I’m finding I can bang out my five articles and get them posted on other sites in about an hour, hour and a half which is pretty good. I’ve mentioned this before but I’m finding that writing is like running. Man, it takes all you can to get out the door and even a bit longer to get the legs warmed up but then you look down and realize…holy, that went by fast.. I’m done. I tell you, the older I get the smarter I get.

I read somewhere about a writer who has written many books with all of them best sellers and  then somebody comes up to him and says, I wish I could write or they have an idea on a great book but just need somebody to write it and they’ll split the money.

His argument (and I’m getting to a point here, bear with me) is that the ideas are no problem – it’s the writing that can  be hard. And now that I’m writing more and more and more I agree. I’ve got tens if not hundreds of ideas on websites where I could take this approach and apply it but the hard thing is getting the daily ‘run’ in. It’s hard to bang out five articles for one site, let alone ten.

You have to do the mileage and that’s the hard part. It’s easy to let it slide until tomorrow.  But slow and steady wins the race and I’m hoping to prove my point with this little challenge. Not only is it getting easier but more fun too.  So, all this  to say I’m OK with it being ten days and the progress is slow. I think a real world goal might be how to make $1000/month in 90 days, which is still good in my eyes. A grand, or bust. What I really want is to figure this stuff out with this challenge – even more so than the dough. I want the site I’m promoting to be a success that offers value. We all know I’ve preached here about the value before….so I’ll stop for today.

Now the fun stuff: The money!

$16 bucks today from commissions, so this was one of my better days for my efforts to date. Google chipped in another six bucks bringing my total over the  $20 mark which sur e makes up for yesterday’s .21 cents or whatever I made.

But I think the best part in all this is watching me sell other stuff I am no promoting which all adds up too and is funny to see what others buy. I’ve sold everything from kid’s toys to gardening tools and today’s weird sale was:

Yup, I sold three of these:

Source Naturals St. John’s Wort

which netted a small commission. Hey, it all adds up. All I have to do is write and promote my website more and more.

I’m tempted  to make a website about all that I sell (if it’s sold once..)  on a daily basis. Maybe I’ll do that here… I wonder…

Focus, must focus

Where does this leave us? Add $81.92 from yesterday to Today’s $21 and  we’re over the hundred dollar mark just in time for the ten day celebration with  a grand total of $102.92 a third of the way through the month. A realistic goal would be  $300 and a quasi realistic and somewhat hopeful goal of $500 for the 30 day challenge.

Time will tell..

Related posts:

1. How To Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 8
2. How To Make $1000 in 30 days
3. How to Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 3

The good news is I’ve got the design done on my site.  It always takes me some fiddling and tweaking to get things how I want to look. It’s quite the balancing act. You want to have the ads prominent because, hello – $1000. But it can’t be all ads as the site looks just too junky.

I may have mentioned this, but I’m also writing about products that can only be sold in the US,  so that’s another hurdle as this here internet thing is worldwide, so a vistor from  heck even Canada is a wasted click and potential sale. But that just makes things all the  more challenging as not only do I have to crack a grand but also it has to be for the most part, the US market.  Anyway the redesign looks much better. much much better.

The good news  is I sold an iPod. Again, good ‘old  Amazon, as I have no intention of promoting iPods but if somebody wants to buy an iPod I won’t discourage them.

Over time,  I’ll have what is probably the most important thing besides the thousand dollars I have earned and that’s data of what sells.  I’m probably too late to crack the iPod party this year but if I find that  I end up with a few more iPod sales do you think I’m going to think about making a music  and iPod website for the next 1000 dollars? Yup.

But it all takes time and gather the data and do more of what works. Even with the twenty or so articles I have written so far I’ve seen traffic rise about 20 percent daily as my links get picked up which in turn bumps my site up for those search terms ,  so so far so good. A bit of a step backwards with no writing over the weekend, but that just means I’ll just have to write write write this week. I’d like to have 100 articles online so I can see just what a hundred articles does. If it increases my monthly income by just $100  a month for one month’s effort that’s 1200 bucks a year, so effectively making my two hours of work a pretty good part time income.

