This will be the last post on Nomad Couch. It’s the end of an era. Last stop. La grande finale. It’s been an awesome ride, but now has come the time to say goodbye – and swing the bat.

I hate goodbyes so I’m going to try to keep this short(ish).

First of all, I know that this might come as a bit of a shock. After all, it was just few weeks ago when I announced “my plans for this summer” regarding Nomad Couch. Obviously, those plans won’t be happening anytime soon.

Now before I get to the reasons for this decision, I just want to say a few words to you – my dear reader.

A HUGE Thank You.

I mean it. THANK YOU.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for “liking” this blog on fb. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for letting me know a little something about you. Thank you for sending all those wonderful emails and asking a lot of questions about travel, business and life. I truly, TRULY appreciate all these acts of kindness immensely!

Those emails & reactions have kept me going over the last few years. They’ve given me inspiration to write more. They’ve given me motivation to try to help people more.

If you just recently joined the email list, thank you! And in the same breath - I’m so sorry. I hate it that right when you came into the room, the host of the evening goes out from the backdoor. Doesn’t that just suck or what!

I’m sorry.

If there’s anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to contact me through Twitter or Facebook. I’d still be more than happy to help.

Now, a Few Reasons

First of all, by no means was this a quick decision. Quite the contrary. It’s something that has been pounding in my head for several months now.

Let’s just say that during the last few months, I’ve been seriously thinking about what it is that I want to accomplish in life, business – and what truly motivates me.

While writing to Nomad Couch definitely has been a big pleasure and very inspiring adventure, it has also turned out to be true that it won’t be the road I want to keep walking in the future. To be completely honest with you (and myself), it just won’t help me get anywhere near to those goals that I have set for myself in life and/or in business.

I don’t even think that it’s been that I have been playing in the wrong niche. I’m sure that it’s possible to build great businesses around the location independent lifestyle & business concepts. I’ve seen many people do it already. All my best wishes to them. Cody, rock their socks off bud! I know you’re doing it right as we speak

It’s just that in order to go after something you’ve always dreamed of – you need to make sacrifices in the process. This would be one of those crossroads in life.

Swing The Bat.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how my current business endeavors (namely my freelance WordPress business and WebVehicle, our software startup) further the plans and goals that I’ve set for myself in business. Based on that: WebVehicle stays, freelancing goes.

By considering all the elements involved in each business, it has become very clear that freelancing won’t be the way I want to keep doing things in the future. WebVehicle is more on the right track so I’ll keep working on that.

However, I will be also starting a completely new business from the scratch. And not just any business, it won’t be a walk in the park.

Think big or go home. That’s how I’m going after this one. Because in the end… why the hell not?

Because being 50, 60, 70, 80, 90.. and having regrets that you didn’t swing the bat.. is the worst of them all. – Gary Vaynerchuk

My Goals:

1. First goal: Build a business that makes one million dollars in revenue (hopefully before I hit 40 35 though!!)
2. Second goal: Keep building until that business (actually that, or some other business of mine) makes one million dollars in revenue within 12 months

Laugh all you want. I’m not kidding. I’m dead serious about this.

Will I ever get there? Honestly – I don’t know. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

But make no mistake about it; I’d be damned if I wouldn’t even try.

So this is me, swinging the bat.

And Gary, if you’re listening; here’s to one of those hmmmm… moments from one random fucker. Thank you for giving me the last spark to finally go after this!

Thank you for reading and now go catch those dreams of yours. No one else is going to catch them for you.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the video below, be sure to watch it. You won’t regret it.

P.P.S. If you’re wondering what will happen to Nomad Couch after this post: Don’t worry. The posts will stay online until further notice. If you want to keep in loop about where I’m going currently with my goals, just tune in to my tweets. I’ll let you know when there’s something worth your while to hear more about.

All my best,  Juha

Featured photo by Poppy Wright

Swing The Bat. is a post from: Nomad Couch is now "officially closed"

Now this might seem like a crazy thing to do for many. I’ve just removed every single one of my affiliate links from this blog. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why.

Consider this: You write a kick ass helpful post, spill your guts out and really do the dirty work of going through, let’s say 3 online services that help your reader to get some specific task done. You know it’s a super helpful post and it will be genuinely helpful for your reader.

