July was a big month for me and my family. This is because I started a new job. Previously I was working 4 days a week in a compounding lab just 10 minutes from home. I have now begun a full time sales role with a large pharmaceutical company in the city. It now takes me 1-1.5 hours to get to and from work.

This is a big adjustment for myself and my family, but it is a great learning experience and it is a great company to work for. I look forward to getting all the learning I can possibly get from this company.

CashFlowInvestor.com.au

This is my main focus blog, and the train ride to and from work each day has been great because I have had the time to write content for my blog and to grow the search engine traffic.

My Goal

I have decided to set small incremental goals for this blog. There is a lot I will need to achieve on my way to give this blog a solid web presence and to turn it into a full time income stream. Instead of trying to do it all at once I am breaking it down into small bite sized goals.

My current goal is:
“To achieve 1,000 visits from search engines in one calendar month”

In the month of June I had 330 visitors from search engines and a total of 516 visitors and 993 pageviews.

In the month of July I have grown my search engine visitors to 572, my total visitors to 891 and I had 1,777 page views on the site.

I am more than 57% of the way towards my goal! Considering last month I was only at 33% this is a solid improvement.

I have 10 keywords that I am specifically targeting and combined these 10 keywords receive approximately 4,000 searches per month. It is my goal to be ranked #1 for every one of these keywords. So far I have achieved page #2 for almost all these keywords and place #10 (that’s page one) for one of the keywords. Still a lot more work to grow this.

Other Interesting Points

At the end of June I had 546 email subscribers, now at the end of July I have grown my email subscribers by 23 and I have a total of 569 subscribers. This is not something I am actively trying to achieve so any growth is good growth.

I found a new affiliate program that I want to get behind and market. I am currently in the process of writing a blog post that markets this product and adding a few emails about this product to my email list.

I am not completely happy with the way Real Estate Investar is performing. It is an extremely expensive product and at this point I would rather be focusing on smaller products and selling more of them. I want to begin phasing this program out and replacing it with book sales and other affiliates.

I published 6 posts in July and about 10 Ezine articles to increase my back links.

Money Made

I think I sold one book through my online affiliate account and made about $2.00. I also sold one yearly subscription to Real Estate Investar, which earned me approximately $300. But these sales are few and far between.

Not so focused on making money at the moment, just trying to grow my search engine traffic.

I don’t think I will be focusing hard on making money for a little while yet. Though I do plan to grow my book sales and I will trial a few affiliate Programs.

IsItAGoodMovie.com

This is a new initiative that I have started. I have big plans for a social media aspect to this site, but to begin with I am just writing movie reviews to grow traffic. Once traffic grows I will be able to monetize the site and then be able to pay for the things I need to pay for so I can do this big plan things for my site.

In June this blog (used to be shortmovierreviews.com) had 98 visitors and 222 of pageviews. 40 of these visitors came from search engines.

In July 2011 this blog had 165 visitors and 265 page views. 75 of these visitors came from search engines.

Eventually I would like to grow the search engine traffic to this blog to over 1,000 visitors per month. The same goal as CFI

July was a month of a new job and good solid growth online. I am planning to continue the “slow and steady” approach in August and through until the end of the year. Slow and steady wins the race.

Sometimes you just get overwhelmed thinking about your goal. For example:

One of my long term goals is to generate a full time income from my own business, probably an online business. But to think I need to earn $60,000+ online in one financial year when I’m not making much online in a daunting task. If I was to just look at that task (which I have done in the past) then I would get completely overwhelmed.

One of the ways I plan to achieve this goal is through my website http://CashFlowInvestor.com.au. However, I don’t have a lot of spare time (I work full time and have a young growing family) and thus I can’t focus a lot of my energy on achieving that BHAG. For that reason I have had to focus on passive income strategies and have broken down my huge goal into tiny bit sized pieces.

Here is my current goal for CashFlow Investor (CFI):

Receive 1,000 visitors from search engines in any calendar month

This is a good goal for me because it helps me work towards my BHAG but it is a tiny step on the journey. It also works because search engine traffic is passive, in that I write the article once and get search engine traffic to it for years.

Currently I am getting around 350 visitors per month from search engines so I am a third of the way there.

This is how I plan to achieve my goal:

Keyword Research

First I spent a few hours doing keyword research. I have selected 10 keyword phrases relevant to my site that have little competition. Combined these phrases receive over 4,000 searches per month. If I can rank #1 for these 10 keywords then I can expect anywhere from 1,000-3,000 visitors per month just from these 10 keywords.