But at this point in the game, that’s all just pipe dreams.

Income Report. .

Amazon Sales: 26 (turns out my iPod hasn’t shipped yet, so no sale yet)

Google Ads: $2.50.

Not exactly a stellar day… oh well. Try again tomorrow.

Grand Total to Date: $70.86 or an average of $8.85 per day to date.

Related posts:

1. How to Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 4
2. How To Make $1000 in 30 day. Days 6 and 7
3. How to Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 9

But, I’m sure going to try…

One of the efforts I’m trying to make is to take more action and actually see results – good or bad. I’ve been a great thinker and learner this past little while but I’m starting to realize that by doing is where the rubber hits the road and the real learning happens, so I’m trying to apply myself more, and think less. Because thinking and dreaming is all fine and dandy but I’m learning that the real value comes from doing and failing and then dusting yourself off and failing again. Along the way some of the mud has to stick, right? If nothing else, you know what doesn’t work so you can try try again.

Here’s the plan: I’m going to make a grand in a month (ok, it might make two or so, but still) I have a site that’s doing just OK. not great, not bad but with zero effort on my part it sees a bit of income already – enough to pay for my internet if nothing else. And with the holiday season upon us things should pick up after a slower summer.

Essentially all that’s required is working a system which really only requires  one thing: a bit of effort with the hardest part and most boring writing article after article about this product until it’s number 1 for every search term possible that could relate to that product. I could farm out the writing at about $500 and I’m tempted but it’s money I don’t have really so I’ll have to do the work myself dammit and we’ll see how things go later when it comes to having somebody else do the heavy lifting.

I’m quite familiar with the topic so it shouldn’t be too hard to do – all it takes is time, about two hours a day for 30 days – write write write write, will all I’ll be doing and I figured a fun thing to do would be to report on my little project over the month. Even if I only make $100 a month, that’s a minimum payment on something so there’ only one way to go and that’s up.

I’m optimistic and realistic too. This is only $30 a day and I’m already at about ten bucks most days already with this site so all I’m really doing is polishing things up a bit. If this works, I can run the project again and  again. If I could get this rockin  even at an extra grand a month I just might get out of debt by the end of the thousand days.

I have nothing to lose but time, so I might as well give this a shot. I’m cheating a bit because I am starting with a website I have that does have some traction and income already, so all I’m doing is turning up the heat a bit to get it to a grand a month. (I doubt this site will ever make me rich, but we’ll see..)

30 days x 2 hours  = 60 hours for $1000 which works out to $16 an hour, which is like a part time job I don’t have to get.  And…if this does work even remotely, it’s pretty much timeless.. you do the work once and then forget about it but the money just keeps coming from your past efforts. If this works and stays at $1000 for  12 months, that’s a $200 per hour I made while you were watching TV.  If I squeeze two years at a grand a month that’s $400 an hour and I didn’t even have to go to law school. It’s possible. It just takes hard work and here’s the kicker for me to get my mind wrapped around; consistency. You have to work when you don’t want to. You have to work when you’d rather read about others making money as that’s more fun and you don’t have to do the hard work yourself.

Here goes. Day 1. Write a page about the product and how great it is blah blah blah, and oh, by the way you can buy it here – just click here – for the lowest price from the best store.

If I make any money with this little challenge, I’ll report along the way. If nothing else – this will be fun.

Grocery Shopping Challenge

On the grocery front: Tide on sale today for half price so I picked up two and a few other things and I’ll grab some more Tide tomorrow. You know, I think I turned a corner in this grocery stuff. I have an idea of prices now and I keep an eye out for what’s on sale and buy lots of it when it is on sale. I found BOGO sandwich meat yesterday and bacon on sale too and I didn’t have to clip coupons – all I had to do was to use my noggin and pay attention to prices and shop for stuff when it’s on sale.  And I’ll probably end up knocking off $25o off my monthly grocery bill with little effort other than waking up and paying for stuff when it’s on sale, and not full price.

This shopping technique can be applied to anything too. Don’t buy a new bike – hop on to craigslist or kijiji and wait and when the right bike/furniture/whatever comes up either used online or on sale at a store then and  only then do you buy it. Why pay full price? for anything?

