Financial Hack

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I have come across an interesting dilemma with one of my websites and I thought it would be interesting and worthwhile to throw out to any readers for their opinion on what they would do in this situation.

What happened was that I kept forgetting the days that I started blogs, so I created a site to remind me when the “blogoversary” of the blog was (aptly named blogoversary.com) I thought that this was a perfect name and couldn’t believe that nobody had taken it. After I had already purchased the domain, I realised that people were referring to it as a “blogiversary” and not “blogoversary” — a check of Google for both terms brought back results of 90,000 and 7,000 respectively. This, of course, was quite disappointing to find out, but I put up the site anyway, placed the button on a couple of my blogs and didn’t think much more about it.

This past week (after about 2 years) I decided to clean it up a bit and make some minor changes that had been bothering me about the website. In doing so, I realized that the site had grown enough to where blogoversary (526,000) had displaced blogiversary (147,000) as the term used to describe a blog’s anniversary on the Internet. Even more surprising, there are over 3000 blogs that are currently using the blogoversary button on their blog.

First and foremost, I’m glad I didn’t give up on the idea completely when I found out that someone else had the term I thought I had. I was fortunate that the person that owns blogiversary never did anything with the domain allowing blogoversary to gain momentum and become the default term (luck always play a role in these things). None of it would have happened, however, if I had completely given up and done nothing.

When you come across a problem you have, it’s likely others have had the same problem. Putting my idea of a reminder to people of when they started their blog was something that others obviously had trouble remembering as well, or so many other blogs would not have decided to use the blogoversary button. One of the best ways to create niche sites is to look at the problems you have and if someone hasn’t solved the problem, you have an opportunity to do so yourself.

If an idea is good, it will make its way around. Except for placing the button on my blogs, I have done no other advertising of this site. People somehow found it and passed the word around despite my total lack of effort in promoting it.

I think one of the best moves I made was that I made the site extremely simple. It was made basic for ease of use for myself, but that also translated into ease of use for others. There is no long form to fill out in order to get the button for the site — in fact, you don’t even have to leave the front page to do so.

I wonder how much it not being monetized helped the site? Since I really didn’t think anything would come of it, I never bothered to monetize it in any way which could have very well been a good thing in helping to spread the word around about it. I think people feel much more comfortable without ads all over the place when they place a button on their site.

Some of the things that made this site successful despite itself make it difficult to monetize. I’ve been thinking about ways to do so and have come up with some ideas which I will share later, but I’d love to hear what, if anything, would you do to the site to further promote and monetize it?

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You probably have never heard my name. You likely have never visited any of my websites or blogs. I don’t sell anything. I’ve never paid for advertising. I am not an A-List blogger and my website would still be considered quite small within its category. In all likelihood, you are a better writer than I am. You definitely know more about computers than I do. And despite all this, I take home a six figure income from the Internet.

While you will likely be disappointed to learn that there are no secrets or an easy path to this success, you will be encouraged to know that you can do the same thing I have if you really want to. If you want to succeed, you are going to have to work hard. Probably harder than you have ever worked before. But if you are willing to do this, you can make money. I’m the perfect example of “if he can make money on the Internet, anyone can.”

I don’t do anything but write. I write a decent amount, but I am by no means prolific. There are many bloggers that produce much more content than I do. While I do know a lot about the subject matter I write about, all the information has, for the most part, been self taught. So the question is why have I been able to make blogging and websites a full time job when many others who have better skills and talent than I haven’t?

I think a lot of it simply comes down to attitude. While it helps to have superior writing skills, that in itself isn’t enough to succeed. I won’t BS you and say that making money blogging is easy or simple. It’s true that some people get lucky and making money ends up being easy for them, just like there are lottery winners, but far more of the people who are making money simply appear to have been lucky. The truth is that they worked long hours to get where they are. While this is probably not a typical list of traits and skills that are associated with Internet entrepreneurship, I don’t think I would be where I am today without them:

Stubbornness: 90% of the game is not quitting. There is a lot of talent out there that simply doesn’t have the stamina, willpower and just plain stubbornness to keep going when the only two people reading your site are yourself and your (mom, dad, sister, brother, friend). A stubborn streak has helped me keep going even when it seemed that nobody knew that I existed on the Internet.

Most people quit because the success doesn’t come quickly or easy enough for them. It takes a substantial amount of work and dedication (likely much more than you ever imagined) just as it would take to make any business successful. Having a stubborn streak that made me refuse to give up has helped me clear numerous hurdles that could have easily stopped me dead in my tracks.

