I’m now officially “back to work”. That is, I finished my two week sabbatical, and am back putting all my effort into my passive empire again.

Today was day one and it was one of my best days in a long while. I worked hard, I got that good-tired feeling when I finished – like I’d really accomplished something. And I’ve no doubt I’ll be up early tomorrow excited about what I’m working on. I feel re-energised and it’s thanks to new focus.

Focus: My Biggest Problem

When I look at what I know, my experience, how long I’ve been at it and how much I’m earning, I know that I’ve made a lot of mistakes. That’s fine, and it’s all part of IM and any other business. It’s fine, that is, as long as you learn from them. And one of my biggest lessons has been that I haven’t focused enough… on anything!

I’ve jumped from project to project, idea to idea, niche site to niche site, never really finishing any of them. Back in May, I decided to ramp things up. I started maybe 15 niche blogs, writing content for them everyday. I was focused, but only on the content. Once I did my 10-20 blog posts for each blog, I was no better off than where I started. None of those blogs got marketed properly, I didn’t have any sort of plan.

How Can I Change Things?

On this two week break I knew it was time to re-evaluate. I’d been procrastinating a lot recently, and I know procrastination can be a sure sign that something’s not right. I had to cut some things out of my grand plan, and find new ways to focus.

I actually sat down with a pen and paper (a rare occurrence these days) and made a list of ways to become more focused:

• Only work on one niche site at a time (or at least, fewer than 15!),
• Build authority sites rather than tens of mini sites,
• Only focus on Amazon product reviews from now until Christmas,
• Outsource more of the simple tasks that make me busy,
• Get rid of all my old niche sites,
• Do NOT buy into any new guides/ courses/ eBooks etc.,
• Give up ghostwriting,
• Take time out every day away from the computer (to read real books and so on),
• And, above all, have a plan (which may mean taking more time away from the computer to truly consider things).

What Did I Decide?

1) Giving up ghostwriting was top of the list. This is actually something I gave up a while ago, yet somehow it crept back into my life. It was fear that caused me to do it. I had to move and there were extra costs and so on. But in truth I know I can get by without it. If I need extra cash in the meantime I will a) sell sites as in point 2 below or b) take on more custom niche site building jobs.

• But for now, for active income, I’m going to focus at least one full day per week on writing PLR article packs. These may not earn as much upfront, but often sell better in the long run and create a truly passive income stream. Not to mention the fact that I pick and choose exactly what I write.

2) Getting rid of my niche sites is next. I read that Yolanda also decided to do this, and has actually followed through. I’m still on the fence. Most of them don’t earn me anything so I really haven’t got much to lose. I just know, psychologically, that when they’re gone I’ll feel like I have even more of a clean slate to work from. Not to mention the fact that even selling them off cheap will give me a nice chunk of cash.

3) From now on, the sites I create will be authority sites. Of course, some may not end up being profitable and I may leave them before they become an authority. But each and every new site I start (which won’t be many anyway) will be started with an honest purpose in mind: to inform, educate or entertain, and not just to make money from people who can’t click away from the site fast enough.

This really gets me excited about working on them! I have one in the green living niche which I’m especially looking forward too, and it’ll be targeted towards the UK market. I’m not even attempting to start it yet while I’m still working on my Halloween/ Christmas sites: I’m waiting ’til the timing’s right to make sure I don’t give up on this one.

4) Outsourcing more has always been something I wanted to do, but keep changing my mind about because of the money issue. Unfortunately I’m still limited by the money, but I’m going to try and work smarter and outsource the simple things leaving me to do what I’m good at e.g. the in-depth content that I really just don’t want to leave in anyone else’s hands right now.

5) And taking more time out. This one really is essential. I gained so much perspective on my business by not working on it in the last two weeks. It’s something I need to do more often. Not to mention start reading books again (which I’ve let slip) and get back into yoga etc.

Forging My Own Path

Underlying just about everything is the fact that I’m forging my own path in IM. I always have been, except that I got distracted by many shiny objects along the way. I’ve always known that it’s up to me to learn by doing things my way, yet somehow I never listen to what I know.