Heck you could even apply this to car or even house shopping: figure out what you want and how much you want to pay for it or are willing.. and then wait for the sales or buy it used. Especially stuff like technology or cars where the depreciation happens so fast but there’s lots of good value left and the other guy paid through the nose. I bought a used camera that retailed for about $4000, but after about two years it was worth about six hundred dollars. I bought it, played with it and then sold it for the $600. It cost me nothing ..well OK, maybe some shipping costs.. to use that camera. It made great photos.

In fact, I SOLD a photo today as a stock photo with I made with  that camera that I got to use for essentially free, all because I watched my prices figured out what I wanted to pay and saved up until I had the money. By the time you have the dough the stuff has depreciated so much  you do have the money to use it and appreciate it even more.

Today’s grocery spend: 22.46

Total grocery spend: 384.12

Related posts:

1. How To Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 8
2. How to Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 4
3. How to Make $1000 in 30 days. Day 3

A year from now, I want to be able to say that I’m on track with the debt reduction and the only way to do so is to get rockin’ and start burning the midnight oil if need be. Even if I’d rather just hide and have a nap. I like easy.

As I think I have learned that I work better with my ‘year’ being from birthday to birthday, today’s a pretty good day to start with a few projects, but not bite off more than I can chew either -as that just leads to disappoinment a year later.

Even though few if any read this get out of debt website, I want to publicly state my intentions for this coming year, as it’s a great way to embarrass myself further (and, too late – I’ve already done that) and also make me accountable with an action plan.

First, the main objective: Make $40 per day in NEW income by this time next year. If I do have any  regular readers you might remember – that gives me about a grand a month or so which is enough to keep the wolves at the door  yet still make my 1000 day deadline to get out of debt. I’ve got a lot of debt left, and not that much time left.. I haven’t stopped to count, but less than 900 days. I’m already at least 100 days into this project. I want to count backwards and know that I tried at least.

$40/day is a doable number. There’s a few days this past week when I’ve been close – even though at times it seems as I’ve been at this for six months now, or close and I haven’t made any headway  - I really have. I have failed for 100 days, which is in an odd way more valuable than the $40/day I haven’t made. You can’t hit the shots you don’t take, so it’s said.

But I’m starting to get my head wrapped around this SEO thing and it really does just come down to getting links and recommendations from sites that are relevant to your sites and eventually you’ll see some traffic from the search engines, which while hard to get as you’re not the only one out there who wants to be the first page –  it’s FREE traffic. No coupon needed. Just hard work.

There’s two methods really to making money online.Well, there’s more but I’m not talking about get rich quick scams – just sign up for my $3000 program, etc.  Hard work is the common ingredient in both methods.That and a bit of luck. A lot of times you just fall into your niche or calling.  Did I ever think I’d be writing for a living? No way in a million years. I would have paid much more attention to  the print journalism part of school when I was there if I knew the future was writing, but who knew?

Where was I?  Right. Two ways to make money online:

1. Have one big honkin’ site. An authority site about bugs, or cars, or celebrities, or getting out of debt.

or…

2. Have a bunch of smaller sites that are very specific: Have a site only about credit cards from Bank of Montreal, or interest rates from  the ScotiaBank but you only have a few articles that are tightly focused and the domain name matches the topic or keyword you’re aiming (hoping) to get on the first page  of Google.

What to do? Both are good choices. If you made one small website every day for a year  you’d have  365 small and tightly focused niche websites that would be a year old,  and have at least a few related articles on each website.  The downside of this  method is the cost – In my case each domain name costs ten bucks x 365 =  $3600 or so. Now, it’s only ten bucks a pop and the good thing  is you can only make websites so fast so hopefully as your earlier sites get older, and start to get indexed in the search engines you’ll start to see some money from the earlier sites you created to cover the costs of the sites you’re currently making. Just like a debt snowball, but this is an income snowball. Start with one…rinse, lather repeat.

