Do SEO, link building,

Improve design, try new software,

Improve newsletter,

Outsource irrelevant tasks,

Manage employees,

Plan topics for the following week, etc.

Okay… so I have 2 days planned; the beginning and the end of the week. They make up the daily stuff concentrated into 2 days per week. There is not much I can do to vary this kind of work. However, this leaves me 3 days… or 30 hours to focus on specific projects.

I would take this 3 days block to focus on 1 project at a time. My guess is that I would probably be able complete at least one project per month since it equals 120 hours on a project. I don’t think I ever put 120 hours on any of my projects so far, therefore I can only imagine how great it could be to so!

Specific Projects I Would Work On

I think I would need to list at least 12 projects to make sure that I make more money each month. Technically, it’s not really stupid math to think that if I can work 120 hours on a site it would generate an additional $500/month. This means that I could *technically* improve my revenues by $6,000 per month within a year. After 12 months of working for myself, the company would be making roughly $15,000/month. I could then draw a salary of $8,000 per month easily… wow…

All right, enough with day dreaming… now it’s time to generate these dollars with real projects. It’s one thing to think about making money, it’s another one to make the site generate it!

Here’s a list of 12 ideas that could generate $500/month:

#1 Optimize all my niche sites to grow by $500/month

#2 Create a membership website

#3 Create an authority site to become a successful financial planner

#4 Create another set of 5 small niches sites generating $100/month each

#5 Create additional products to sell for my existing websites

#6 Take my 5 main sites and improve them so they make more money

#7 Create an authority website about insurance

#8 Create an authority website about finding a job (how ironic! Hahaha!)

#9 Create a series of product review niche sites

#10 Write eBooks (would require more than 1 to generate $500/month though)

#11 Take a month to learn how to use different technique and products to improve my site (and make money with affiliate programs on top of my improvements)

#12 Work on special promotions for affiliate programs and sell them through my newsletter

That’s shocking

I often do that when I write on TFB: I start a blog post with an idea but I have no clue where it will lead me. So as you read this article, you have a resume of my high speed level of thinking about my future. Within a few hours, I just found out that if I quit my job, I could probably generate another $6,000 per month within 12 months. This plan is obviously not detailed enough as published but there is definitely enough room in this brainstorming session to generate the money I’m looking for. Plus, it is line with a highly sustainable plan…

I’m shocked.

I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect that it would be realistic to think this way. After writing the post, it doesn’t seem completely ridiculous. In fact, I’m not even sure it sounds risky…

What do you think? Would you drop the ball and go all-in?

I probably knew this a while ago but it just punched me in the face last night

Every Monday night, I meet-up with three other guys producing websites for my Master Mind Group Meeting. Each week, a different member is in the “hot seat” where he shares a problem or project he is currently working on. It was my turn last Monday. From time to time, I have a spark in my mind and the urge for creation haunts me down until I build a new site.

These urges have created sites such as my EMT resource. They are relatively small niche sites generating roughly $30 to $50 per month. I put about 25 hours of work on it and I’m getting 1 hour per month worth of my time back since then. It’s been a year, so I’m still short on this project. Not sure it’s the right way to do business though… Anyways, back to my Monday Master Mind Story:

My project of the week was one of those sparks resulting in another small niche site project. I had researched keywords using Market Samurai, built the site structures (topics, categories, etc) along with traffic and monetization strategies. The discussion went well until we hit the nail; my traffic and monetization strategies were obsolete.

Making Money Online As You Have Read It On So Many Websites Is Dead

I’ve been in this industry for too long I guess. Long enough to have experience, but so long as to get cozy in a single business model without looking outside of it. I have been using pretty much the same strategy for the past 6 years on most of my websites and this is probably killing my business.

I’m well diversified and the business model has been proven to be stable. However, I have lost the connection to the “new waves” and am realizing that I’m falling behind. Most people talk about link building, keyword research, web 2.0 properties and other SEO strategies. The trick is that everybody uses the same strategy and Google knows it.

