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?

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?

I had been living in London for a year when the economic problems started to hit mainstream consciousness in the Autumn of 2008. I was shocked, not at what was happening with banks, stock-markets and house prices, but rather that so many people were acting surprised. Most ‘experts’, journalists and politicians were saying the same thing: ‘No one saw it coming’. Now the scope of this blog isn’t economics so I won’t go into details, but the basic fact is that many people had been warning for years that you couldn’t build an economy on the idea of never ending house price rises, mountains of debt and trade deficits.

I guess I had always thought of myself as slightly anti-authoritarian, clued up on how the world really works (not what you’re taught in school or on TV) and quick to question those that presume to be experts and to know what is best for other people. But it turns out I was still quite naïve and that a part of me still put too much trust in the opinions of others. The last remnants of this naivety was blown out of the water by the sheer incompetence and idiocy displayed by media, politicians, economists and other self-proclaimed experts (although I’m sure a good portion of them knew exactly what was going on and just chose to ignore it for their own short term gain).

So what do you do in the face of what might be the 3^rd Great Depression of the industrial age and the precursor to resource wars, WWIII, and a full on Mad-Max scenario? Curl up in a ball and start crying? Roam the streets with a sign saying ‘The end is nigh’, warning people of the doom awaiting us all? These and other options were tempting to say the least.

However ignoring my emotional-monkey-brain’s flight or fight response momentarily, and looking back at history, I realised that despite how bad things may seem now, we (in the developed world at least) are still living the best life humans have ever had. For most humans in history life was a 30 to 50 year struggle where all they thought about was where their next meal was coming from and how they could avoid being killed in some horrible war or by some lethal disease.

Whereas in the last depression people went hungry this time round they will probably have to do without buying a new iPod or new car this year. And if we do have something like the last depression, wars, and we start competing against each other for food and water in a post-apocalyptic nightmare then there’s nothing much I can do about it right now and I should stop worrying about it.

So lets just assume that the current economic climate is going to cause hardship for many, the balance of economic power will shift to Asia but other than that things will continue on fairly normally. Could the western currencies be devalued and thus derail my plan? It could happen, but if it does I won’t be any better of having stuck around here.

So assuming the non-apocalypse scenario will transpire I went through the following thought process.

1. I will die. No one cares what I get up to and it won’t matter because we’re just a bunch of slightly-more-advanced-monkeys hanging out on a rock on the edge of the galaxy. This is the existential argument to do whatever I want to do.

2. I decided that I’ll do lots of fun things or work towards maximizing my ability to do fun things, this means having maximum control over how I spend my time and where I spend it.

3. If research has shown that the law of diminishing returns applies to the relationship between happiness and how much money you earn, and I am already above the threshold for which that law applies, then there is no point in working to earn more money and I should in stead focus on how I earn an income. In addition, the way that pensions are supposedly provided for (based on the idea that a shrinking working class should support a growing retired class or betting on continual growth in the stock market) is unsustainable. I should operate from the assumption that either I work till I die or I save and invest enough for myself to live on.

4. Since I might work till I die I might as well do something I enjoy or choose something where I can spend a minimal amount of time earning an income. I have several friends that make their income online which potentially maximises the control they have over their time and location. These friends can serve as mentors and teachers.

5. Since I have little to lose and a lot to gain I should be engaging in (relatively) high risk, high reward behaviour. Play to win big, not to lose what little I have or perceive to have. This applies to every aspect of life. It puts me in the category of a Diversity Generator as opposed to a Conformity Enforcer (See ‘Global Brain’ by Howard Bloom), which is a good category to be in for my personal life as well.

6. In the worst case scenario, I ‘fail’, learn a lot and grow as a person. I come back to Europe and get a job, I start working as an English teacher in China or go work for multi-nationals in the Czech Republic. I could do all kinds of things.

7. If things do continue to detoriorate economically speaking (as a lot of people I respect think it will) then I will at least have had a good time before it all goes down.

So this is the rationale for choosing to go to South East Asia for a while to work on my online income. South East Asia is cheap and currently I can take advantage of strong UK, US and EU currencies (Not guaranteed for ever I know). I’ll be able to direct 100% of my focus on working for myself. I won’t have to worry about shopping for groceries, commuting to work or dealing with strikes. I’ve already been to South East Asia so I know what to expect and won’t be a distracted tourist.

So there it is, an entirely logical plan. Or maybe just dumb rationalizations covering up a decision already made on an emotional level. What do you think?

I booked my ticket to Malaysia the other day (from there I’ll be travelling to one of the islands in Thailand). This means I really have to go through with my crazy plan and will have to get myself organized in order to be ready for my flight on the 18th of November. Doh!

But seriously, that’s a good thing. Doing it reminded me of the commitment and consistency principle I sometimes use. I think I first heard about this principle in Robert Cialdini’s book ‘Influence’. It goes as follows: “If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment”.

I think this principle works because on one hand people don’t want to suffer embarrassment for not following through on what they say they will do, and on the other because people have a hard time acting in a way that they consider contradictory to their identity or personality. I think I’m correct in saying cognitive dissonance plays a role as well.

In the past I’ve used this concept to push myself to go on my last world trip, to go sky diving, bungy jumping, learn how to scuba dive and get on stage to play music in front of a crowd. All this, and more, despite being quite scared at the time. It’s such a great tool on so many levels. It forces you to really think about what you want to do, whether you are willing to stand behind your decision, how you’ll go about doing it and how you’ll communicate it to other people. Then you get  the benefit of social pressure pushing you along so that you don’t have to suffer being made fun of or thought of as weak.

So here’s a 3 step action plan to use the commitment and consistency principle.

1. Decide what you want to do.

Now you really need to be clear about what you want for yourself. Not for your teachers, parents, friends or society at large.  It sucks when you publicly commit to something that you don’t really want for yourself, you’ll feel resentment and it will drain you. In contrast it will be awesomely powerful when it’s a completely authentic personal decision as it will make you feel energized, powerful and alive.

2. Tell people about it.

You can do this in person or set up something public; like a website, blog or a note on Facebook. You might feel embarassed about your goal, dream or vision, because your really putting yourself out there and if they reject your plan then it will feel like they are rejecting you.

But don’t worry because it turns out that most people are more worried about what you think of them than whether your plan will really work. They may feign shock and incredulity. They may make fun of your dream or point out the flaws of your plan, but an hour later they’ll have forgotten about you and will have gone back to wondering what they are going to cook for dinner later and how they can best go about asking out Sally from the marketing department.

3. Go and do what you said you would do.

Because if you don’t you’ll feel like a loser, people will point and laugh at you and nobody will want to be your friend.

Welcome to NomadicNeil.com!

In this blog I’m going to share my journey from being tied to one job and location to earning the majority of my income over the internet and so giving me the freedom to live, work and play where I choose.

In 2005 I went backpacking around the world and spent 18 months working and travelling through South-East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Along the way I realised that living that life was a lot less expensive than I had previously thought. Two friends of mine were earning an income over the internet and pointed out that they could live and work anywhere that had a decent internet connection. The idea was planted in my head but I decided to move to London in order to help a friend with a business idea. It turned out that we weren’t really suited as business partners so I decided to get a job.

Before I knew it another year had passed and I didn’t feel like I was moving towards my goals or desired life-style so I decided to again focus on earning money online. At the same time I started saving money and came up with my escape plan which consists of:

1. Start working on making money online

2. Save up enough money to last me a year without any additional income

3. Move to a cheap country and dedicate myself full time to making money online

That’s about it. I’m coming up to stage 3 of the plan and over the next couple of months I’m going to document the process here.