The downside  of this is that this method will suffer from the 80/2o principle where 20 percent of your work on making hundereds of small websites will count for most of your income. But that’s OK as long as you earn back your domain name costs, and make more money, you’re good.  The other upside with this method with the small websites is you can sell them at year’s end. Even if they end up becoming stinkers and you can’t make any money from them, you now have hundreds of small websites that you can use for links to other related sites that are making you money which would result in your money making website earning more, as the link from your small site is relevant, and has quality and if it’s a year old – trust too. It’s not a site you made  yesterday and threw up some ads and links in a plan to game the system. You’re linking from one quality site to another. It’s my opinion as long as you create value you should be OK.  It’s really a simple recipe. Create great content, and get links to to it. The money will take care of itself, if the value is there. It’s when you lose focus on creating the value is when you’ll make less money.  You can’t chase the dollar. Chase the value, and the money will come.

This makes me wonder, which to try?  Big Site? Small Sites?

So of course, I’m going to bite off a lot and do both.

I’ve got one site that has some promise (actually, two) so that can be my test for adding some more quality content to so the plan this year is at least to create 100 high quality on topic articles and get links for each article by writing articles for other sites via guest posts or link exchanges but a year from now, I want 100 well written article with this site. The result: I’ll have a big site to keep/sell that has a lot of relevant  content.  (Heck, if I stick to this site for another two years, this site will be an authority site, just by default of me adding another long rambly post like this one. If you’re still reading this, this far, 1000 thank you’s)

For the wee sites, these tickle my fancy as it offers me a way to learn about and explore new niches. Now, one every day would be a big bit to chew off but I want to do or average  one every business day – that’s  five a week x 52 weeks = about 250 of these.  I think I’ll do about five on each topic – five small sites on lawnmowers, or mothers day gifts, or back to school notebooks, or swimming pool filters the choices really are endless. How about gold jewelery, or baseball bats, or shoe repair too?

Of course, for the most part I’m going to stick with what I know –  You wont’ see any sites from me about dogs or geraniums as I have no interest, but you can bet there will be some about tennis, or  personal development, or debt,  or high end audio, or Toronto or ipods, or music or movies.

I’m gambling here as these small sites cost money – about ten bucks each for the domain name. I don’t have to worry about hosting as I have a dedicated server so I don’t share hosting with anybody and I’ve got lots of room for all 250 sites to live.

250×10 = $2500 that I have year to recoup somehow. Is it $2500 I have? Not really, but I have to try – If bankruptcy or a day job is in the future I want to at very least be able to say I tried.   Any business would cost much more than that to run anyway, and the potential could very outweigh the lousy ten bucks. If  each site averaged making .50 per day, that’s $125/day which is about $40,000 per year. Not a whole lot of money, but that would wipe out the debt in just one short year. I have to give it a shot. I really do.

What’s going to happen is that some sites will be a complete waste of a good day, and others will surprise me and outperform my wildest expectations. If nothing else, it’s going to be fun and a learning experience and a story to tell here too, which if you’ know me, you know I value a good story to tell as well – moreso than money some days

At first, I had thought about sharing the new sites I make an updating you as we play along… but I don’t think I will. If it turns out my mini site about slippers for small dogs actually is a relative success, I don’t want to be copied. I’m going to have enough competition thankyouverymuch. I’m not trying to hide anything as well, there’s nothing to hide – but I don’t think I need to give away the farm here either.

What I will share is maybe that today I’ve made a website about dogs, and report and update you dear reader on my income if any.

With the future so, so far away, I just hope I don’t do what I’m prone to do  - get bored. But I have to remember to keep my eye on the prize which is debt freedom in 1000 days. Debt freedom in 365 days would be even better  but for now we’ll stick to the original plan.

Related posts:

1. How to save almost $500 a year by failing miserably.
2. Getting out of Credit Card Debt Is Hard
3. A year from today. Day 45

But here’s the thing: It should be easy as there’s only two steps involved to get out of debt:

Spend Less Money

Make More Money

I know I’ve mentioned this theory before, but I gotta tell ya, it’s not working so  well for me and I think I know why and I’m here to admit it  - As one reason I wanted to post  here was to publicly embarrass myself to do better – I lack focus and patience with my little projects with making money online. I try something for a few days or weeks and then move onto something else. There’s so many things I could do or try  - so I try tackle them all and get nowhere with all of them, which is discouraging to say the least, and which is why I haven’t been around the past few days….