Now, you see that 2 of those services have an affiliate program in place so you apply. Heck, why not include the link to the post. If people find the post useful, maybe they click through a link and give some positive karma back by buying the service. It’s a win-win right?

Then The Nagging Feeling Comes Along…

I did write a useful post, yes? Check. I didn’t write it because I just wanted to earn affiliate commission from those services, yes? Check.

Still, something seems to be off. The nagging feeling of “I just monetized this post” comes along.

Do my readers think I wrote this just for the sake of money? Do my readers think I’ve been “bought” by the owner of the service that I recommended?  Is my recommendation biased because of the affiliate links?

I know the truth but do they?

Choosing Camps

Among the bloggers who use affiliate links in their blogs, there are basically two camps:

1. The Sleazy Internet Marketers: We’ll you know this type. Every week, you get at least one new message from them telling you that “their friend” has just came up with this amazing thing. And that you should definitely buy it. Through their affiliate link (well, of course!) They say they “know” this guy is the real thing and they’ve been buddies for life… And so forth. You know the type. (In reality, he’s never used the product himself, he’s never met the guy selling the product, and quite frankly; money is pretty much the only motivation for him to promote the thing in the first place).
2. The Authentic Marketer: This guy does affiliate marketing too. The difference is he only recommends something when he genuinely knows it will help his readers in some way. He doesn’t do it just to make a quick buck. Sure, it’s a great thing if someone buys through his link, but that’s not the main motivator for him. Helping is.

Most bloggers fall in somewhere between these two camps. I know I’ve done a bit of both. Before writing this post, I had couple of my affiliate links on the toolbox page pointing to some products that I don’t have personal “real life” experience on.

For example, I’ve never used Clicksor or Infolinks on any of my sites. I have registered to their service to check out what they’re about, but using their service in real project – nope. I included those links because those were known alternatives for Google AdSense. Just alternatives to choose from if the reader so seem fit. That’s it.

For the most part though, when I’ve recommended something on Nomad Couch, whether have those been iPhone Applications or tools for Location Independent service businesses - those recommendations have always been based on my real life experiences. Even so, if I had added my affiliate links to those posts.

However, as long as I’ve been using affiliate links, the nagging feeling has always been present. So, I decided to finally do something about it.

Eliminating the Problem Alltogether

This post marks the end of affiliate links in this blog.

I’ve removed all my affiliate links from the toolbox page. I’m also going to do the same for each older post where I’ve used affiliate links.

These are my reasons:

1. I want to get rid of that nagging feeling. When the concept of blog monetizing is taken out of the equation, it’s much easier to recommend only those things that you truly believe in. No money involved.
2. I want Nomad Couch readers not have to second guess my motives. When I post something new, now you truly can rest assured that I’m not in on this for money. If I recommend something, it’s a real, genuine recommendation – not a trick to get my hands to your pocket.

Sound good? I’m loving this already!

But Doesn’t This Kill All My Nomad Couch Based Income?

Well, technically – yes. BUT (and this is a big but), I’ve never considered this blog to be an income source for me to begin with. At some point I recall thinking about “monetization strategies” for this blog, but I haven’t stressed about those things for a long time now.

Cutting out the affiliate links won’t hurt much. The positives weight out negatives easily on this case.

No more sleazy feelings!

Putting Monetary Motivation Elsewhere

By taking monetary motivation out of blogging, I honestly believe it’s much easier to produce content that will be truly valuable to your readers. They don’t have to worry about you being too pushy on some service or product and you don’t have to worry about sounding like a douchebag if you happen to recommend something on your blog.

Of course this is just how I feel about it; feel free to continue doing your way if it’s working for you.

I’m going to put my monetary motivations elsewhere (like here) and keep this blog a marketing douchebag free zone from now on!

That would be all for now. How do you feel about this? Do you get that “sleazy bastard” feeling when you use your affiliate links? Do you promote stuff that you’ve only barely touched (if at all)? Whats your take on the subject? Let’s hear it in the comments!

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you dropping by again next week! Cheers!

