Nomadic Neil

Woohoo! I just finished my last day at work. Now for phase 2 of my plan for ‘World Domination’ tm. On one hand I’m really excited about the upcoming months. It won’t be like my previous trips which were long holidays interspersed with periods of work. I’ll be staying in one place for weeks, if not months at a time, and my main focus will be to build up my location independent income.

On the other hand this doesn’t seem like such a huge transition at all. Just another part of the ‘2 steps forward, 1 step back, 2 steps forward’ process I’ve been following over the past couple of years. In a couple of areas of my life I’ve decided that I’m going to walk a certain path and have decided not to attach too much meaning to whether I’m right where I want to be at any particular moment. I know I’m doing the right thing as long as I’m doing something that is helping me move forward. I accept this does leave room for the bare minimum of concrete action. That’s definitely something I want to improve on.

At the moment I think of myself as Neo just after he was freed from the Matrix. His body was free but he still needed to go through a process in order to free his mind as well. In order to succeed I’m going to have to have to ‘free my mind’. I need better beliefs, a more empowered sense of identity and more productive habits.

My plan for the coming week besides the usual pre-trip preparations (packing my things, making sure my mail will get forwarded, buying sun-screen etc.) is to start ingraining some habits. These will include 15 minutes of meditation in the morning, physical exercise and voice exercises. I’m going to try to stay away from my computer as much as possible because I’ve been experiencing some pains in my neck and shoulders as well as tingling feelings in my thumbs and little fingers. Those are the signs of a repetitive strain injury and I’ve experience it before. Not good!

But before all that I’m going to go out and party, then sleep for 10 or 12 hours.

At the moment I’m running two websites based on two different internet-marketing models. The first is an affiliate reviews web site, the second is a e-mail list building page. The first site is the only one that makes money at the moment, I think it works out as roughly $1 per day over the past year. I’ve heard that one of the biggest hurdles in making money online is getting that first sale, once you’ve achieved that you can rinse and repeat until you’re rolling in internet millions, maybe.

Now even though my site is a blatant review site, on which I even include negative reviews of products, I like to think that I provide additional value for the visitor with informative articles and blog posts. The niche that I’m writing in is of particular interest to me so I don’t think I’ll have trouble updating the site for a while.

But at then end of the day the life blood of any site is traffic. It doesn’t matter how good I think the content is if nobody sees it. Rhere are a few ways of going about getting people to visit your site, one of which is ranking high on SERPs (search engine results pages) for particular key words and key phrases. Over the past 6 months I’ve been focussing on one particular key phrase for which my best ranking was number 6 on Google and number 4 on Bing. Now I haven’t been spending as much time on this aspect of traffic building in recent months and I’ve now found that I’ve slipped to 10th place on Google, which is right at the bottom of the page.

One of my friends had already warned that I shouldn’t focus on trying to game Google, instead I should focus on creating sites, products and information that people actually want so that they find it organically or through word of mouth. I didn’t dismiss his advise, just took note and decided that I needed to go ahead and give this method a go for the learning experience at least. I did the same last year when I set up a blog for the purpose of making money through affiliate links. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sustain blogging in that niche for more than year but decided to do it anyway as it was better than doing nothing.

So even though I’m not entirely surprised that I would steadily drop down on the SERPs, I am a little disappointed that it would happen so fast after I actively stopped working on my ranking. Especially since I don’t the other sites are that great, in fact that top site only has 3 articles that don’t seem relevant at all. The only reason it’s at the top is because it has thousands of back-links.

Now I’m not whining about this. The people that own those other sites put a lot of work or money into getting their rankings but it does highlight the fact that if I were to depend on this method of traffic generation I’d need to be working on building link almost continuously. Either doing it myself or paying someone else to do that. To me that just seems like a waste of time, effort and money. Creating my own products and services is definitely the way to go. That way I can set up my own affiliate programme and let other people worry about generating traffic.

Warning! This post contains a lot of swearing.