Yes, I’m still looking for a job with one eye, but I’d lie to you if I said it was my top priority as I have had some luck with making money online and want to continue with this program but I look at the calendar and it’s March already and I’m impatient and do not want a year of nowhere..I want to look back at the year and and know that I’m on track towards debt freedom. I’ve got about 900 days still, so there’s still time to redeem myself.

So. I’ve been thinking. These past few months haven’t been a complete wash as I’ve learned some things in how to get free traffic  to sites with google and how to go about it.  It works –  as you saw with my little test with the litter boxes I made you all suffer through

For the time being, this will be the last of the write what I want and  rattle on about nothing posts. Instead, I’m going to dedicate this month (or so ) to writing more about finances and on topics such as bankruptcy, or debt consolidation, or what banks offer what services and how much. I might even do a bit of research even before I start to just type randomly, like I’m doing. Heck, I might even learn a thing or two.

The goal  is to have this site offer more value than what I’ve been offering and I’m also going to make more of an effort promoting this site. Debt reduction and getting out of debt is a competitive topic, but it’s a challenge and I have had some limited and surprising search terms find me and now I need to get working so that more and more readers visit this site.

I also need to get back on selling the stuff on ebay. I was all gung-ho  for a while, but it’s easy to fall off the wagon and there’s lot  of reasons Let’s see: part with stuff, I’d really rather not to only get pennies on the dollar for  and then  I have to wrap it, pack it,  mail it, insure it and fill out customs forms. Buying is way easier. You bid, you buy, the stuff shows up.   There’s also the resistance you make up on your own and really  - and with  a lot of things – once you get going , it’s not too bad. I don’t miss my extra iPod I had, and I was able to toss another $100 or so towards the debt. I have lots more ipods and other stuff.  I know for a fact that I’ve got a few things to sell.

I read a book this weekend about why resolutions fail: You say you’re going to exercise more. What’s more? Is going to the fridge for another beer exersise?  No, but I suppose you could argue that it is, but the ‘exercise more’  goal is too vague. The goal needs to be tighter.

My mistake so far as been starting this site and saying I’m going to get out of debt in 1000 days. Not a bad start, but I need to tighten it up some. How am I planning on reaching that goal? What’s my goal for March, or April, or six months from now?

I want to be making $40/day in new income from this site (or others I’ve got)  by Canada Day- July 1. That’s 4 months away. It might be tight to do so  and I might fail spectacularly but I’m going to give it a shot  as $40/day knocks the debt down on time.

How? I’m going to write 50 articles (to start) on getting out of debt or personal finance that are actually useful, and answer a question – such as my Bank of Montreal Locations post, which gets some search traffic. That post took me all of about 2o minutes to write and it will work for me forever. How’s that for a return on your investment? And if it’s a dud – I’m out 20 minutes. I need to do more of  that. And even if the 50 articles  are a bust, it will be valuable content  to this site.

Theres’s a plan BTW, I’m going to pick ten topics  and write five articles each I think. RRSP’s might be one topic, tax sofware might be another  and timely topic to investigate, maybe I’ll dip my toe into creditcards a little later too.

The far away goal is to have  a $100/day income from this site and others.  The goal for 1000 days is to have this site alone count for the $100 days. Ultimately I want to turn this around  - not only to be out of debt in another few years, but have the fact that I recorded my debt freedom journey to be my new source of income. It’s doable, I just need to work on promotion more. As much as I I appreciate my family and friends dropping by  to this site –  it all comes down to more traffic. More traffic equals more money and I’ve got to keep my eye on the prize which is more value. I’ve prattled on about it long enough, so now it’s time to get busy and take action.

For the ebay project: I want to apply myself for one hour per day to eBay activities. Heck, it’s only one hour. I’ve read (and agree) that batching your tasks is a great way to get things done and applying one hour to my project might help make me some more funds to get out of debt , and also get rid of lots of stuff which isn’t needed or missed.