Featured photo from Shutterstock

The End Of Affiliate Links is a post from: Nomad Couch is now "officially closed"

I was going to write about a whole other topic today, but this just can’t wait. My Google Analytics statistics got me worried and I felt like this absolutely needs to be addressed today. So here goes.

I have a habit of checking Nomad Couch visitor statistics few times a week. During the past three weeks, I’ve seen someone come here multiple times through Google with the phrase “negative blogging nomad couch“.

Seeing this first time a few weeks back got me wondering what was someone trying to search. Seeing the same phrase second time last week started to get me worried. Today someone came in from Google with that same phrase once again. Now this worries the living heck out of me.

So – Let’s address this right now.

Negative blogging?

Sure, it’s just a handful of visitors (maybe even the same person). Not much right? Well, I agree. But even so, it got me wondering.. have I been posting too negative stuff on the blog lately?

I can see how someone could felt this way. After all, I just lately posted about:

• 12 Dangerous Ideas: Common Lies, Myths And Half Truths People Tell You Online When You’re New 
• 3 Reasons Most Lifestyle Businesses Fail + How To Avoid Becoming One of Them

Now it’s true that I don’t know why someone came in with that phrase. It might have nothing to do with my first thought that “maybe I have been posting too negative stuff lately?”.

However, if it was because of that – I would like to apologize. Being negative about things and ranting is absolutely not what I wanted to express though those posts – or this blog. Not at all.

I just believe that it is very important to not just always look at the bright side of things, but to also talk about the rugged side of things.

It Ain’t All Sunshine And Rainbows

I wish it were. And who would not want that.

The truth is, however, that we all face challenges.  There will be setbacks and many times – we must fall and rise again from the ashes if we really want to achieve the goals we have set ourselves to do.

Failing is important – it makes you learn. What’s truly important is this: No matter how hard you fall, you can always rise again. Don’t wallow in the ash – move on.

Don’t let failure beat you down mentally. Learn from it and then move forward.

Maintain a Fighter Spirit – Even When The Shit Hits The Fan

When I talk about the negative side of location independence, working online and failure; I don’t do it because I want to just rant about some ideas that I think are not the best way to go about doing things.

I talk about negatives (too) because I’ve made many of those same mistakes myself and I don’t want you to do the same mistakes yourself.

What didn’t work out for me or others might very well work for you. Succeeding in life and business is far from being a black/white thing.

Find what works for you. Take the hits and keep moving forward. ALWAYS.

Two Most Inspirational Clips I’ve Ever Seen

When you’ve done reading this post, I want you to truly FEEL that inner fighter inside of you. Everyone has it, even if you feel like you’ve lost it at some point in your life.

The following are the two most inspirational clips I’ve ever seen and today, I want to share them with you.

The first one is from Rocky Balboa, the second one is from  Any Given Sunday. Both great movies, see them if you can.

Watch them. Now. I swear you will leave here with positive thoughts today.

So to finish today’s post, I’m just going to quote Rocky on this. Could not say it better even if I tried.

It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can GET hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!

That’s all today. Stay positive!

Ps: If YOU were the one who came in here with that “negative blogging” phrase – please let me know why you did so. I would really love to know! Cheers!

Featured photo: Shutterstock

Negative Blogging is a post from: Nomad Couch is now "officially closed"

Summer’s just around the corner and I’ve spent this week writing down my plans and goals for this summer. Nomad Couch plays a big role in those plans so I thought I would share some of the plans with you today.

While people tend to read blogs less often in the summer, I still think you should have something great to consume when you are not too busy sipping your favorite summer beverage on some beautiful outdoor terrace.

So here goes. A sneak peek of what’s coming next at Nomad Couch.

May: One New Post Per Week + The Start of My First ThemeForest project!

Besides posting on my regular weekly schedule, I’m also starting a new project that I’ve been itching to get started for a long time now.

In short: ThemeForest, here I come!

If you’re not familiar with ThemeForest, it is a marketplace for website themes, templates and designs.

While I’ve been doing freelance web development for a good while now, I have not made any commercial themes for venues like ThemeForest. This is about to change.

In fact, I’m putting all my freelance development services on hold for this summer because I want to make sure this project gets my full attention.

