If you have been a reader of my blog for the last 2 months or more then you may know that me and my wife Kel went to New Zealand recently. We went there because Kel was sent there for work. She is a very talented Merchandiser and she was doing a store setup. Luckily we were able to go over 5 days early and have a bit of a holiday, traveling around the North Island.

A Wicked Holiday

We hired a Wicked Camper Van. If you don’t know know what they are basically they are camper vans that have really cool paintings on the side. A lot of the wicked camper vans are extremely crude (eg. “Save the whales, harpoon a fat chick” sayings painted on the side), but because I was traveling with the Mrs. I requested a tame vehicle and thus we got the “Schwarzenegger” van. The bed was mighty uncomfortable, but it was cheap to rent and great to drive around the country.

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Photo by AJ87

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”

- Maya Angelou

For a good part of this year I have spent my time focusing on how I can make more money. I set the goal of trying to earn $100,000 this year and then I set out and looked to find ways that I could make money.

All I was thinking about was ways to make money. I was thinking about how I could flip websites to make money. I was thinking about how I can create products to make money. I was thinking about how I could use twitter to make money…and so on and so forth. I was looking for every opportunity I could find on a quick and easy way to make money.

And you know what this did?

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My dream, my goal, is to make a full time income online from blogging. It has been my dream and goal for around 3 years (ever since I began blogging). But achieving this is a lot more difficult than it sounds. You cannot just start a blog, write a few articles and expect to have a full time income from your blog in 2 months.

There are certain things that you need to do if you want to be a great blogger. There are certain things you must do to attract readers and to keep readers.

There are a lot of people who have done this poorly and thus have failed or have small blogs. I believe that I have done a heck of a lot of things wrong, otherwise I would have a raging blog right now. But there are some people that have done a really good job and are thus reaping the rewards for their efforts.

Over the next little while I am going to do case studies of 5 extremely successful bloggers who are earning a full time income from their blog. I am going to be focusing on exactly what they have done correctly and how you and I can mimic these traits in our own blog so that we can become successful.

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Image by myvector

“Yes, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”

- Yoda

When you begin your first online business you are filled with hopes and dreams that you will make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and work just a few hours per day. This is achievable and is possible, but unlikely, at least for a while.

You are not told about the difficulty and the despair that can come with trying to make money online. You are not told about the dark side of starting an internet business. Generally you just have to learn about it through your experiences. (more…)

Image by Johnath

“Success comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?”

- Anthony Robbins

I expect that a lot of people reading this blog post are exactly like me, they are lacking momentum in their internet business. When you first begin your internet business it is likely that it is just you doing all the work. You are doing the design, the marketing, creating products, providing customer support etc etc. In the early days of an internet business it difficult to gain momentum because everything hinges on you.

When your business begins to grow and generate cash flow you are then able to reinvest that cash flow back into your business by hiring people. When momentum and cash flow comes in you can begin to outsource some of your jobs and you can focus on your core passion and core talent that will ultimately give you the most success.

Once this happens it is likely that your momentum and cashflow will increase allowing you to outsource more jobs and to take advantage of more opportunities. This will continually increase your momentum. Like a snowball rolling down a hill and getting larger and larger as it picks up more snow.

I am such a dumbass. I wish that I knew 3 years ago what I know now. I wish I knew how important it was to establish yourself and generate cash flow. For the last three years I have been jumping from business opportunity to business opportunity but never seeing anything through. Now I feel like I know the importance of generating consistent cashflow (I need consistent cashflow to pay off my $20,000 debt and to afford food and rent). If I knew what I knew three years ago now, then I would be easily earning enough cash to being outsourcing. But I didn’t and that is all part of the journey. Here is some advice and some things I am focusing on to build the momentum of my business.

Establish Cash Flow (more…)

 

Photo by Jill Murray

 

Less is more

One of my readers once asked me if I could write a post detailing my daily schedule and exactly what I do each day. I never got around to writing this post basically because I don’t have a daily schedule. I don’t have a schedule that I stick to and work by, I just work when I can and it has been completely random.

In fact I have been achieving very little because I have been trying to do so much. Each day over the last few months I have been blog posting, forum posting, building my twitter account, writing ebooks, building websites, starting new blogs, trying blog flips, freelance writing, reading and commenting on other blogs, editing my own blog designs etc etc. As you can see there is a lot to do and I have not been achieving much.

My blog readership is the lowest it has been in over 6 months. I am only getting about 30 visitors per day to my blog. My income is down and I have gone from earning over $1,000 per month to earning less than $50 per month online. My motivation has been down due to these two factors and I have not been dedicated to building my online business.

I have been trying to do a lot of things in order to achieve success, but I am starting to believe that doing a lot of things is actually stopping me from becoming successful. I was reading Yaro’s Blog where he was talking about the fact that there are thousands of money making opportunities out there, but it is more important to focus on your one talent if you want to become successful.

