In August 2012 I started a niche site targeting a primary keyword. I wrote 5 articles (around 2,000 words each) and then just let it sit.
Here are the monthly visitor results
September: 15
October: 49
November: 65
December: 92
January: 124
February 1-5: 37 (if it keeps going like that I should get 207 visitors in feb)
Truthfully this website is running at a loss and not even breaking even (paying for the yearly domain name). But the CPC is decent and I am happy with the CTR also.
If the site continues to grow then it has the potential to generate a sizable income. All it would require is to scale out the site by adding new content and by focusing on extending my keyword portfolio.
Since its creation is has driven traffic from just 17 keywords, and i am ranked for many others (but not well). A quick analysis of these keywords show that they weren’t even ones I was targeting. So I could write more targeted content and get better rankings (and more traffic).
So, in conclusion, there is absolutely nothing to gloat about or take to the bank. But there is potential and only time will tell whether this will be a money site.
On October 30th 2009 I wrote a post titled “Why I will be financially free in 5 years“.
I wanted to take a moment and look back over the last 3 years and assess what I have achieved and why I won’t be financially free in 2014.
Looking back on this article I can see how naive I was. But looking back I also think that the nativity I had drive me forward to achieve more than I could have otherwise.
In 2009 I wrote down 7 reasons why I would be financially free in 5 years. I want to take these 7 reasons again and elaborate on them with 3 years of hindsight.
1. I think in terms of cashflow not net dollars
This is something that has served me well over the last 3 years…but not something that would make me financially free on its own.
I have learned that cashflow doesn’t just come to you because you want it. It comes to those who earn it and can do something with it.
My cashflow has increased dramatically since 2009, but due to career growth NOT investments. I now earn about 5+ times what I earned personally in 2009 (I was only working 2 days per week then) and I am earning a lot more than my wife and I were earning combined at the time.
Passive income is around $100-$500/month depending on the month. This income is driven by online websites that are 100% passive. I do nothing to keep them afloat. This is no where near the financial freedom I desire, but it is nice to have a little bit of passive income backing us.
Cashflow is still #1 for me and when I invest I will always focus on cashflow. But my passive cashflow is nowhere near high enough to be financially free in 2014.
2. I am always learning
This still holds true, however as a field rep I have traded in the books for audiobooks and I now listen to approximately 1-5 books per week!!!
Books are so cheap and I listen to them on 3X speed that I go through them quick. As I keep adding to my knowledge I also add to my working income.
3. I am not just willing to take risks, I want to take risks to learn
In 2011 I took a huge risk, I took a new job when my old job had a better guaranteed income. This risk paid off as I was soon promoted and my guaranteed income is higher than my original job (and I get commissions).
The last big financial gamble I took was importing USB sticks to sell on eBay. I lost about $1,000 buying duds. Lesson learned…start small and take small risks.
My next investment cost me $155 (income which I earned online an reinvested). The website I bought tanked with the Google Penguin update but I only ended up losing about $100.
I am still willing to take risks and want to take risks, however I take smaller more educated risks. With 2 children and a wife to feed I can’t afford to lose $50,000 on a property investment gone wrong…but a couple of hundred dollars won’t break the bank.
4. Having financial intelligence attracts money and people with money
I still hold this to be true, however, I now believe studying money in books doesn’t automatically equal financial intelligence. It takes real life experience.
With my wage myself an my wife try to act with financial intelligence and this builds our financial base and our reputation.
At work, where I am in business to business sales, I get to speak to people all day long about growing the income of their business. I provide financial intelligence to my customers and I also learn a lot from them too.
I think I have learned more from my customers than I have taught them. But taking ideas from each customer makes me more and more valuable to everyone I serve.
5. I will use leverage
Something I haven’t really done yet. My focus over the last 6 years has been growing my income and maximizing the leverage of my own time.
In 2012 I did try hiring freelance writers for my site CashFlowInvestor.com.au, however I ceased this as it didn’t bring the returns I was looking for, in the time I needed it.
This is something I will look to begin doing in the next few years, leveraging my money to make more money.
I guess I do use the leverage of the Internet and I have multiple sites that provide a small amount of passive income for me.
6. I love the game
I do love the game, but I think I love the game of serving people more than simply just the game of money.
Currently I am playing the game of sales. Trying to find the best ways to serve my customers and deliver beyond their expectations, it isn’t an easy game but it is a fun one.
I love sales and marketing and it is so fun to learn. At the moment I am focusing my efforts on this and trying to push the boundaries of sales and marketing in my current company so we can deliver a better customer experience. It is hard, but I love challenging the status quo and thinking outside the box.
7. I know my ‘why’
The why I wrote 3 years ago wasn’t strong enough.
So I can have as much free time as I want to spend with my family, and so that I can have a platform from which to speak into people’s lives.
I don’t want to not work, I want to be able to work on the things that inspire me. Not working and having nothing but free time would drive me crazy.