I won’t yet reveal what type of theme I’m going to build, but it will be a WordPress based theme. I’ll be sharing more details on the project here as it progresses.

There are a number of different lessons to be learned before a project like this is finished. Lessons such as:

• How to become a ThemeForest author
• What type of products they accept for the marketplace
• What steps are there involved in theme creation process
• What steps are there involved when you submit your theme for a review
• How to make sure you won’t get sued for copyright violations if you use third party resources like icons, images, video and code
• How to market your theme after it is accepted to ThemeForest
• And more…

As this is my first commercial theme project, I will be doing every step by myself for this first project. For the second project (oh yes, there will be more ), I’m going to outsource some parts of the theme creation process. Before outsourcing becomes an option though, it is necessary to really know each step of the way so you actually know what it is, you could outsource. 

June: Online Entrepreneur Interview Month

June will be dedicated to online entrepreneur interviews.

I’m going to have a chat with several successful online entrepreneurs and ask them a bunch of tough questions about the way they run their business.

I have yet to confirm the full interview guest line-up and specific talk topics, but I’ll let you know the first guest as soon as the interview is ready to go out.

July: Guest Posts Month

In July, I’m opening doors to guest posts here at Nomad Couch. If you believe you have a great  in mind you’d like to share with us, contact me directly and we’ll talk about your idea in more detail. Get in contact and I will lock a publish date for your post!

You don’t have to have a HUGELY successful business or anything like that. The most important thing is that you have some valuable lesson or two to share with our readers, matching our core topics in this blog. Namely, location independence, selling online, freelancing and  topics of that nature.

August: Lessons And Results From ThemeForest (and more…)

In August, I’m going to talk a great deal about the way ThemeForest project has gone so far and the lessons learned along the way. We are also going to talk about what’s in store for the rest of 2012 and how those plans involve you.  More on that later

Before Signing Off For The Weekend…

What do you think about our summer schedule based on this post? Think you’ll be hanging with us this summer? I hope you will! Let me know if you have some particular entrepreneur in mind you’d like me to talk with in June and I’ll see if I can make that happen. Also, if you’d like to guest post, please send your ideas to me directly and we’ll take it from there.

Have a great weekend and I hope you get a chance to enjoy beautiful spring weather! Until next time.

Featured photo by John Skodak

Nomad Couch Summer Schedule 2012: What We’re Cooking For May-August? is a post from: Nomad Couch is now "officially closed"

How to set up a location independent service business? That’s the question we’re going to discuss today. Whether you’re a freelance graphic designer, a business owner running a team of software developers, life coach (selling coaching services) or some other type of service business owner – You could be running your business in a true location independent style. The question is: Are you?

In case you didn’t know, I own and run a small WordPress development studio. It’s a freelance based business that I can run from anywhere in the world (given that I have a laptop and a working internet connection at my disposal of course). The following tools & services are the ones I’ve found useful for my particular business.

Do note that following steps are by far not the only way to setup a location independent service business. There are a ton of similar services available for each step. Having said that, this is the combination I’ve been using so far and I’ve been quite happy with my setup.  (Don’t worry; this post is affiliate link free. Just try out those services that you feel like a good match for your business and let me know how you got things rolling!).

Ready to start? Great! Here we go:

Before Anything Else: Pre-requirements

There are couple of things you need before we start.

1. You need to have a registered business (Sole proprietorship, LLC or whatever suits your taste)
2. You need a second bank account for keeping your personal and business cash flow separate (not absolutely necessary, but highly recommended)

If you got these in order, let’s move right along!

Step 1: Set Up a PayPal Business Account

Why this is important: With PayPal business account, you can easily start receiving payments via PayPal and all the major credit cards. The difference between individual & business account is that with a business account, your buyer doesn’t have to have an existing PayPal account. With business account it’s up to him to choose if he wants to use his existing credit card or PayPal.

An alternative for using PayPal would be to accept wire transfers, which is fine too. The reason I recommend PayPal here is because it integrates so well with the other services we’re going to set up later in this article.

Cost involved: No setup or monthly fees. 2.9% + $0.30 is charged PER TRANSACTION (note: if your monthly sales exceed $3000, you’ll be eligible to apply for PayPal’s Merchant Rate. This will lower the cost per transaction for you even more).