All I know is that now I’m working on roughly one thing at a time. Today, I worked on my Halloween site nearly all day. Tomorrow, I’m working on a PLR pack all day. I plan to rotate just a few tasks like this to keep things interesting, but the thought of spending a whole day doing only one things fills me with so much excitement right now!

PS. As soon as I typed the last word, I realised I’d reached exactly 1000 words. This has got to be one of the longest posts here (especially in recent times). If you got this far, thanks for listening!

It’s been a while since I posted, and I’m not officially starting work again until Monday, but I’ve updated my August earnings on the earnings page.

Although I had good intentions, I didn’t do as much as I had planned in August. Client work and moving house took a lot of my time, but I did release a Halloween PLR article pack which did well (I don’t include this in my monthly earnings).

I’m looking forward to getting going in September as I’m going to spend a lot more time on my sites and a lot less on client work (more about that below).

My Passive Income Progression

As I’ve been getting organized, I’ve been laying out my earnings each month and watching how they’ve increased. Here’s a look at how my passive income has progressed since April:

• April – Total = $278.94 |  Daily =$9.29
• May – Total = $281.73 |  Daily = $9.09
• June – Total = $323.71 |  Daily = $10.79
• July – Total = $381.84 |  Daily = $12.32
• August – Total = $405.06 |  Daily = $13.07

Although the monthly increase is small, it still looks good. But I am a little worried as I got a couple of affiliate commissions in July and August that were more of a “one off” (Hostgator affiliate program payments etc) and that probably won’t continue. My Adsense earnings are increasing a little every month which is great to see.

My goal for August is $450. This will be difficult, given my trend in monthly earning increases as well as the fact that the last couple of months included those unexpected commissions. But why set a goal if it’s not a little difficult to achieve?

Thinking Carefully About My Future Plans

Like I said in my last post, I’ve taken two weeks off and have used some of the time (a lot of it was taken up by cleaning and moving!) to consider my business carefully, and the direction I want to take. Although I originally said I was ramping up my passive income efforts in May, I’m going to do it again – only this time I’ll be a lot more focused.

I’ve looked at all the different elements of my business and decided to cut a few out. The main focus will then be my niche websites (specifically, selling Amazon products), and selling PLR article packs (the benefit of these is that they have the potential to turn into a good passive income stream).

I’ve set out a spreadsheet detailing how much I’ll need to earn each month. The amount of client work I take on will depend on how close I am to my passive income goals (I know it never works out as you expect, but at least it gives me a good idea of what I need to achieve.) I really want to see a noticeable increase in time for Christmas.

As I write this I’m surrounded by boxes. I might get up and forge a path to my desk in a moment, but I thought I’d add a quick blog post now while I’m sat with my laptop on the sofa.

This will be my last post for a few weeks. I’m moving on Saturday, my broadband is being disconnected on Friday (!!) and I’ve got a lot to do before then. After I move, I’m taking a well earned break. I’ve even told every single one of my clients that I’m not going to be working until September 6th at the earliest! Wow – it feels really good

What I’m Going To Do In My Break

As you can guess, a big reason for this break is simply to unpack, to relax a little after a very stressful run up to the move, and to settle into my new place (I don’t know about you, but working at home I get very set into a routine and when my surroundings change it can take me a while to properly adjust).

I’m not sure yet how long my broadband will take to transfer over, but it could be two weeks from my move date. I’ve bought a mobile broadband dongle so that, in the meantime, I can connect to mobile internet via 3G on my laptop, but there’s a 30 day download limit of 2GB for this. I really don’t know how much 2GB will let me do, but I know I can’t carry on watching videos, doing everything I normally do.

The point is I’m going to try not to do all the usual things I normally do to waste time. Watching videos, getting sidetracked. As well as relaxing and not working to a fixed schedule (I normally try to work 9-6 every day even though, of course, I don’t have to), I’m going to take the time out to really consider my “grand plan”.

There are so many aspects to my online business: writing, custom site setups, blog flipping, writing PLR content, and the various different kinds of passive niche sites I’ve got. As you all know, I’ve tried a lot but I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of creating a full time passive income. That’s partly why I find it so hard to focus – because I need to do the client work etc to bring the money in now, yet it really does detract from my own passive efforts.