Passion: I love what I do and if you don’t love whatever you choose to write about on the Internet, you’re going to make it nearly impossible to succeed. In fact, I can say that I would be doing what I am doing now even if I wasn’t making a cent. I know because when I started I wasn’t and at that time there was no reasonable expectation that I would.

It takes time to make money on the Internet because people have to discover you. If I didn’t love doing what I’m doing, I would never have had the stamina to keep going. Passion let me spend long hours working on my site and blogs without realizing how much time I was actually devoting to them. Even with all those long hours, I still loved spending the time doing what I was doing above all the other choices I had.

Creativity: Working on the Internet will always pose unexpected problems and it will be essential to use creativity to help solve the numerous problems that are bound to arise along the way. The solution to the problems often won’t reveal itself right away. I have had to try new ideas including multiple failures until I hit on something that worked for what I was trying to accomplish. Being able to be creative and adapt has helped a lot in making everything work.

Self Motivation: If you want to find an excuse not to do something that you know needs to get done, but which you really don’t feel like doing, there are a lot of easy ones to adopt. You are your own boss and if you want to waste time, it’s easy to do. Since I work for myself, being able to motivate myself to keep writing and putting effort into my current projects when it didn’t always seem to be worthwhile to do so was essential. If I hadn’t been able to find ways to keep myself motivated at all stages of growing the site and blogs, none of these would exist today. It wasn’t always easy to keep going when it seemed there was no reward for the effort, but even during those times I found a way to motivate myself to keep producing material.

Vision: I don’t think I ever had a grand vision of where my writing would eventally lead, but I have always had a vision of where I wanted to go next. Instead of being at the bottom of a mountain and looking at the top and saying I wanted to get there, I started at the bottom and saw a step in front of me that I wanted to climb. From there, I found the next step. and then the next step. As the site and blogs have grown, I think I am beginning to look a wider, but that concentrated vision in the beginning was extremely helpful.

Time: I knew I was in this for the long haul from the beginning. In fact, when I started there wasn’t any platform out there for people to make money from content alone (adsense still didn’t exist). It never entered my mind that I would make a lot of money quickly, let alone ever. I felt that if I could produce good quality content and information for people that eventually it would be of value for advertisers and figured it was going to be years down the road. Had I assumed that I was going to make money in a short period of time, I would have been highly disappointed and probably quit long ago.

Voice: Everyone has their own voice and you need to use it. I have brought my own voice into my writing. While this may sound obvious, it has been been difficult to accomplish. I’m not the best writer in the world and I would even say that a good description of my writing style is “common” When I see other writers that put the words down so much more eloquently than I am able to do, I want to change my style. The few times I’ve tried this, it has been disastrous because it simply isn’t me. That is not to say that I don’t incorporate things that I see other writers doing that I like, but when I do this, I do it in my own style instead of trying to change mine to theirs.

Faith: Not faith in the spiritual sense, but that what you’re writing or creating is helpful to others. When I first began writing, I received little to no feedback because there just weren’t a lot of people coming to the site. I had faith that what I was creating was worthwhile and helpful to those few that did find their way to my writing. Having that faith will help you to keep going and creating content, and even more so when you do begin to receive positive feedback.

Help: I wouldn’t even be near where I am today without a lot of help along the way. When I first started out, it was brutal and downright frustrating trying to get the word out that my site existed. Over time, however, I was able to find other people that were in the same situation as we were and we banded together to help each other and our sites as best we could. There were also some slightly bigger and more established sites that took a chance on my potential and drive by helping us out when they could have very easily ignored us. I could have never done it on my own.

No Outside Life: You have to be willing to give up a lot of the activities and free time that you had before beginning the project. You have to be willing to put these other activities aside as you build your presence on the Internet, especially in the beginning. When I first started, I was working full time at another job. It was literally like doing two full time jobs at the same time. If you think your are going to be able to succeed only spending an extra hour or two when you can find the time, you will be sadly disappointed when the money doesn’t come.

As you can see, my list of what you need to be successful on the Internet doesn’t match up well with most of the others you have probably read. It certainly isn’t the “quick and easy” success that seems to scream in every advertisement you see. I do, however, believe it’s a realistic list of what helped me get to where I am today.

For those that are hoping for directions on how to make easy money, I’m sorry if my list disappoints. What I can say is that the skills listed above are ones that every person has within them and so it can be done if that is what you want to do. What I can say is that even with all the work, disappointments and frustration, it’s also a wonderful experience along the way and the obstacles makes it that much more satisfying when you can say writing on the Internet is your full time job.