So if you are starting your site today, all the reading you do and the courses you take won’t lead you to anything. It will definitely work over a short period of time but your site will crash and burn upon a Google update. Therefore, most link building strategy is probably useless over the long haul. It is useless because Google will sooner or later find your pattern and then, your site will be penalized. Their latest techniques were based on looking at an abnormal amount of exact keyword match use for anchor text. When you think about it, what are the odds that 200 links to your site all use the same 5 keywords? So much for link building, huh?

The traffic building techniques are changing and the monetization strategies have evolved as well. The no brainer ways were to optimize your adsense blocks, write a few affiliate reviews hope to make conversions. It is still working (I’m still making a lot of money with these techniques), but this is not where the money is.

So How Do You Make Money Online In 2013?

Ahhh…. That’s a great question… which I don’t have a direct answer for yet! But this is what I’ll be working on in the next few weeks! I’m not out of resources for the moment and I’m already working on other ways to make money so far…

Newsletter

I’ve been repeating this for at least a year now: the money is in the list. The main reason why I focus so much on my newsletter strategy is because I can attach my reader to my site without the help of Google. My subscribers follow my blogs and will come back to read an article each time I send them an email. The key here is to catch as many readers as possible that come to my site through Google the first time.

Membership Website

This is another of my projects that will look like a “real business model” and a more classical way of making money. I still have the target to launch my membership website by the end of the year. It will be coupled with another investing book which I should finish in the next six weeks. Using Amazon has been a great strategy to boost our income in 2012 and we will continue on this route.

Build Smaller Sites With Greater Content

Instead of focusing on keyword research and link building strategies, I’ll try something completely different for my future sites: create an awesome user experience. This is how I can make sure my readers will come to my site, bookmark it, subscribe to my newsletter and follow my suggestions for affiliate programs. Instead of trying to make a quick buck from Adsense and have visitors leave as soon as they come in, I will try to make them stick around and read 3, 4, 5 pages of my sites and have them take an action. I’m not reinventing the wheel here but I think the future of making money online will go there.

Using Different Media

Another important point is to use search engines other than Google. Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts are all ways to generate traffic towards a site that are independent of your keyword ranking abilities. We got our mic and software to do screen captures so we should be entering into the production phase shortly.

I’ll probably start with a 5 minute market review podcast for my investing sites. Since I follow the markets with passion, it won’t be hard to produced a 5 minute show weekly! I hope to build my brand and gather more loyal readers that way.

What Else?

So this is where I’m standing at right now. I don’t have a clear answer nor a clear strategy but I’ll be working on my structure first and then, implement different things. What are you doing different now for your sites? Have you used any of these strategies yet?

image credit

What are some articles worth checking out?

What advice I would give my 23 year old self @ Retire by 40.

I always love articles like this. There’s so much to be learned out there from those older than us! I’m only 25, but I sure do wish I could speak to my 23 year old self!

The Quitting Lawyer and the Despondent Millionaire @ Mr. Money Mustache.

Some great reader stories and responses in here.

Time for the carnivals…

Financial Independence Carnival #11.

The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup (thanks for the link!).

Sunday Morning Dump (thanks for the link also!).

Today I wanted to have some fun and discuss the idea of getting work done in the summer when it’s warm out.

Do you get more or less work done in the summer?

You feel better in the summer. There’s so much to do. Everyone is out. You can spend an evening at the park. Most of you reading this have kids and believe me I know how bad kids can be in the summer. When I was a kid I just wanted to be at the park all evening playing soccer or hanging out with friends. I couldn’t stay in.

How are you supposed to stay productive or stick to your laptop when you just want to be outside? It’s pretty tough at times.

The winter can be a killer on your moods. I’ve seen many friends experience season affective disorder. You don’t feel like doing anything. You just want to sit around. Your mood sucks too.

According to the Mayo Clinic:

“Seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. If you’re like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the fall and may continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.”

That sucks. I personally can get pretty damn lazy in the winter months. There are days where I don’t feel like doing anything. It can be difficult to snap out of.

With that being said, we all want to get the most out of the summer because it’s only here for such a short period of time.