3 years ago I felt like money would provide me with a platform, but the more I work and live the less I think that is true. Yes it provides you a platform to certain people, but what if your target market isn’t people wanting to get rich?
My why now more centres around being able to work on things that inspire me and make a positive difference in the world. Luckily I am in a job at the moment where I get to do that without being financially free.
So will I be financially free by October 30th 2014?
The answer is: Almost certainly not.
But will I be better off financially then than I am today? If I have anything to do with it the answer will be most certainly: yes!
At the moment I am trying to focus on continuing to build my passive income. I can proudly say that I have a nice little passive income online, earning me money whether I work or not. But the ultimate goal is to have a full time passive income.
This will give me financial freedom and I will have the decision whether I want to work or whether I want to do other things. And as big as this goal may sound I want to achieve it in 4 years with almost no money behind me. Here’s how:
Creating A System That Works For Me
I am currently in the process of creating a system and systems that works for me. My systems are really simple and use technology to operate on autopilot. All I need to do is set them up and then drive traffic.
My system works like this.
Create a series of autoresponder emails through Aweber (trying to make a years worth of weekly emails. Each email markets products that I take a commission for.
Then drive traffic to a squeeze page and get people to sign up for my email newsletter.
It is really that simple. Once I set up the system all I need to do is drive traffic and the system works for me. When I get enough income I can outsource the traffic creating through ODesk or by using PPC and then it becomes completely passive income.
Building Multiple Systems
I only really keyed into this “build the system then drive traffic” a couple of weeks ago. I have know it for ages but never really done it.
I am now doing the hardest part, building the systems. This week I built the front end for Rich Academy, which is a free 50 page ebook. Then I will probably spend the next few weeks completing that system by writing up my 52 weeks worth of emails.
Then I will go on a build another system on Cash Flow Investor with a free ebook, 2 paid products and 52 weeks worth of emails. This will probably take me about a month.
All This Work For No Results
I am building the two systems because they will intertwine and build off each other. But the problem with building the systems is that you don’t make any money while you build them. I will have to wait till after they are built (when I focus on traffic generation) to really start to see some results.
But once they are created I know without a doubt in my mind that this system will work well for me.
In The Mean Time
In the mean time I will fund my family by working, freelance writing and copywriting. Writing can earn me up to $400/day and copy writing has huge potential…so the good thing is I won’t be starving while building my retirement income.
The End Goal That Makes It All Worthwhile
The end goal that will make all this worthwhile is a full time passive income online. Not just a passive income that makes me a bit of extra money, but something that will fund my lifestyle completely!
Then I can spend my days with my family, and spend my time focusing on growing my passive income…without being distracted by money troubles.
All Possible By A System
Aweber allows me to create this system. Then once I have created it I can use the power of FOCUS to focus on generating loads and loads of traffic to my sites (funneling people into my systems). This focus will produce great results, which will hopefully make me a lot of money.
This is my basic plan (at the moment) to achieve financial freedom in the next 4 years. Do you have a plan?
Over the past few years I have built up a pretty sizeable email list and at times I have made decent money from this list. When I ran the full time blog SmarterWealth.net I could easily make $100 per product review because of the size of my list.
I run my list through Aweber, which is an email marketing tool, and Aweber allows you to send out automatic emails to my subscribers. So when someone signs up for my list (for example by using the form in the sidebar of this blog) then emails are sent out to them automatically.
Recently I updated my series of emails and I wrote about 20 emails that taught people basic concepts about wealth and thinking the way rich people think. But I wasn’t making any money from any of my emails. Then the other day I realised why:
I didn’t mention any products or have any advertising in any of my emails. No mention of products = no sales = no commissions. How dumb have I been. My list has been growing, and all the while I have been getting poorer because I haven’t been making any money from my life.
Starting Afresh and Making Some Money
So I have decide to start changing my emails one at a time. Whenever I want to start something new I always want to delete everything that is old and just write everything completely new.
But at the moment with family/work/freelance writing/everything else I don’t exactly have the time to delete and rewrite 20 emails in one day (or even one week). My other emails aren’t bad, they just don’t serve their purpose. So over the next few months I will be replacing them one by one with teaching emails.
These emails will be helpful but they will also mention products that will help people to achieve their financial goals. I won’t be spamming people, all of the products I market will be helping people to achieve their financial goals for a fraction of the price of say a mutual fund manager or a stock broker.
Why I Think This Has Clout Over All The Other Ideas In My Brain
As an entrepreneur I have many ideas rattling around in my brain, so why is this idea worth writing a blog post about?
I guess what makes this idea so good is that it can generate me a passive income. I can and am already making money online through freelance writing and writing sales copy, I don’t need another source of income that will make more work for me. My email list is already there, and it is already growing on autopilot, so I may as well take advantage of that fact.