The great thing is though, that as I write articles for these keywords I am finding that I am generating a great deal of traffic from other keywords. So the more targeted articles I write the more traffic I get for keywords I didn’t even think about.

Writing Posts Using SEO

As I mentioned above I have done my keyword research and I am now going about writing articles that focus on these keywords. It is my goal to rank #1 for these keywords in Google. To do this I have written relevant, helpful articles that I believe people searching that keyword will find interesting.

I make sure I use the keyword in the title, in the URL and at least a few times throughout the post. This tells Google that my article is all about that specific phrase and it should show people my site when they search using that phrase.

Backlinking

Lastly I am creating backlinks to my articles using the keywords I am targeting. This tells Google (again) that my article is relevant to that specific keyword. If I can get enough backlinks from enough sites then hopefully I will get to the #1 position in Google. If I don’t get to #1 I still hope to get in the top 3.

I am using article marketing to get my backlinks. Article marketing is great because you get backlinks not only from a high PR site (like ezinearticles.com) but when people use your article you get backlinks from their sites too.

However, Google is a pretty smart machine and is likely to know that those articles are genuine backlinks to my site (someone who shared the link using their own free will) so I will also be using Squidoo lenses to link back to my site. I will then use article marketing to link to these lenses so Google sees these lenses as a reputable source.

Hopefully using all of this I will succeed in ranking highly for my search terms.

Time Frame

I don’t actually have a time frame for this goal. I guess the time frame would be “as soon as possible.” I am lucky in that this is a fairly achievable goal and I have done the prior research that will make it easy to achieve. My prior research and knowledge of SEO will help me achieve this hopefully within 3 months (so 1,000 visitors in the month of October), but if I absolutely had to give it a date I would say that I want to achieve this by December 2011

The Power of Focus

There is so much to think about when trying to achieve a BHAG. But if you take it one step at a time and focus on one area it makes that one thing much easier to achieve. By spending my time focusing on building search engine traffic (which I know I will always need down the track) and blocking out everything else, I can let my mind focus and think of the best ways to achieve that one thing.

Because my mind is focused it makes the task at hand much easier, and it allows my mind to come up with some great blog posts because it isn’t distracted by the one million other things I need to do.

What’s Next

I am already thinking about which goal to set next. I am tossing up between either “5,000 visitors from a search engine in a calendar month” or “12 weeks of email marketing messages for my list”. Both I will need somewhere down the track.

I am trying to time my goals so that I can achieve good passive results and maximise the return on my labor early on. If I can make some money early on (it doesn’t have to be a lot), then that can fund more articles and more marketing which speeds up the process. But it has to be balanced. If it is all about money then your site goes to crap and you get greedy, but if you don’t earn any money you get discouraged.

I am making about $10/1,000 visitors to my blog at the moment, so I think my next goal will be 5,000 visitors in a calendar month, but we will see.

I have enjoyed my varying roles at Bova. From selling lotto tickets to desperate hopefuls (I mean customers), to helping customers with their prescriptions and vitamins, and more recently working as the stock control manager in Bova’s compounding lab I have always tried hard to apply myself and do my best for the business. However, I do admit to occasionally taking a book to read for the quiet times on my Sunday shifts.

My new role is a sales role at a large pharmaceutical company. The job came about because one of my friends works there and a few people got promoted leaving a job opening for me. I went for an interview, did a few tests and that was it. I am really looking forward to the sales training and experience as well as experience in the corporate world.

I have 2 days left at Bova and it’s a little sad, but it feels a little bit like a coming of age. I have worked for the same company for over 5 years and have little to no working experience outside of Bova (except my freelance work). It will be great to learn and mature.

Thanks to Colin and Nick Bova for giving me a job and especially thanks to Nick for seeing the potential in me and allowing me to innovate, take initiative and make mistakes. In the last nine months I have learnt so much and have become much more valuable (and the better pay shows for it).

So bye bye Bova. It’s like the end of an era. I hope I will be good at sales because I haven’t really done much of it before. I keep telling myself “You can only get better!” I hope that in 2-3 years I will be A great salesman.

Building this site has been fun and has been a great adventure. It is very different to what I have done before for two reasons.

One because it is very ‘niche’. Other sites I have done are very broad but with this site I am sticking to positive cash flow properties only. This is something I have a great interest in and something I enjoy writing about.

Secondly, because I am building an Australian website and targeting Australian traffic. In the past I have mainly targeted worldwide traffic. So minimizing my reach to just Australia so that I can provide more value to my readers has been a challenge but has been fun.