How can you stay on top of your goals in the summer?

The following tips have worked best for me when I know that I have to be glued to my laptop when it’s gorgeous out.

Avoid the temptation to drink early.

When it’s warm out, it’s tempting to start hanging out on the patio earlier in the day. This usually leads to booze. This could lead to a few beers. You’re feeling social. You don’t want to go home. Next thing you know, you’re 6 beers in and feeling wasted by 5pm. While there’s nothing wrong with that if you planned for it, it sucks if you have things to do that day.

As tempting as it can be, you got to hold off on the early drinking.

Get your work done first.

My goal is to get as much done as possible in the morning. This frees up the rest of the day. You also don’t have to stress during the afternoon about that email that you forgot to reply to or that project that isn’t complete yet.

I say that we try to get as much done as possible in the morning or before we go out. The rest of the day is ours.

Wake up early.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” – Ben Franklin

It’s tough to wake up earlier than you need to in the winter because it’s freezing out and your bed is so nice and warm. Now that it’s warm out, you have less excuses. What are some of the benefits of waking up earlier?

• A calm morning.
• Time to exercise.
• Start the day off right.
• The world is peaceful.
• More focus.

[Quick note: Leo wrote about the beenfits of waking up early at Zen Habits.]

As for me, I have windows open with a nice breeze coming in as I type this article. This is the warmest day of the year. As soon as I finish my work I’m heading outside to enjoy the sun. We have a nice little park in our backyard and there’s always someone around to hang out.

Do you struggle with getting work done in the summer?

I have so many projects, I don’t know where to start….

At work, with your sideline business or for life in general, I’ve observed that many people can’t manage their time well. They all have tons of things to do and work super hard over long hours. But the result is always the same; they can’t make it.

If you feel overloaded, under pressure, crumbling under your pile of work, this post is for you.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE YOUR TASKS?

Honestly, it’s difficult because you want it to be that way. My boss once said:

You can keep shuffling paper all day. At the end of the day, you will have worked 10 hours in a row like donkey, but nothing will be done.

The problem is not if you are working hard or not, the problem is that you are not working on the right things. I’m known for my sense of productivity. I’m actually obsessed by efficiency. If there would be a religion based on effectiveness, I would be one of their greater preachers . I have never believed that working long hours was the solution to achieve any task. Get smart instead. Here are a few tricks I’ve learned to make sure I keep my focus on the right thing.

CLEAR UP YOUR MIND… AND YOUR MAILBOX!

One of the biggest time consuming items in your life (after traffic, lol!) is probably email managing. In order to become efficient, you need to have a clear view of what has to get done. You need to look at the entire forest, not just the tree in front of you. If you attack one task after another, you’ll be a good soldier, but you will never lead the army.

What bugs me the most is my mailbox. I can’t start my day with an inbox full of email. This is why I always start my day by cleaning it out. In reality, there are only a few emails requiring immediate attention. Chances are that it’s not even 1 a day! This is why I scan through all my emails, delete the ones that are useless, forward a good part of them to other people who can work on them and answer 1 or 2 crucial emails in the morning. This way, I know that my mailbox is almost empty and the rest could be cleared towards the end of the day.

IDENTIFY YOUR PRIORITY

Each morning, after cleaning my inbox, I look at my week and at my day. I make a list of things I absolutely need to finish. Those are added value task that nobody could do. I’m not here to shuffle paper, I’m here to add value to my company; regardless if it’s my employer or my own company. The point is to add value when you work on something.

The short list will lead to the rest of my day and help me prioritize tasks. Every time a new thing to do hits my desk, I look at my quick list and determine if it should be part of it or not. Most of the time, it shouldn’t. So I put this task aside and continue my focus. I do exactly the same thing with my online company: focus on my quick list and put the rest aside.

Towards the end of the day, I have less “brain energy” so I can handle the rest of my emails, shuffle paper around and clean up other small tasks. The important things have been done, so I can spend time on things that don’t matter as much.