I hope that removing myself from this huge jumble of work for a couple of weeks will help to give me some clarity. Hopefully next time I see you I’ll have a renewed energy for my online business (and perhaps a tighter definition of what that actually is).

Well I’m moving in less than two weeks now! I am excited, I’ll have a much better work space and more space in general. What moving means is firstly I’m having to sort all my stuff out. I started this weekend and am going to try and do small bits here and there so I’m not left with loads to do on moving weekend. Aside from packing, I’ve scheduled mainly client work before I move, since I probably won’t have time for it for a couple of weeks after I move.

Prioritizing

I pretty much have no time to work on my own stuff. I am going to release a PLR pack this week (I have to get it done now before I move) and I’m trying to make sure my Halloween site stays updated. I’ve decided that I just had to set these priorities so, for now, everything else has to wait. This has really helped me to feel less stressed about what I’m doing, thankfully.

So even if I’ve not doing too much to build my online empire, at least I can relax knowing I’m doing something. And my plan for after I move is to spend days focusing solely on my own websites for a couple of weeks (in between unpacking and settling in). I’ll have limited internet access in the form of mobile browsing. Hopefully I won’t be disconnected from my broadband for too long

Today I thought I’d mention some other backlinking and traffic generation techniques I’m planning to try. Although these are more time consuming than things like forum profile backlinks, I am hoping they’re more powerful and definitely more relevant.

Guest Blogging

I’ve known for a long time that guest blogging can be extremely powerful, but for some reason I’ve always ignored it for my niche sites, as if the topics aren’t suited to guest blogging. But honestly this isn’t true. I’ve just had to think outside the box a little.

For example, if I have a product review about a tumble dryer, there’s probably not going to be a blog (that’s not a review blog like mine) that would be willing to accept guest blog posts, or that would be worth submitting to. Instead, I have to look for general cleaning blogs or household tips to submit to.

My Progress Today

So basically today, this is what I’ve been doing. Typing things like “general niche”+ submit article/ guest blogging into Google to find sites that would be willing to post my articles. This is more time consuming than it might seem! I found a few sites after some searching, but discarded a few because they had low page rank or just didn’t seem to get much traffic (judging by blog comments etc).

I’ve narrowed down a list of about 5 blogs in the general niche that accept guest articles and allow links. I’m going to try and write 10 articles for these (or outsource them, not sure yet) and submit them off. If they don’t all get accepted then I want to use them as blog posts as they’ll all cover different aspects of my niche. I would try to find other blogs to submit to but honestly there aren’t many available in this niche as far as I can see.

Future Backlinking Strategies

I also want to try press releases and have wanted to for a while. One of those things on my list that I haven’t gotten around to yet. The only trouble with this is that you need to come up with a newsworthy angle for the release, but if that’s possible I do think it can be a very powerful marketing tool. So I’m hoping to test this method some time in August as well.

As you can see from my earnings page, Amazon doesn’t exactly earn me loads of money, but that’s understandable considering I’ve never focused on it.

But today when I logged in I saw this:

I only got 8 clicks, but there were 14 items ordered. Even better, those items were all ordered by the same person, from just one click on one of my sites. And none of the products were related to what my site was about. This site was just an Adsense site (one that doesn’t do well) and I included a couple of affiliate links.

Unfortunately the products are only about $20 each, so not too much commission (the commission will show in my earnings once those products are shipped). But it just goes to show the huge potential for Amazon customers to browse and end up buying a lot of random stuff!

Like I have said a few times recently, I’ve been writing longer articles and review posts in the hope that they’ll be more search engine friendly and attract visitors for more long tail keywords. The reviews are 1,000+ words, and include a lot of LSI keywords that I researched through various keyword tools. They also contain images and Amazon affiliate links within the text. These reviews are genuinely useful – they took a while to research!

Anyway, now I’ve written five of these long pages, three on one site, two on another, I decided I’m going to submit some articles to backlink the individual pages. This was part of my strategy before, except I only did it for random blog posts, whereas this feels a little more planned to me.

Today I wrote three Ezine Articles, to cover links to all five of those pages (plus one extra link since it’s two per article). And now I’m going to submit them through Unique Article Wizard, but only at a slow pace of say 10 per day, to keep the links building steadily. This will keep the links building even though I may not have lots of time to work on them (I have got a lot more client work to do this week).