One Thing Will Make You Successful (more…)

My name is Ryan McLean and I am in debt. I am not one of those perfect people who has no debt and thousands of dollars to their name. Though I once was.

Me and my wife have accumulated over $20,000 in debt in the last 12 months. Before I turned 19 I was really good with money and I had over $16,000 saved up in my bank account. Through need to eat and buy things, and also through generosity my $16,000 became $1,000. Then when I got engaged my $1,000 became a debt of over $5,000. Then put in a honeymoon, wedding rings, a car and buying things for a new home and you get over $20,000 in debt quite easily.

Me and my wife have realised that it is really important for us to take control of our debt before it takes control of us. We want to start a family soon, and we don’t want to be having children while struggling to make weekly debt repayments.

So in my quest to get debt free and to start taking control of our money once again I have devised a plan (from extensive research) on how we will get complete control of our debt within the next 12 months. (more…)

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes   

- Oscar Wilde

When I started this blog in March 2008 as FoolsWealth.com I had huge dreams and visions of my blog being a huge success and of me making thousands of dollars every month. I had a dream that I would have tens of thousands RSS subscribers and that people would be banging down on my door begging to advertise on my website.

However, as my blog stands today I have few readers and few visitors to the blog each day. I made little or no money from the blog and I feel a little defeated because none of the hopes and dreams that I had in March 2008 have come to fruition.

There are two ways to learn how to make money online, from your successes and from your mistakes. I have had few successes and many mistakes and I have learnt from them. There have been a few major mistakes that I have made on my blog that have caused my blog to remain stagnant and fail to grow. (more…)

Being lazy can actually make you more cunning and a smarter person.

I know this from my own life because when it comes to writing articles and doing things that are tedious I am lazy.

Lets use me as an example. I have just started a new niche website and I am in desperate need of articles for the website so I can draw in search engine traffic and start earning some income. But I am too poor to outsource the articles and I am too lazy to attempt to write them all myself. At my slow rate it would take me about a year to write enough articles to start getting any decent search engine traffic.

So my laziness has driven me to find alternative ways to have articles written. People may not be willing to write for nothing, but they might be willing to write for something that doesn’t cost me anything. Like a paid pitch on my blog, some advertising, old domains that I have, a website that I own, access to a premium theme I am no longer using, solo emails to my subscriber list.

My laziness seriously drove me to find ways to get people to work for me where it would cost me any money….and it works. If I was a workaholic then I would have just done this myself and I would have never explored the arena of getting people to work for alternatives other than money. In this case my laziness has actually made me smarter.

So it is possible that your laziness could make you smarter. If you use it to your advantage.

Obviously being lazy on the couch and watching TV all day will not make you smarter. But being lazy and thinking of ways you can outsource the things you don’t like doing so you can focus on the things that you enjoy…now that is smart and everyone needs a little slice of that cake.

If you have been trying to make money online for any amount of time you will know that almost daily you are bombarded with advertisements promising that you can make thousands of dollars in just one day. Though this is possible it is far from the ordinary and many people give up trying to make money online because they believe they will make money fast, and the truth is they don’t.

I have been trying to make money online since mid 2006. So I have now been trying to make money online for approximately 3 years. Only in the last 6 months have I been focusing on making money full time. So my first 2 and a half years I just did it in my spare time. 

Over those three years I have many inspiring moments where I read something, or had a brainwave and believe that I could easily make hundreds of dollars in just one day. I have also had many moment where I have felt completely defeated and have been ready to give up on any attempt to make money online. My latest episode of give-up-itis occured just 3 weeks ago.

I have come to the conclusion that it is not a good thing to try and get rich quick. Because for almost everyone it leaves them disempowered and incapable of continuing. I believe that it is a better thing to try and get rich slowly online. Not that I believe it should take 50 years to get rich online, but I do believe it will take you a number of years to get rich online.

I have pretty much settled for the fact that I will not be making any serious money for AT LEAST the next 6 months. I am smart, I know a lot about making money online and I am still giving myself 6 months. So if you are brand new to blogging and making money online then rest assured that it will take you a significant amount of time to get ‘rich’ online.

If you wanted to become a doctor, or an accountant, or a journalist then you would expect to do at least 3-4 years study (or on the job training) so I don’t see why trying to make money online should be any different. There is so much to learn and so much that you can do that you can’t expect to master it in a matter of weeks.

So, instead of trying to make some quick money online, I am going to be focusing now on creating a long term goal that will enable me to build up my income SLOWLY. One of the things that I am doing to build up my income slowly is REINVESTING and JOINT VENTURING.

Whatever money I am earning I am reinvesting back into the number one thing that will make you money online CONTENT. At the moment I am looking for joint venture partners to write just 5 articles for me and then I will give them a paid pitch on this blog. So if you see some pitches on this site soon you will know why.

What are you doing to ensure that you are building your income SLOWLY?