And that’s the news. I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I learn.

Hopefully, getting out of credit card debt will become easier the longer this little journey takes me.

Related posts:

1. I Have Nothing To Hide. I Have Credit Card Debt. Day 26
2. Ten Steps to Eliminate Credit Card Debt
3. How To Cancel Credit Card Debt

Beloved Friend,

I am writing this mail to you with heavy tears In my eyes and great sorrow in my
heart because my Doctor told me that I will die in a months time. Base on this
development I want to will my money which is deposited in a security company.
I am in search of a reliable person who will use the Money to build charity organization
for the saints and the person will take 30% of the total sum. While 70% of the money will
go to charity organization and helping the orphanage. I grew up as an Orphan here
In Sarawak Malaysia and i don’t have anybody/family member to take care of my wealth.
The total money in question is $3.5million dollars. I will provide you with other
information’s once you indicate your willingness.

Yours sincerely.
Ms Fadiza Nurideen

See?  I get 30% of 3.5 million. Problem Solved  I wonder if anybody acatually falls for these scams? Somebody must, otherwise the spammers and scammers wouldn’t send these emails.

So. It’s Monday and welcome to Day 69 of the debt freedom plan.

Today, I’ve been slowly working on my 100 sites.  (I’m at number 4 so far) I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew though. These are competitive terms I am trying to rank for in the search engines so we’ll see.  This could be a whole bunch of wasted time and effort, but at least I’ll better understand  what works and what doesn’t  I can also use these sites to link to other sites. I’m only out $87.

Heck, I can rank for “I’m woth stupid” here for this website. ( I should design a tshirt with that on it and sell it.) so hoping I can find something somebody’s searching for and help them solve a problem. Which is really

I’m finally beginning to understand that links to your site is the best payment you can be paid when building websites: Forget the money from adsense or banner ads, the biggest payment somebody can make is to pay you with a link from their site to yours. With the advent and popularity of blogs, everybody can have a website in under an hour. There really is no excuse these days not to have a website. Blogger.com even will allow you to start a website without  much effort whatsoever. fill in your name, and a few other login questions, and ta-da! You’re blogging.

I don’t use blogger.com, but I could. I use wordpress for this site as it’s all about the control. I am the master of my domain (bad joke, bob hope) and I control the content, and save for the nine bucks a year to host this site it costs me nothing to run but time.  Blogger is owned by google so you’re at the mercy of the mighty G. I don’t want to wake up one day and find all my work gone. You guys (all 3 or so) mean something to me and I want to keep on a bloggin’ without worry that it’ll  be pulled becuase I used the word stupid or some other arbitrary rule.

There’s two schools of thought to make money online: Have hundreds of small websites that cater every topic imaginable, or have one authority or larger website that caters to a specific niche or topic. It’s been said it’s easier to earn from the small ones: You toss a bunch up, see what happens and if some start to show results, you just make more and expand.

Or, the other method is to just start a big site with a major topic and work on it. The arguement here is you’re focusing on one thing rather than chasing a million different topics all at once. It could be said that ramseeker is an authority  site. It’s main topic is ram prices, but I cover ram prices for all apple computer models as well as all PC systems too. If I were to have a bunch of smaller niche sites, I would make one on just memory for the iMac, another site for just MacBooks, and so on.

So. I’ve already got the authority,or big site that the search engines trust and now I’m working on the smaller ones.  The trouble I’m finding with the smaller sites is that there’s lots of technical terms to write about and it slows me down considerably. While here,  I’m just rambling away on the end of  the couch. I can type fast, and not a whole lot of editing goes into these. I write what I think about.

On the actual trip to debt freedom, not a whole lot has changed. I’m all paid up with everybody pretty much (current, not paid off) . I’ve been good with the credit cards. No lattes, or any discretionary spending of any type, but I’ve also kindof dropped the ball on the the ebay sales. I have some stuff ready to go, I just need to find the inclination to sell it . There’s always tomorrow.

And speaking of tomrorow, I hope you’ve had a good Monday and we’ll see you then.

Jim

Related posts:

1. Money Problems? How To Turn Things Around
2. How To Work Your Way Through Analysis Paralysis
3. Another Year Older. And Deeper in Debt.