My blog is still in it’s early days and I only have 17 active posts. However, I have been smart enough to start a list (using Aweber) from the beginning. I have around 400 subscribers to my list.

Here are the things I have done to increase my traffic by 250% in 30 days.

1. Become Active on My Site

I have started writing actively on my site. Although I can only manage to get a post out about once per week before that I wasn’t writing anything. I am focusing on writing long, quality articles that are 2,000 words plus that will drive search engine traffic for years to come

2. Target Keywords

I spent a few hours doing keyword research and I am writing posts that target specific keywords that I feel I can rank well for. In 30 days my search engine traffic has gone up from around 30 visitors per month to 90 visitors per month. My goal is to get over 100 visitors per month just from search engines by the end of the year. I am 3% of the way there

3. Being Active On Forums

This hasn’t actually been my goal, but I have naturally become more involved in the forums related to my site and this has driven more traffic to my site

4. Drive More Traffic From Your List

I updated my followup emails and included 3 more emails. Some of these emails link back to my site and encourage people to read my blog.  I have also sent out a couple of emails show-casting my latest blog posts which has driven traffic back to my site.

5. Increased Pageviews

While my ‘unique’ visitors has gone up 250%, my monthly pageviews have gone up 365%. I added more content to my blog and I also added more pages. I added a book page, where I list the best positive property books, I added an archives page where people can see all my blog posts. I also added a calculators page (though I only have one calculator) that I plan to build up in the future. It seems the more quality content I add to my site the more people read…go figure.

So Have I Made Any Money?

While I am not focusing on making money at this stage (I am focusing on building the traffic to my site and the quality of my site) I have made around $2 from an affiliate sale selling books that I recommend. Not much, but seeing as I wasn’t trying to make any money this month I can’t complain.

At bible college it was almost as if they taught us relativity was wrong because in saying there is no absolute truth you are making an absolute statement which is contradictory in and of itself, thus cannot be true. But I think I believe there is both absolute truth and relativity.

I have never given much thought to relativity in the past. But this last couple of weeks has made me think of relativity in regards to money. The fact that the value of money is all relative.

For example, it was Sasha’s birthday party last weekend so we were saving every dollar we had to put towards the party. I went down to Cronulla that week and as I walked past the pie shop I decided that there is no way a pie was worth $4.20 to me. I would rather wait and go home and eat for cheaper.

Yet this week, after the party, I went and bought two pies and thought that $4.20 was extremely cheap.

The price of the pie didn’t change in the last 10 days that suddenly it was cheap, it stayed the same. The only thing that changed was me and my view on money. The value of the currency you hold in your wallet is relative to your situation.

Makes me think that money isn’t the only thing that is relative…..

Birthdays are a time to celebrate you, people buy you presents and take you out for dinner and spoil you. But today, thinking back, I am grateful for all the people who made 22 such a good year. It was a massive year for me and us as a family and without the help of friends and family I wouldn’t have come out so happy at 23. I think with all the screaming Sasha has done this year I would have come out stressed off my nut.

Kelly
I could have not survived this year if it wasn’t for the love and support of my sexy wife Kelly. We have been through some hard times this year. The birth of our first baby Sasha on March 4 was a landmark in both of our lives and I think the first 6 weeks after that were kind of a hazy blur of sleepless nights and pointless fights caused by lack of sleep.

I watched ‘Going The Distance’ last night (chick flick I know) but they said “I think you will only ever be happy if you marry your best friend” and I think that is exactly what I did.

Sasha
Having Sasha this year marked 22 as the best year yet. Yes her consistent screaming, whinging and poo’ing can be frutrating at times. But the laughs, the cuddles, the wrestling and trips to the beach made it all worthwhile. Now I have two beautiful girls in my life and I love it.

Yesterday I took Sasha to ‘my spot’ and it was actually the place I asked Kel to marry me. It was really early in the morning so it would have been nice to just sit and cuddle and watch the sun come up. But not for Sasha! She wanted to walk around (which meant I had to hold her) and as soon as she saw I puppy dog she was the one yapping. That’s Sasha for you, can’t sit still for longer than one baby einstein episode.

When I drink too much I talk to much. The filter between my mind and my mouth disappears. So I say whatever I think. And the other day when we were out with friends I kept saying to Kel “Where’s Sashi”. I was having the time of my life at the beach (and hells yeh I was) but I fricken missed her. It was kind of frustrating…but I’m her dad so I’m allowed to miss her.