DON’T TAKE A STEP BACK, RUN FOR A MILE AND THEN LOOK BACK

People say you need to take a step back to have a clear view. I don’t think it’s appropriate. I think you need to run a mile, go to the top of a mountain and then turn back and look at the big picture. At each beginning of the year, I take an hour or two to make my plan for the year. This plan is good for my day job, my online company and my personal life.

I listed my goals for 2013 for my personal and online business aspects on this blog. I do the same thing at work to make sure I’ll be on target with my objectives. You know what? This is why I never fail at doing a good job at work .

A FINAL TIP: IDENTIFY THE REAL PRIORITY

It all starts from setting your priorities. Most people don’t know which priority to set as first. I find it easy: take the one that adds the most value. I have seen people working on 10 sites at a time and my questions was: why don’t you focus on your top 2 earners and see if you have time left for the rest?

We have been putting a lot of projects on the shelf throughout the years for this reason. I don’t have the time to work on a super project? That’s not a problem, let’s put it on the shelf and work on a super project that is already working and generating money. In 2012, we had an insurance website project. We clearly don’t have the time to build it right now. So we just forgot about it and have focused on other money earners. This year, my main project is a membership website. Last year it was my book. You know what? I’m still selling 40 books per month after almost 9 months since we launched it.

So keep this in mind: choose what bring the most value as your priority. It’s not that complicated once you use this single rule, is it?

I have these flashes burning in my mind at times….

A few days ago, I took a day off in the middle of the week to go to the spa with my wife. We had breakfast together, spent the day relaxing and came back at 5pm to pick-up our kids and fall into our family routine. Taking days off like this is one of the most powerful things that could happen to my mind. It’s an amazing time helping to me disconnect from reality.

When I arrived at the restaurant for breakfast, I had this flash again: Why is this not my life each week? Why do I work most of the time when I could be enjoying life fully?

I’m sure you’ve entertained these kinds of thoughts at one point or another in your life. Waiting to hit 65 and to finally retire doesn’t resonate with me. I’m 31, turning 32 towards the end of the year, so waiting another 33 years is way too long to wait before enjoying life fully. I’ve mentioned a few times that I want to become a millionaire quickly in my life. My online company is the main factor that will determine if I will worth over $1M or not. At the moment, it looks like I won’t be able to create the growth I need from my company to be worth that much in 4 years. Does this mean I can’t retire at 35? Let’s find out!

WHERE I’M STANDING NOW

According to my latest net worth statement, I show a total debt of $312,303. The first point to retire early is to kill your debts ASAP. Less debt means less income required to make everything work and then, it’s all that much easier to pull the plug and enjoy life! Here’s my debt situation in detail:

In the next four years, I’ll pay able to pay off my personal loans in general as well as for the car and pool. At this rate, I think I should be able to clear my personal line of credit as well. Therefore, the only debt that will stand will be my mortgage. I won’t be mortgage free in four years, far from it, but I can concentrate on that debt solely. However, I will consider a car loan payment as I will always have to pay for one car loan at least…

HOW’S MY BUDGET?

Now that I know that most of my debts will be gone, it’s time to take a look at how much do I need to spend monthly to keep my current lifestyle. If I calculate a $250K mortgage at 5% over the next 25 years, this makes a payment of $1,500.

When I add all my expenses together, I need $5,787 per month to keep my lifestyle as is. This includes all my expenses + $325/month for my childrens’ tuition (RESP contributions). I won’t consider any RRSP contributions at this point since I will already be retired. I just need to generate $5,787 per month. Let’s put it at $6,000 to make sure we are safe.

I’m well aware that $72,000 per year (after taxes!) is a lot of money to generate in order to keep my lifestyle. Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so as we spend $1,200 in groceries (a family of 5 requires a lot of food!). Since we eat a lot of vegetables and fish, it’s getting expensive… I have also considered vacations, car maintenance and home improvement/maintenance in the budget. Basically, everything is covered .