Is there a mobile app for this? Yes. Native apps are available for iPhone, Android and Blueberry.

How to set this up:

1. Go to PayPal.com and sign up for PayPal for business account.
2. Fill in your business details and complete the registration process.
3. Add your business bank account so you can easily transfer funds to your bank account.
4. Get your account verified. New accounts have sending and withdrawal limits until they’re verified. Click Get Verified on your Account Overview and follow the instructions.

That’s it. Setting this up won’t take many minutes and you’re good to go. The only caveat is that if you want to instantly apply for volume discount (more than $3000 sales per month) and your account is brand new, you must wait until your account is 90 days old before applying. This is PayPal’s current policy.

Step 2: Set Up a FreshBooks Account

Why this is important: FreshBooks enables you to send invoices online. You can choose to send invoices via email, snail mail or both. When you sign up, you get a 30-day access to every feature they got in their service. After 30 days (if you haven’t upgraded), your account goes to basic mode which  has a limited feature set and allows you to manage up to 3 clients.

Cost involved: Free account is… Well, free. “Seedling” account costs $19.95/month (allows 25 clients) and so on.

Is there a mobile app for this? Indeed. Check FreshBooks Add-ons page for more info.

How to set this up:

1. Go to FreshBooks.com and sign up for their free account.
2. Fill in your business details & link this to your PayPal account. Click Get Started when you’re done.
3. Log in and get rest of the setting in order. Click Settings and you’ll be able to manage your company info, taxes, invoice templates, online payment channels and more. Check the Online Payment section and double check that your PayPal account is linked. From this view you can also choose which other payment channels you’d like to use (PayPal’s enough for most cases).

Play around with the service for a while and you’ll get the hang of it. Oh, you know what… You could now send your first invoice and get paid straight to your PayPal account. That wasn’t too hard, wasn’t it? But why stop here when we got some more goodies to take advantage of

Step 3: Set Up a Hosting Account And Buy Yourself a Professional Business Site Template

Why this is important: You need a website for your business, right. Some place to show people what you’re selling, true? You need a few things: 1. a hosting account where you can set up your domain and website. 2. a site template for your business website.

Cost involved:

• Hosting plans: As of writing this, monthly costs for BlueHost plans start at $4.95 (includes domain) and $3.96 for HostGator (domain is extra $15 onetime fee).
• Theme: You can find some decent free themes online, but I really recommend that you invest a small amount to get a really good theme that fits well for your particular service business. You can find unbelievably gorgeous themes from ThemeForest for $10-40.

How to set this up:

1. Set up a web hosting account & your website domain through Bluehost or HostGator.
2. Get yourself a WordPress powered website theme that feel like a good fit for your particular service business. ThemeForest, WooThemes or ElegantThemes are all good places to start looking.
3. Install WordPress (using your BH / HG account). Then, install the theme that you just bought (or downloaded for free).
4. Fill in the blanks. In other words, create the page structure you want, write content and get the design, settings & plugins in order.

This is the step that will most likely take the biggest chunk of your time to accomplish. Depending on your prior experience with hosting accounts, WordPress skills, design issues and the way you want to set up your site, the amount of work can be anything from few hours to few weeks. Just make sure you have all the essential stuff in place when you launch the site. Namely: How you can help people, a little about who you are and your contact information. Depending on the nature of your service business, you might want to add more (maybe a blog, work portfolio, etc.).

If you want to start with a really minimum setup, the first 3 steps are pretty much all you need. All the following are extras that just basically make your life easier. Pick the one’s you like and give them a try!

Step 4: Set Up a Shoeboxed Account

Why this is important: Still bounce back and forth with paper bills & receipts? Many of us (still) do. How to handle this – location independent style? Try Shoeboxed. It’s a service which allows you to send all your paper bills & receipts to their service, where their staff scan them and store them in digital format. That way, you can manage all your “paper bills” through an easy to use online UI. You can send your papers to them via snail mail OR (which I highly recommend) scan & upload or snap photos of your receipts with your smartphone and then send those straight to the service.