Anyway, I’ll try to stay updated here to keep myself accountable and moving forward!

I do say this every month, but I honestly can’t believe it’s August already. July has actually flown by. As you know from reading here, my July was very interrupted as I found out I had to move. I spent a lot of time going on viewings during my work day, and stressing about finding a place. The last week I finally had more time again to work on my own projects.

August will be disrupted too by the actual moving, in three weeks’ time, but I’m going to do my best to keep the disruption to a minimum . If I do have to go a little while without broadband while it switches to my new address, I’ll try and use that as a time to get a lot of content written.

July Earnings

I’ve just posted July’s earnings to my earnings page. It’s less than $10 more than what I earned in June. But I did earn more in Clickbank and in Adsense in July (my first £100+ GBP Adsense month!) so I think it shows that my sites are improving with age even if I’m not doing so well at marketing them!

In fact, here’s a look at how my Adsense earnings have increased over time (click on it to see it in full):

As you can see, they are slowly and steadily increasing. I had about 5 proper niche sites and month to month they’d get stronger and earn more through Adsense. It was in May when I started creating more niche sites to try and really improve things. None of my new niche sites have done fantastically, but hopefully they’ll go the same way as my older sites and just earn more and more as they get older.

Plans for August

I’ve decided I’m not going to try and keep creating more and more niche sites. I’m going to focus on sites I do have and try and make them even more of an authority. As well as the shorter blog posts I’ve been doing, I’m also adding product reviews and how to guides that are over 1,000 words. These are full of LSI keywords that I hope will get the traffic in for lots of random phrases.

I’m trying to do at least one of these long posts for my sites each day this week and then I’ll use articles to market the long posts, as well as the main URLs of my blogs as a whole. I’ll keep a close eye on how this plan is working out to make sure it’s worth continuing with.

If I can, I’m going to try and update here more often again to keep me on track.

Apologies in advance – this one’s a bit of a rambler!

I’m pleased to say I found a new place and am moving in 4 weeks. Of course there’s going to be a lot to do, and I’m not sure how long it’ll take my broadband to switch over but I’m really hoping I won’t need to be disconnected for too long when I move! I’ve got to wait for the reference checks to go through before the flat is officially ours, when they do I’ll arrange the broadband ASAP.

IF I do need to wait for the broadband, my plan is just to use it as a blessing that helps me focus. I’ll probably write as much content as I can for my own sites in that time. I’ll have to plan it so I don’t have too much client work, so I’ll be doing more client work before I move.

I’m really trying to work out a plan of action for summer. It’s so hard (a) because my passive efforts aren’t making enough money for me to justify outsourcing much to move forward quicker and (b) because my passive efforts aren’t making enough for me to focus solely on passive income – I spend most of my time doing client work. If I could spend all my time on passive income I’m sure I’d get somewhere faster, but I just can’t risk that right now, I need to keep the cash coming in.

It’s really hard for me to divide time properly between client work and my own sites. So I’m trying to work out a plan that’ll mean I dedicate time to both. It really isn’t easy to keep switching between the two though, seems my brain can’t motivate itself when it’s doing so much!

Today and yesterday I did take some steps forward: I wrote another two very long reviews (1,000 words+). These reviews are full of long tail keywords and are very detailed, so I’m hoping they’ll do well. I just have to work on promoting them a little to try and get the traffic trickling in, but once I does I’m hoping it’ll end up getting lots of long tail traffic.

Everyday I’m basically spending hours either phoning agents, looking at property listings or going on viewings. Although that in itself doesn’t take too long if I do it daily, the thinking and stressing time is really having a huge impact on my work. I just hope I find a flat soon.

On top of that, I’ve been trying to earn some extra cash for agent fees and possibly a higher monthly rent. My passive income efforts really are suffering, I have to put them to the end of my to do list each day, and although I’m trying to work extra hours I’m finding it hard to stay energetic.

On a positive note, I did spend two hours yesterday writing a really good Amazon product review. In the past writing content was all about how much I can write in how little a space of time, but I’ve really changed my mind on that. My review ended up being 1,400 words (but lots of subheadings and bullet points) and I truly think it’ll be really useful. I’m going to write a few more and want to put them online ASAP.