My Mums
Where would I be without my Mums? Ron Ron and Ju Ju….ok I never call them that. My mum gets “Nana” and Kel’s mum get “Grandma”.

My mums are the best grandparents anyone could ever ask for and without their help me and Kel wouldn’t have had a night to ourselves in 11 months. Thanks Jill (Grandma) for allowing Kel to go back to work one day a week and for reading Sasha bible stories. From us she dances to “Put your hands up for detroit” and from Jill she sings to old christian songs…I love it. Thanks Mum (Nana) for all the overnight stays and random last minute drop offs so we could go out and have fun.

Sasha loves her Grandmas and I can see why. They are the best.

Tim + Carol
T+C, you guys should name your daughter Lulu or Larry or something starting with an L, so then you can be TLC. Anyway Tim and Carol have been the best. They were there in hospital visiting us when Sasha was born and they bought us toothbrushes, toothpaste and dry shampoo…all the essentials of course.

The other weekend we had brunch out with them and Sasha, and Sasha freaking loves them. All she has to do is look at Tim and laugh. Actually come to think of it Sasha is probably the only person who would laugh at Tim’s corny dad jokes…not because they are funny but because she just thinks he is the best. And she loves her Carol cuddles and soon Sasha will have a new little friend to steal toys off and push over, you know all the loving stuff big sisters do.

As the year has progressed I have noticed how much more comfortable we have become with these two…that is mainly because I have noticed an increase in sexual connotation comments (mainly from me)….these aren’t always received well but our friendship rolls on. 22 was great with these guys but I think this next year will be even better as we both will have kids and they can relate and contribute to the copious amounts of poo stories.

Bec + Scott + Lucy
These guys made 22 the craziest year yet and it was awesome. Some people would think that having a kid would be enough, but the 4 of us decided one kid wasn’t enough we wanted to move in together.  Whenever we told anyone they had this weird look of their face….”But you both have kids”….but we did it anyway. It may not have worked out as planned but I will always look back of that time with a smile and laugh about how we all just flew by the seats of our pants.

Why I am really grateful when it comes to the Jordans is that we actually had another couple our age who understood our plight. They understood how hard it was being young and married with kids. And because neither of us could go out we would spend countless nights hanging out together playing cards, eating Kelly’s World Famous Korma, drinking a mixed variety of God knows what, and watching “When In Rome” (I’m trying to forget that one). It was good to hang out with people and not feel awkward if your kid screamed or vomited on their couch/carpet…..thanks guys. And thanks to Lucy for giving Sashi a best friend and someone to play with and get covered in spagetti sauce with.

Ani + Nath
Where do I begin with these two? Fricken hell. Hung out with Ani and Nath at the turn of 2010. In 14 months they have managed to be on again off again 3 times…but I always had faith they would get back together. Now they are back together (or are they) and they are loving life…reminds me of me and Kel when we were dating. We had the best night out in the city the other week….ever! Without these two cool cats it would definately not have been as fun. And the beach on Australia day…genius. Turns out Woonoona (where we went to the beach) is “rough as guts” and we were lucky not the get shanked…good picking guys! But that was some of the most fun I have had in ages. You 2 remind me and Kel that we aren’t old and grey yet so thanks.

I have so much fun with these two and I can see myself hanging out with them when I am 45 and our kids have gone down the beach at Burrill Pines Holiday Park to light a bonfire and get drunk like we used to do. I suspect that Nath will owe me $50.00 before my 24th Birthday.

My Sis
Growing up the nicest things my sister would say to me was “Fuck off” and “Fuck you” and the funny thing was that I was the one who got in trouble because I told her to shut up. I never understood why we were allowed to say fuck off and fuck you but not shut up….weird family rules….gotta love it.

This year has been the best year I have had with my sister. She is great with Sasha, though I am glad that Sasha is now old enough to respond to Sara’s overwhelming affection towards her and desire to play with her I went and saw “The Karate Kid” with my sister this year and that kicked ass (get it…haha) and me and Kel have had quite a few dinners/hang outs with her this year which has been really fun. I look forward to building a better relationship with my sis this year.

Casey + Viv
Lastely, but not leastly, Casey and Viv. Just knowing you guys are there if we ever need you means the world to us. And the fact that you would drive us home at 11 o’clock at night when we locked our keys in our car at YOUR house, says a lot about the kind of people you are. You are very generous with your time and I appreciate that.