Cost involved: Starter plan is free (you can send 5 docs/month and you must enter all data yourself). Lite is a better choice as it allows you to send 50 docs for a monthly fee of $9.95. In addition, their staff scan and enter your bills to the system automatically (so you don’t need to do that yourself). Check all their plans here.

Is there a mobile app for this? Yes. Shoeboxed is available for Android and iPhone.

How to set this up:

1. Go to Shoeboxed.com and sign up for their free account.
2. Fill in your account details and complete the registration process.
3. Start using your account! I highly recommend that you upgrade to the Lite plan as it allows you to do so much more with your account.

Play around with the free account and learn if the service would be helpful for your business. One more piece of your business is now “in the cloud”. Pretty nice, huh?

Step 5: Set Up a Outright Account

Why this is important: Outright is the fifth piece in our puzzle and truly a great one. It does something that the previous services alone can’t do: It keeps your online finances organized. It’s an accounting service that enables you to import all your bank account, credit card and eCommerce account data into a one organized view where you can categorize and manage them.

Cost involved: Outright is a free service. They do offer a plus account which enables even more features but personally, I think their free plan is plenty enough for most location independent businesses. See for yourself and decide if you need the upgrade.

Is there a mobile app for this? Yes, for the iPhone. Grab it here.

How to set this up:

1. Go to Outright.com and sign up for their free account.
2. Fill in the registration details and proceed to the account linking section (you should be directed there right away).
3. Link your other accounts: Bank (U.S.), credit card (U.S.) & eCommerce accounts (PayPal, FreshBooks & Shoeboxed).
4. That’s it! Now you can start monitoring all your service business income & expenses through one easy to use view. Pretty cool huh?

The caveat for non U.S. business owners (like me) is that only U.S. bank account & credit card (assigned by U.S. banks) data can be imported to the service. The positive thing is we don’t necessarily need to implement those, since we already manage our billing through PayPal & FreshBooks (which you CAN import!). A special thanks for discovering this service goes to Sean Ogle. I wasn’t aware of this service before reading Sean’s fantastic post about small business tax preparation (be sure to check the post, it contains golden info on location independent business taxation).

Step 6: Set Up a Docstoc Account

Why this is important: Docstoc is a service that provides pre-written business document templates, agreements and more. Whether you’re looking for NDA’s, tax forms or business plans, this is the place to find them. I personally feel this is a true life saver for any type of business.

Cost involved: Basic account is free and it lets you search, browse & read over 20+ million business documents. Premium account ($9.95/month for 12-month membership) gives you access to even more documents and let you download & print each document.

Is there a mobile app for this? Yes. There are multiple different apps available for iPhone & iPad.

How to set this up:

1. Go to Docstoc.com and sign up for a basic (free) or premium account ($120/12 months).
2. Fill in your business details and complete the registration process.
3. Start browsing for documents. If you chose to go for the premium account, you now have even more ready to use documents at your disposal.

I’ve only used Docstoc for a month or so, but I can already highly recommend it because it really provides every single document template you could ever wish to use in your business.

Step 7: Set Up a RightSignature E-Signature Account

Why this is important: Contracts, estimates, NDA’s and more. Chances are you handle documents that require a signature from your client. Sure, you could send documents to your client via snail mail, but that’s not how we roll as location independent entrepreneurs right? Enter the world of E-Signing. With RightSignature, you can handle all this online – without sending a single document via snail mail.

Cost involved: Free trial allows you to send 5 documents for signing. Bronze account allows you to send unlimited documents for $14/month. See all their plans here.

Is there a mobile app for this? Yup! RightSignature is available for the iPad & iPhone.

How to set this up:

1. Go to RightSignature.com and sign up for their 5 document free trial.
2. Confirm your email address and sign in.
3. Click Account -> Integrations and click FreshBooks. Then follow the instructions on screen to connect RightSignature with your FreshBooks account.

That’s it and you’re ready to roll. Nice thing about RightSignature is that it integrates nicely with the FreshBooks account we set up earlier. You can send your estimates & invoices for e-signature from the RightSignature send screen.

Ok, one more step to go!

How To Setup a Location Independent Service Business: A Step By Step Guide is a post from: Nomad Couch is now "officially closed"