WHAT I CAN DO IN FOUR YEARS

There are a few things that can be done in order to make this dream happen. The first one is the level of bonus I can get from my day job for the next four years. Technically, this amount varies greatly from roughly $15,000 to…. $100,000! I don’t expect to make $100K in bonus as this would be an exceptional year. However, if I can maintain an average of $25K to $30K per year over the next four years, this would greatly boost my debt repayment. On top of my regular monthly payment, if I add an additional 10K per year (‘cause there are a lot of taxes applied to the bonus!), I could drop my mortgage to 200K or maybe lower in four years. This is definitely something I have to work on…

Cutting down on my budget could be another thing I could do… but you and I both know this ain’t gonna happen. If early retirement means not drinking wine, not eating great food, not going on vacation and not keeping my big house, it’s not gonna happen. There are things I’m ready to sacrifice to retire early, but not my lifestyle.

The next big factor will be the amount of cash my company can generate in the future. I’ve previously wrote that I could draw $3,000 monthly from my online company tomorrow morning without firing anyone. Note that in that post, I wrote I need $5,000 per month to live but I think that $6,000 would be more realistic over the long run . I think I could definitely grow my online company a lot faster if I was working 40 hours per week on it instead of 10! But would it be considered retirement?

WHAT’S EARLY RETIREMENT ANYWAY?

I guess it all depends on your definition of early retirement! Two of my university buddies took that route a while ago and they are living freely without being fully rich per se. The difference is that they work hard sometimes and take long vacation throughout the years as well.

I don’t see myself doing nothing to going to restaurants and spas I think will need challenges to make my life worth it. However, building your own empire is something truly exciting. If I have to work 40 hours a week on my computer and have the opportunity to take 2-3 months off per year, I think that’s early retirement. If I can take my 40 hours per week at the moment I want to do it throughout the day, I think this is early retirement.

Basically, for me, early retirement is simply doing what you love to make money when you want to do it.

WHAT THE WORSE COULD HAPPEN?

After looking at my situation, I think the worst would be to retire at the age of 40 or 45… seriously. Each year working at the bank means at least 10K in debts paid off + 10K in additional savings (considering my employer stocks, pension plan and RRSP contribution). So If I wait until I’m 45, my mortgage will probably stand at 150K or maybe lower where my RRSP + pension plan will be sitting at over $250K.

I truly start to believe that at worst, I’ll be retiring at 45… I can’t technically not imagine waiting at the age of 58 where I would reach full pension at my day job… that’s quite interesting already, isn’t?

INSPIRATION FROM WHO’D DONE IT

Throughout the years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with a lot of people who had accomplished early retirement as per my definition. Some of them are doing it the extreme way (cutting down their expenses and live frugally), I’m not this kind of guy Some others are making a lot of money and enjoy every moment of life too. I guess it’s all in the balance of life!

Here’s a short list of people I’ve met and inspire me to live freely and work for my own pockets…

Quinn @ Cubicle Free

This guy made over $400K in one year from one if his website a few years ago. He is now living freely and keep working on his online empire.

Pat Flynn @ Smart Passive Income

Pat is continuously working on blog and other web projects. He is definitely not retired per se, but he can truly do whatever he wants with the amount of money he is making right now.

Sam @ Financial Samurai

Sam has taken the hard way of working hard in a very demanding field and save most of his income to achieve early retirement. I’m not willing to make those sacrifices but man, this guy is inspiring!

Mr. Money Mustache @ Mr. Money Mustache

Once a successful engineer, I’ve meet Mr. Money Mustache at FinCon12 in Denver. This guy applies the true meaning of early retirement extreme by living frugally.

Joe @ Retire by 40

Joe recently stopped working and now takes care of his family. This is another great example of someone who had worked hard to save money aside.

Adam Baker @ Man Vs Debt

My friend Adam is living from one project to another without really worrying about the future. His life is quite inspiring while I’m not sure I would be willing to be on the edge all the time as he is!

Martin @ Start Free Lancing Now

Martin (MD!) did exactly what I should have done after my bachelor degree: never get a day job! I’ve been stuck in the golden pay check dilemma for years now while he enjoys freedom by working on his own websites and other gigs.

Readers, do you have other inspiring people pushing you toward financial freedom and early retirement?