I always wonder how much of our lives is driven by emotions and rationalizations rather than strict rationality. I think we’re a lot more emotion driven than we think, in fact I think for many people only a small percentage of their decision making is rational. With that in mind I think it’s only fair to give you the emotional / irrational version of how I came to my decision to quit my job and go to Thailand in order to build up online income sources.

I think it was in the Autumn of 2008, I was sitting at work, watching TV (we always have Sky News or BBC News 24 on). There was a report on about the collapse of Lehman brothers and how everyone was so shocked an nobody saw this crisis coming, blah blah blah, same old, same old. And then it happened. I thought:

Fuck em.
Fuck em all.
Fuck the no-nothing journalists.
Fuck the bankers for leeching off the economic ecology to the point of systemic failure, yet again.
Fuck the economists who think they can predict things with their ‘models’, again.
Fuck the government for letting it all happen, again.

Fuck my commute to work.
Fuck reports
Fuck meetings
Fuck corporate gobble-de-gook.
Fuck corporate ‘mission statements’ and ‘values’.
Fuck wearing a suit.
Fuck my job.
Fuck how it will look on my CV / Resume.
Fuck having a career.
Fuck the economy.
Fuck feeling guilty over the fact that the vast majority of people in this world struggle to stay alive and would swap places with me in a heartbeat.

Fuck being scared.
Fuck not being confident in my abilities.
Fuck not knowing what’s going to happen.
Fuck my insecurities.
Fuck not feeling that I’m good enough yet.
Fuck people that feel sorry for me.
Fuck the people that think I’m crazy.

Fuck responsibility.
Fuck guilt.
Fuck Plan B.

Fuck people with their morning fix of coffee.
Fuck the people that need to sit on the outside seat and won’t budge over.
Fuck the people that complain and whine.
Fuck people’s naivety.
Fuck the people that are offended by this.

Fuck the past.
Fuck the future.
Fuck it all

…and breathe…

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always had other aspirations than the standard ‘deferred life plan’, even before reading the 4HWW. But I haven’t always lived that way. I still had (and have) fear, anxiety and scarcity ruling my decision making.

What’s interesting is that a few weeks after I had this ‘fuck it’ stream I noticed a book called ‘F**k it : The Ultimate spiritual way’. It’s a great example of how being in a certain frame of mind influences what you see and notice in the world. It’s a book that advocates saying ‘fuck it’ to everything that bothers us or is holding us back. In a way it’s Buddhist non-attachment and acceptance over resistance updated for the modern age.

I haven’t yet decided if saying ‘fuck it’ to everything is always a good place to come from. It could be coming from a negative place and cultivate negative energy. On the other hand you need to say ‘no’ to some things in order to be positive and say ‘yes’ to others. I guess it balances out that way.

If there’s anything you want to say ‘Fuck it / F**k it’ to then feel free to do so in the comments section. (Click on the ‘Comments’ link at the top of the post under the title).

8 months ago I decided that I was going to save up some money and quit my job to focus 100% on making a location independent income. Today I told my supervisor that I was handing in my notice. Only a couple of weeks and I’ll be a free man again. It still doesn’t feel real but I’m sure that will change over the coming weeks.

I didn’t really explain why I was leaving, just said that it was for personal reasons. I guess I’m just tired of trying to explain to people what I’m doing. People either look at me with pity or incredulity. Most just seem think I want to be a lazy bum and that I’m not thinking ahead, or maybe I’m projecting that on to them. The truth is most people are more preoccupied with what they are going to eat for dinner later that night than with what you’re deciding to do with your life.

In the beginning I used to tell me people exactly what I wanted to do, then I switched to joking about it. ‘I’m going to sit on a beach all day and play guitar’, ‘meditate in the jungle’ or ‘I’m going on quest for fortune and glory’ (funny how all of those have an element of truth in them). Now I just say I’m going on holiday / travelling for a while. In Europe it’s quite a common thing to do so it’s not such a big deal. Funny how it seems more reasonable to people to go on an extended trip than it is to try and set up an on-line business. To be honest I think that’s down to not many people being aware of the potential of internet marketing and other online income generating methods. To most it still sounds like a scam.