For all the awesome lifegroups, and the sometimes not so awesome ones (****Cough****…..DVD…..) thank you. Speaking of the DVD, I respect you guys a lot of seeing that through and making the absolute most of it even though it was a bit of a miss. Looking forward to bubbi #2 this year and hectic lifegroup as it gets invaded by little minions (aka everyone’s babies).

So thanks everyone for making this year great. Sorry if I missed you in my thankings in this post but my hands were tired so I couldn’t keep going. I love you and am grateful for you anyway.

1. Start a paid membership site - Probably over at CFI, but maybe some other sites. Basically I want to get my internet business up and running again. I was once earning a part time income online from the blog smarterwealth.net, I want to just start earning a little bit of income online again.

2. Finish the year with less debt than I started with - It’s deinately time to start lowering my consumer debt so this year I want to get into that habit and start paying off our debt. We are trying to take steps to put us in a position where we can do that so it should be achieveable.

3. Earn myself 2 pay rises at my job - I started my new role last year and it is a great job that I can grow into. I want to take initiative and grow my role to make the business more money, make the business more effective (and thus make me more money too).

4. Find a place to settle in - I have moved 6 times in the last 2 years, and within a couple of months it will have been 7 times. I want to finally find a house/unit that we can live in for at least a couple of years. I am sick of moving.

You know how they always talk about how HUGE an influence you father has in your life? Maybe I love family because my dad loved family?

My dad was as family minded as they come. He worked one night a week (sunday nights) and the rest of the time he was a house dad. To him (and to my mum too) family was THE most important thing in life. Maybe that is why I love family so much?

An older chap from one of the suppliers I work with asked me the other day if I was studying. The answer being no. Everyone always asks me if I am studying. If you’re 22 (almost 23) without a degree people think you should be studying….maybe I should. Anyway, my reply to “are you studying” was something along the lines of “No….I’m a family man” and that made me feel good.

Friday is my family day. I hung out with Sasha all day and then picked mum up from work at 4:30 and went straight to the beach. Such good times!!! I love fridays.

I would love to be a hardcore business-man, and I do have a few business ideas and I am working on a few (slowly), but at the end of the day I am a family man and I only want the money so I can spend more time with my family….it’s a tough life

Robert Kiyosaki, who retired at 47 earning over $120,000/year from investments, said “In order for me and Kim to retire young we had to have a plan, a plan that started with nothing because we had nothing”.

That is an interesting concept. All the books and everything out there teach you how to have a plan if you already have significant savings or own your own home etc. But I am yet to see one that teaches you how to have a plan for financial freedom by starting with nothing.

I have never really created a plan because I don’t have much disposable cash to start with. But now I will start thinking about creating a plan that involves starting with nothing

Oh 2010 how I have loved the time we spent together. But we need to talk. I have found someone else and I am leaving you for good. “What’s her name” you ask? Well her name is 2011, and I can’t explain it but it just happened. It was like I didn’t even have a choice. It’s not you…it’s me. We are just going in different directions. You are staying where you are, and that’s fine, but I am moving on and I can’t help it. We had fun and it was great while it lasted and you will always hold a special place in my heart.

It is December already…when did that happen? It is amazing to look back over the last 11 or so months and to see how far I have come and what I have achieved. Here is a small list of some of the things that defined 2010 for me.

• My first child and daughter was born at the start of March making me forever a dad from this point on.
• I got a new job for the first time in 5 years. Same company but a new role and better hours and that has changed my life significantly.
• Moved in with great friends and now roomies who also have a daughter a bit older than Sasha. That was a crazy decision (who does that??) and it has been loads of fun (and will continue being fun).
• I officially stopped working in the Internet Marketing Niche and moved into the Real Estate Niche.
• I tried to buy my first investment property but the deal flopped when the bank valued the property under my offer.
• Changed our car from the teeny tiny Toyota Echo to the family sized “mum van” Nimbus, which can seat up to 7 people. Wicked
• Went on a holiday to Byron Bay with the family and our roomates. Rekindled my love for skating, vintage skateboards and just vintage in general.
• Got an Xbox and enjoyed countless hours of shooting people online.

It is exciting to look back over the last year and see what has happened and to document it, because I know that in 2020 I will barely remember any of this.

This time last year Kelly was pregnant and still working on the other side of Sydney. I was working 2 days a week (just weekends) and I was trying to find my fortune in every different get rich quick strategy on the internet. We were broke but we were happy.

We are now a little less broke, and with the addition of the little one a little more happy (and a little more tired). This time last year I would sleep in till 11am on countless mornings, now sleeping in till 8am is a dream. Late morning sleep ins is definately something of the past.