Let’s jump into the epic piece of the week:

The Two Reasons Why You Aren’t Making Over $100K a Year @ Quick Sprout.

What’s my favorite part of this article?

“You don’t have to be the smartest person out there, but if you want to succeed you need to do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

I highly recommend this post as Neil breaks down why some folks make more money than others and what it takes to get ahead.

The carnivals:

Carnival of MoneyPros – (Step Away from your computer and go outside- Edition).

Carnival of Personal Finance – Happy Days Are Here Again Edition!

Carnival of Financial Planning B- May 10th.

We all make mistakes. That’s normal. What sucks is not knowing when you’re doing something wrong. How are you supposed to know that you’re on the wrong path when everyone tells you that you’re the best? This is why I love to receive harsh criticism. Just because someone is honest with you or doesn’t like every single idea of yours, it doesn’t make them a “hater.” We should be thankful for those that don’t sugar-coat.

Instead of calling critics “haters” we need to open our eyes. We can’t always be told that we are the best at everything.

This article is about the mistakes that I made and about how others helped me realize I was messing up. This isn’t about feeling sorry for yourself. It’s about fixing things.

What are 5 little known factors that could be killing your business?

1. Focusing on the wrong people.

What’s your target market? Who are you marketing to? Who do you want to reach?

The biggest issue is that most of us can’t answer this one question. It seems simple enough, but too often do we try to approach “everyone.” That’s unfortunately not a target market. You can’t please everyone. You don’t work for everyone.

You need to stop focusing on the wrong people. I focused on the wrong people for far too long.

How do you know if you’re focusing on the wrong people?

• There’s no specific target group.
• They have no money.
• They’re unresponsive.
• They don’t care enough.
• They have no access to resources.
• They can’t act on anything.
• The market group doesn’t exist.

It’s time to go after those that matter and want your help.

2. Selling the wrong product.

I’ve done this before. It’s easy to get lost in your own little world.

Are you selling the wrong product? First, how do you know if you’re selling the wrong product?

• No sales. 
• Nobody reacts.
• Nobody cares.

The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. No reaction is the worst reaction. I embrace being hate. I enjoy being loved. No reaction sucks.

You need to stop selling the wrong product and offering the wrong services.

3. Looking in the wrong places.

Oh I’ve looked in the wrong places many times. Not just with business, but with life.

What are the wrong places exactly? It’s difficult to tell to be totally realistic. Nobody goes out of there way to look in the wrong place. It just sort of happens by accident. The best way to tell is if you keep on trying something and it doesn’t work.

My best tip here is to experiment with different ideas. You can try guest posting, Kijiji, Twitter, other blogs, and so on. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. I’m just suggesting that you don’t dump all of your resources into one place. Try everything out.

For my friend’s tattoo business, Facebook works amazing. For me, Facebook is just an excuse to make inappropriate jokes on everyones’ walls. For my one buddy, Kijiji helps him find clients. For me, well we won’t get into that.

4. Wasting time on things that don’t really matter.

There are just so many things that don’t matter at all. Seriously. I’m the king of wasting time on trivial things. Wasting time will only hurt the growth of your business. That means you get to help less people. You make less money. And you don’t make the impact that you were hoping to make.

What are the biggest time sucks?

1. Arguing with random people online.
2. Responding to pointless emails.
3. Research aka reading articles.
4. Marketing aka reading marketing blogs with the same tired advice.
5. Facebook. Enough said.
6. Social media marketing aka chatting about Dexter.

Please stop wasting time when you can’t afford to!

5. Losing focus.

It’s too easy to lose focus. There are distractions everywhere. The other night I went on YouTube and started watching old UFC fights for no good reason. I lost my focus and fell behind.

Once you lose focus, it might be near impossible to gain it back. Nothing seems to click. You’re in a slump and it feels like you’re going to be stuck forever.

I’m not going to be a hypocrite because I’m the king of losing focus. So um, I say, try your best to keep your eye on the prize!

Have any of these factors been holding you back? They’ve certainly held me back at one point or another.