A part of me is still a little worried about the state of the economy and specifically the volatility of the $, £ and Euro. My plan depends to a certain extent on those three staying relatively strong over the coming 6 months and that’s far from certain. All my favourite economic guru’s are still bearish. But at the end of the day there will always be something to worry about, so I’m just going to get on with it and take things as they come. It’s part of how the story goes, heroes often feel apprehensive and a little scared at the beginning of their quest.

I spent a few days in the Netherlands visiting friends and family last week and it really reawakend the travel bug inside me. Packing my back-pack and getting my passport and plane ticket ready got me in the mood for my trip to Thailand, though it still doesn’t seem totally real. I keep having to remind myself that there are still a few things I need to sort out before then; insurance, vaccinations, finding someone to take over my room, so I need to get myself in gear!

Anyway, the first few days in NL were spent in the small village and town where my family and friends live. There’s nothing much to report on that except how I noticed how small the distances are compared to London. Walking to my friend’s local pub takes 2 minutes whereas in London I regularly travel an hour to go out. I went to Amsterdam the day before my flight home and visited the Rijks Museum looking at some Rembrandts, including the ‘Nightwatch’. In the evening I went out to a club with some people I had met at the hostel I was staying at. A quick side note, on the way back from the club I was surprised to see that there were many small galleries displaying contemporary art in the city centre. The lights were left on in most of the display rooms so we could have a look at some of the pieces on display.

The funny thing about the hostel was that it had a smoking room in the back where people could smoke pot and listen to the Doors all day long, and I believe some people actually spend most of their time in Amsterdam doing just that. I do hope some of those people do manage to stagger outside to discover some other aspects of the city, even if it’s only to satisfy their munchies!

I’m not against people taking drugs and partying but I’m glad I’m not one of those people whose memories (or lack of them) of Amsterdam boil down to: ‘Man I was soooooooo wasted!!!!’ In stead just think of the endless possibilities the city provides and imagine in years to come telling stories that start with: ‘I was looking at a self-portrait by Rembrandt… and I was soooo wasted!!!’

The two main reasons I set up this blog are first so that I can connect with other people in the lifestyle-design community and second in order to help motivate myself to follow through on my plans. This meant that I started to think about whom I wanted to connect with and how I wanted to do that. Should I try to get as many readers and subscribers as possible or should I focus on getting a small group of dedicated fans? Should I market myself in a particular manner or should I strive to be as authentic as possible? Thinking about these things led me to think about what people refer to as personal branding.

Personal branding seems to involve creating or cultivating your image or the content of the awareness that people have of you. Often this is in the context of work and business. The premise is that customers and consumers have instant access to millions of businesses, service providers and varieties of entertainment through the internet and in order to grab their attention we need to create a strong personal brand that stands out from the crowd.

Now I understand that people form impressions very quickly both in real life and online and that this often determines how people behave towards each other. But it concerns me that it’s yet another part of our lives that is being defined by marketing and consumerism. Do we really want to reduce ourselves to a brand? The problem with brands is that they have to be simple and concise, easily recognizable and consistent. However in real life people change their opinions, beliefs and careers all the time. Does this tarnish their personal brand or enhance it? People have enough trouble as it is breaking free from restrictive roles given to them by society, it seems silly to create yet another one for yourself. For example I feel sorry for someone like Michael Phelps. He won 8 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics but has to pretend to regret smoking pot because he would otherwise lose advertising deals. Who’s in charge Michael or his personal brand?

Since the purpose of this blog isn’t to make money (though I’m open to it happening as a side benefit) I don’t feel the pressure to present myself in any particular way. Although saying that, the title of my blog and my online name, NomadicNeil, use alliteration and is memorable. I’ve used photos of myself doing cool things in interesting places around the world. Why did I not put up a picture of myself wearing a suit sitting in front of a computer as that’s how I currently spend 8 ½ hours of my day? Is it because I want people to think I’m a cool adventurous guy? Or is it because I’m creating an image for myself to live up to, to remind me of what I’ve done and keep me going in the right direction?

Do you consciously create a personal brand? How do you do it what do you intend to convey? Do you think I have a personal brand? What do you think it says?