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I actually worked for a large corporation in long ago days. While the time there taught me that corporate life wasn’t the career that I ultimately wanted for myself, I also learned a lot from my mentors on ways to get ahead, much of which is good advice no matter what career choice you choose to take.

When it comes to your career, it is usually small things over a long period of time that add up to the success that you achieve. Getting into the habit of making small improvements on a daily basis will reap huge rewards over the long run. If you find yourself at your desk with some free time, here are 25 things you can do to help improve your career.

Find A Mentor: If you do nothing else on this list today, do this. Find someone (or several people) that you respect and ask them to mentor you. Most people will be more than happy to pass along advice that they have learned over the years which can be invaluable in helping your career. They will also be great people to use as a sounding board with ideas you have and help you figure out the best way to obtain the goals you are seeking to accomplish. A mentor can have amazing effects on your career and will make your advancements much easier.

Start Your Own Part-Time Business: I’m a firm believer that if you want to have the perfect job, you’re going to have to go out and create it yourself. While I have had many jobs over the years that I have truly enjoyed, it wasn’t until I started building my own sites and blogs that I realized what true passion for something was. Begin part-time and build slowly when you have free time, but start the process today. Five years from now you will be so thankful that you did and you might even find that it ends being your full time work.

Identify How You Procrastinate: We all do it, but if you can identify how you’re doing it and put in a system to discourage yourself from doing so, you will dramatically increase your productivity. My big vice was watching TV far too much and I’ve had to also ween myself from spending too much time on social networking sites as well. Once you have identified places that you are spending too much time, take steps to reduce the amount the time you spend on them and instead use that time to further your career.

Pinpoint Work Essentials: The big myth in business is that the ones who work the hardest are the ones that get ahead the most. Working hard is important, but working smart is just as important. Working smart means finding the areas within your job that are essential to your group and to the company and focusing most of your resources in those area. This is one of the best pieces of advice I ever received when working for a large company. Take some time to look at your job and what portions of it are most essential to others both inside and outside your group. If you pinpoint those areas that are most essential, you become the person that people come to when things need to get done.

Begin Making Lists: I used to think that making lists was useless until I started making them myself in a way that was useful for me. I actually have two lists - one is a list of all the things I want to do and one is my daily must do list. On the daily list, I only place the three most important things I have to do that day and work on those three things until they’re done. Once finished, then I can go to my general list and choose projects from there. This ensures that I get those things that I may not like to do as much that would be constantly delegated to the end of the longer list. How you develop your list to work for you may be very different, but creating a list system will help you be more productive. Once you complete something, don’t throw the list away. Instead, date and file them in a work completed folder. This will allow you to have a documented list of all the tasks you accomplished which you can take out at your next performance review or when asking for a raise.

Learn a Second Language: As someone who was the worst student ever when it came to languages in school, I’m living proof that absolutely anyone can learn a second language. I think all of my high school language teachers would roll over in their graves if they knew I was proficient in Japanese. Being proficient in a second language can open up a lot of career opportunities and is well worth pursuing if you have an interest in one. There are plenty of resources online including those developed by the Foreign Service Institute.

Take Some Classes: Too many people feel that education ends when you receive that college diploma. In fact, it’s a never ending pursuit even if you aren’t taking formal classes. There are almost certainly classes you can take or skills that you can obtain that will make it easier for you to advance in your career. Take a few moments to talk with your boss or a mentor to find out what skills will make your advancement easier. Talk with your personnel department and ask if they will help pay for you to obtain these skills. Many will. It’s easier than ever to take classes while working full time with online education.

Update Your Resume: Take some time to look over your resume to update it and improve it. It’s always a good idea to have an up-to-date resume handy on the off chance that another opportunity arises. Make new copies and place them in your briefcase so that they are always ready to hand out.

Get Linked: Web 2.0 has made it easy to make new contacts with people that have a similar background and career interests. If you haven’t signed up yet, consider joining Linkedin which can greatly expand your networking resources. If you have already joined, take some time to explore and find some other people you may want to contact.

Send Some Emails: I have learned over the years that one of the most important things you can do in any job you have is to stay in contact with people you meet. This can be an easy way to improve your career, keep network lines open and create new network contacts. There are probably more than a few professional contacts that you have made that you haven’t touched based with in awhile. There may be some people that you have never met, but that you would like to make contact with. Spend a few minutes sending out emails to some of these people to reestablish contact or create a new contact.

Make A Few Calls: For the exact same reason that you should send out some emails, you should also make a few phone calls to catch up with peers and others. Calling is a more direct approach that will make sure that your message doesn’t get lost in all the other emails the recipient receives.

