Nomadic Neil

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.

It might not seem obvious from the look of this web-site (photos of me sitting on a beach in stead of in front of a computer) but the whole reason I’m going to Thailand is actually to do work. In fact I intend to be more productive than I have ever been before. Initially I want to spend at least 6 hours a day in a productive flow state (See ‘Flow’ by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi). Of course I will work as long and hard as it takes to reach my goals but initially I want to set up good working habits and concentrate on making sure I’m working as efficiently and productively as possible. Being in a place where I won’t be doing any cooking, cleaning or commuting will free up my mental energy so that I can get into the right productive state.

Plenty of people say that it’s wiser to build up an income next to your day job before you quit. It’s the sensible thing to do but the way things are going now I’m finding it really difficult to make much progress. Between waking up and coming home from work a total 13 hours have passed. Although I do a little bit work on my projects each day I find it hard to get into a proper groove. It would be great to be able to spend a whole morning working on one task making sure I do it properly rather than spending 15 minutes figuring out what I was trying to do the night before, another 15 searching the internet for advice on what I want to do, then 15 on the actual task. I’m going to take a different approach to work and productivity than I usually do and intend to install lasting habits.

At the moment there are 2 projects that I’m working on. The first follows the ‘Affiliate –Reviews’ model where I provide products information and reviews and receive a commission on any sales made through the site. I’ve made a few hundred dollars with the site and want to generate enough traffic to earn $50 a day. The other project is a simple landing / squeeze page in which I offer a free MP3 in exchange for the visitors e-mail address. Eventually I would like to create my own product for the list subscribers and would like to do a joint venture with other people in order to quickly grow the size of the list.

Other options for making money more quickly include assisting my friends with their projects, writing and translating jobs or specific kinds of remote coaching.

What do you think of my intention to throw myself into this full time before having set up a full time income? What kind of income generating models are you looking at?