“For the marketer, the freelancer, and the entrepreneur, the challenge is to reset your comfort level, to be okay with the undone, with the cycle of never ending.” — Seth Godin

Last week, I highlighted most of what we had done during our annual meeting. One other thing I didn’t mention was our company shares valuation. Each year, we crunch the numbers together and assign a value to our business. For the first time in 5 years, the company value is lower than the previous year. That sucks!!!

How DO YOU VALUE NON PUBLIC COMPANY SHARES?

A classic method to value our business would be to take the net profit, adjust it with amortization and apply a multiplier. For example, our last year’s financial statement show a net profit adjusted with an amortization of roughly $40K. This means that, after taxes and all other expenses, our business generates $40K per year. If we use a multiplier to value our business, it would have to be 3 or 4 times the profits. Therefore, the company would worth between $120K and $160K. People who think that you can apply a big multiplier to value a company are not in the real world. You may think that your company is worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars or even a low 7 figure due to its big potential. Let me tell you; potential income worth only for the owner! A few episodes of Shark Tank or Dragon’s Denwill teach that!

We thought the classic valuation model wasn’t right for a web business. Especially because there is no way to appreciate the true potential of this business since we run it with only 20 hours/week (10 hrs from each partner).

HOW OUR VALUATION MODEL WORKS

If I had to sell my blog empire tomorrow, I would certainly base my asking price with the valuation model I use to buy blogs. According to this model, I could sell my sites for as high as four times the gross revenues. Since we broke the 100K figure for the third year in a row, I would not be afraid to ask for $500K. But I would certainly not sell quickly!

When we put a share value to our company, we decided to create our own business share valuation model. We thought it would be a good idea in order to:

#1 Keep the same model to see the shares value evolution through time

#2 Design a model considering both the real market and the potential of this business

#3 Establish a value for our shares upon our death as our wives would benefit from the life insurance we purchased.

Here’s our quick formula to determine the business value:

PAST 12 MONTHS GROSS REVENUES * 3 YEARS + CASH – SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM DEBTS

So we built a valuation model which considers the classic valuation model for websites (a multiplier of gross revenues) and added the cash and debts composites. We did that as we were sitting on over $60k in cash one year and we thought this was worth something. The situation is currently the opposite right now as we have corporate debts.

According to this model, our shares are worth $126,000 compared to $131,000 last year. It’s a drop of nearly 4% in a year. This is mainly due to a drop in our gross revenues. The drop is not astronomical, but when you look at our model, each time we lose $1 in revenues, it affects our business valuation by $3. Since we have concentrated on paying down our debts in 2012 and not growing our gross income, we affected our valuation model at the same time.

WHY I THINK MY COMPANY IS WORTH MORE TODAY THAN LAST YEAR

For the first time since we created our company in 2008, our revenues didn’t grow. Even worst, it has dropped by a few percent! Still, I’m convinced my company is worth more today than it was worth a year ago.

It’s been a while since we havebeen concentrating on diversifying our business and make it more sustainable. Almost 70% of our business model was based on private advertising only a year ago. This part of the business was continuously growing and I was even expecting revenues as high as $15K/month by the end of 2012. An important Google update happened at the beginning of last year and forced us to change our business model to survive.

Last month, we had our best month in term of gross income for almost a year! The best part is less than 25% of our income is now coming from private advertising! We even cleared some of our websites completely! We can now expect to receive money each month from various other sources:

Adsense

Book sales (Dividend Growth)

Small eBook Sales

Affiliate programs

Niche websites

Ad campaign brokering services

It is true that we made less money in 2012. But the point is that we are making more passive income than ever. We are making money from so many other sources that our business model is not dependent on anything anymore. We even suffered from traffic loss and are still making more money since we are able to attach our readers through our newsletter.

With the addition of videos, podcasts and a membership site by the end of 2013, I’m convinced that we will continue to break the $10K/month and eventually reach $15K/month in 2014. At that point, our business will be worth a lot more! Hahaha!

Readers, do you think my shares value worth more this year? Would you invest in such a company if you had the opportunity?