Well, I think I’ve got that pretty much under control. Sure, I still waffle a bit and before you know it the invisible force field in front of the starbucks pulls me in and I’m handing over all of my money to the baristas and their green little aprons. But for the most part, I’ve got the spend less part pretty much down pat. I’m cooking at home, reducing my starbucks intake, and just generally being happy with the now, and what’ I’ve got, rather than chasing the next purchase or BMW, or fancy house. If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that money doesn’t really buy happiness. Enough money does. There’s the differnce. If you have enough money for your needs, not wants, the rest is gravy.

So, this leads me to the next part of the equation: How to make more money? There’s a myriad of ways to do this, but when it comes down to it there’s really only two ways:

1. Do it yourself. Work for yourself.
2. work for the man.

As my income is created from online ventures, I’ll talk about the the online methods today. I haven’t had a job in some time but it might be an avenue to explore.

How to Make Money Online By Working For Yourself.

The first thing you really need to do is just create value. That really is key. There’s no easy pill or ebook, or 12-step course that will provide you with the magic bullet. Believe me, I’ve tried. And with internet, and free tools from the web there’s no reason why you can’t create value too. Everybody is an expert at something, and you are too. Maybe it’s a website about all the different types of cables for your TV, or your gardening. What do you like to do? Can you write about it? Can’t write? Can you talk? Can you record a video of yourself? I worked with a sports editor who could rhyme off stats non stop about sports. If he started to share his knowledge online, over time the search engines and more importantly, other people would notice and he would be creating more value every day, with every little sports tidbit he knew.

Take ramseeker.com for example: I started ramseeker because I read somewhere online once that memory for a particular mac was hard to find. At the time, the only other site that listed memory prices, only listed the high/low/averages of computer memory but not the memory prices that the different vendors charge. And I thought that was kindof silly. That site was obviously tracking the prices anyway, so why not go the extra mile and list the prices? So I made a list. And value was created. People visited ramseeker.com because I had done the legwork. It wasn’t rocket science. I visited the online stores, checked out their prices and made a list of what I found.

Over time, the memory vendors that I listed for free started to notice that the traffic was coming from ramseeker.com. They started to write and ask how they could make their listing stand out? That was easy, I replied. Get your checkbook out and there’s a world of possibilities.
And, they did. And a few years later, I quit a perfectly good day job due to the fact that I created the value of listing and tracking the memory prices online.

Once you’ve got the value created, the rest just kindof takes care of itself. If you can create something that’s unique to you, and distribute it, then you can create value and profit from it. It’s that simple.

So the question I’m asking myself right now is how can I create more value? I’m doing it with this site. Now it’s only 28days old and truth be told there’s not a lot of value created. Yet. I’ve got 972 days to go to keep on writing, to keep on sharing you with my successes and failures and my ebay sales, and any other income I’m making.

In essence I’m telling a story. It’s unique to me. There’s no other Jim Fitzsimmons’s out there (Well, there are, but no sad sacks like me that are 28k behind the 8 ball). And it’s my story.

Tomorrow, I’ll explore how to make money from telling my story.

Sacrifice of the day

Three quesses what it is! That’s right, you win! More cables. I’m still sorting box after box of these things so we’ll be here a while doing this. I have some other more pricier things I can sell but this is a good way to test the ebay waters without losing my shirt. It’s a generic s-video cable today – 9 feet in length. The auction on eBay starts at $1 on this.

Updates

Not much to report today, except that I made somebody’s day. A buyer of my tennis string wrote to say I’m the best ebay seller he’s come across and he’s pleased as punch to get the tennis string and how happy he was with the purchase. This is something you can’t put a price on. Tecnically, I probably lost money if I researched how much I spent, and then what I spent to ship and what the auction ended at. But you know what? who cares? I’ve got a bit more cash flow, don’t have to deal with the string, and made somebody in the world a bit happier today. It’s been a good day.

Related posts:

1. How to Make More Money Creating Value
2. A year from today. Day 45
3. Ways to Make More Money With Your Blog. Day 29