Also, because emails can be sent out automatically, this has the potential to generate me passive income through affiliate sales and sales of my own products. This means I will be able to make money without having to work and I can then drop back on my working hours and spend more time with my family.
My Retirement Fund
I like to think of my email subscriber list as my retirement fund. Over time I am growing it by putting a little bit of time and effort into it here and there but mostly I am letting it grow on it’s own. Eventually it will earn enough money to pay for my lifestyle and I will be able to officially retire.
Making This Massive
Once these emails are written (the ones that market products) I can then begin to work out my average cost per subscriber. So if I get 100 new subscribers and make $100 from them then each subscriber is worth $1.
Once I have worked out my cost per subscriber I can then kick things into high gear and as long as I am not spending more than $1 to get a new subscriber I am either breaking even or making a profit. So I can start spending money to grow my list and make more money…this will be when my retirement fund really starts working for me.
Do You Have A Retirement Fund?
No I am not talking about a traditionally retirement fund, I am talking about one that can generate your passive income NOW so that you can quit or cut back on work and still live the life you are living (and afford to live it). My retirement fund is growing and it is costing me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to grow it. My return on investment is infinity because it doesn’t cost me anything.
If you want to grow your retirement fund like me then I have the deal for you. You can sign up for Aweber for just $1 for the first month. You can try this out for JUST $1!!! What do you have to lose? Start building a retirement fund (aka an email subscriber list) so you can retire early like I will.
I am taking on the challenge to write 100 articles in 100 days for ezinearticles.com. I will use the articles to market my new 14 week (soon to be 14 day) e-course on making money with Aweber. You can check out the course for free if you want at www.richacademy.com/aweber.
The goal with this e-course is to begin to create a passive income online. I have always been (and I think I always will be) all about generating passive income. That is income you work for once, and then don’t have to work for again. My e-course will do that in a number of ways:
- By teaching people how to make money online I will also be recommending a few different products and services. Such as:
The goal is to have everything eventually run on autopilot. Once I finish writing the 14 lesson course I will move it from a 14 week course to a 14 day course. I will then create a years worth of weekly emails as well. These will all be sent out automatically once I subscribe.
With my marketing I will be using Ezinearticles.com and other article directories to submit my articles to. This will create a good spurt of traffic when the articles first go live (as they go on the EzineArticle.com homepage) and it will also generate me passive traffic over the long term.
Eventually as income goes up and up I will use some of my passive income to hire full time writers on ODesk. You can get english speakers to work for you for as little as $1/hour. Full time that is $40/week or $2080/year to write articles and market my course full time. That will make everything passive.
- Traffic will be passive as I will have a bunch of articles out there marketing my site.
- Lead generation will be passive as it is simply a squeeze page on www.richacademy.com/aweber
- Sales will be passive as emails are sent out automatically
- When people sign up for services like Aweber I will receive passive income as a commission
- Eventually growth of my traffic and business will be passive as I can pay people to market my website for me.
The goal is not to achieve anything quickly. The goal is to earn enough passive income in the next 4 years to be able to become financially free.
EzineArticles.com are doing a challenge…100 Articlies in 100 Days…if you succeed you get a bunch of free stuff. If you double it and write 200 articles in 100 days then you also get a pretty good leather bound journal. So I am aiming for that. My journal is about to run out and I wouldn’t mind a new one. The 200 articles will do wonders for marketing my new ecourse and it will be good for me to get in the habit of writing again. And the freebies will be a plus too. I love a good challenge. Wish me luck.
Is it possible to shortcut financial freedom?
Will it really take you 5, 10 or 20 years before you can become financially free and live the life of your dreams? I don’t think it has to be like that.
Let’s use me as an example (because let’s face it what other example am I going to use?). I need to earn a minimum of $40k per year in order to become financially free. If I only use the method of buying cheap residential houses in order to achieve that I am going to need to own around 40 houses. It is possible but I don’t think I will achieve that amount of properties in one or two years.
However, I could possibly fast track my road to financial freedom by using subdivisions and developments. One property I am thinking of buying has the potential to subdivide and sell off the land. It is negative cashflow $20, but I could draw $35-$40k out of it by selling the land. That is enough for me and my family to live off for one year.
Technically it is not ‘financial freedom’ as I am still technically working for that money, it isn’t passive. But it allows me to stop working in my job and to spend time with my family and working on building up passive income through other property purchases.
It might take me 10 years to buy 40 properties and achieve my goal of $40,000 per year. But what if each year I could buy 1 property and draw out $40k to live off. Then spend the rest of my time buying properties that deliver positive cashflow. It still might take me 10 years to become ‘financially free’ but I get to do what I want in those 10 years and enjoy the high life.
To me that is certainly a fast track to the type of life I want to live. It might cost you $20/week to get that $40k out, but that leaves you $39k for whatever you want.
This proves to me that there isn’t one specific way to success. I prefer positive cashflow properties over negative cashflow ones, but if it achieves what you want it to achieve either can work just fine.