Make A Lunch Date: One of the most effective tools I used when I was working for a large company was the lunch break. First because I really didn’t like eating alone, but later because of all the advantages that come from it. Lunch dates give you an opportunity to talk with people about ideas you have in a more informal setting than the office. Making a lunch date is also excellent way to network and catch up with peers and mentors, or to meet someone new you’ve wanted to talk to. If everyone seems to be too busy with their work schedule, this is an excellent time to set up a meeting.

Go To Career Events: Take some time to research what meetings, presentations, talks or events are taking place in your area which are related to your career and sign up to attend. Not only are you likely to gather some good information, these are excellent places to meet new contacts and expand your contact network.

Join and Participate In Associations: If your career has an association, don’t only join it, but make an effort to participate in it. Most local chapters are always looking for people willing to lend a helping hand and doing so can easily put you in the position to meet those higher up in the organization. Again, this will open you up to a wide variety of new contacts and expand your network of contacts. It will also help you keep up with the newest developments in your career which has many advantages.

Show Some Appreciation: It’s amazing what a sincere, hand written “thank you” note can do for the amount of time it takes to create. With email and the paperless office, thank you notes stand out these days and definitely leave an impression on the recipient. Furthermore, they know that the time they spend helping you was appreciated and therefore will likely be more than willing to help out in the future as well. If someone has recently helped you out in some way, take a moment to thank them for their help. This is one thing that it’s hard to do too much of, so if in doubt, always side with sending the note of appreciation.

Reread All Your Documents: It took me a long time to break my bad habit of not rereading my writing before showing it to others, but I learned after a number of embarrassing mistakes which I should have known better. With the ease of spell checking, I got into the habit of assuming my work was fine after it cleared the spell check. It’s a bad assumption to make since a lot of things can go wrong even when words are spelled correctly. Get into the habit of rereading everything that you write whether it be an email, a report or any other work related document, especially after a spell check. You will avoid a lot of embarrassing amateurish writing mistakes and look a lot more professional in all your work.

Improve Your Writing Skills: Along the same lines as rereading your documents, you want to constantly work on improving your writing skills. Being able to put together reports, letters, proposals and other written information in a way that easily draws attention the the important points among all the information is a great skill to have that will get noticed. Take some time to go over basic writing techniques when you have some free time.

Improve Your Business Cards: Spend some time thinking about the impression you want your business cards to make and see if there are some changes that you can make to them to achieve what you want. I’m looking for more professional looking business cards that are still creative and will leave a lasting impression on anyone who receives them. Take a bit of time doing this and it may lead to an opportunity that would have never appeared if your business card was lost in the pile with everyone else’s.

Improve Your First Impression: While one of the big reasons I got out of the corporate world was so I didn’t have to worry about dressing corporate for good for first impressions, there is no doubt that they count. Dressing appropriately and having good hygiene and manners is important. Learn to make eye contact when speaking to people, smile, know how to introduce yourself confidently and always be on time (if not a bit early). Take a few moments to make sure that you are making a good first impression with everyone you meet.

Improve Your Public Speaking Skills: One of the most terrifying things for me is to do public speaking. Over the years, I have gotten a lot better, but when I first started teaching, even going in front of a classroom of high school students would have my stomach churning the entire morning before classes began. Being able to make a quality presentation is an important way to get noticed and improve your career prospects. Listen to the way that your favorite speakers deliver their information and adopt them into your own speaking. Join your local Toastmasters group to help you improve these skills.

Read: Get in the habit of reading at least an hour a day on a wide variety of topics. Some of it should be related to your chosen career and issues that pertain to it so that you keep up on the latest news and trends, but it’s not necessary to focus your reading habits exclusively on this topic. Reading should help spark new ideas, challenge your thinking process and expand your knowledge base - all things that can be helpful in your career advancement.

Clean Your Office Space: If your work area is anything like mine, it needs to have a good cleaning once a week or it will quickly get out of control. I actually have this marked down on my calendar to do every Friday afternoon and it’s amazing what 15 minutes will do to keep your desk organized. It may, however, take a bit of time to get to the point where all you need is 15 minutes to clean everything up. Start today to put things in order and put aside 10 minutes a day until you have your work area in the condition you want. You will be surprised at how much time you save looking for things and an orderly office leaves a good impression on anyone who works in your group or visits.

Set Some Career Goals: This is another one of those things that seems obvious and I thought I could get away with general ones that I had in my head, but now realize the power that comes with taking the time to write them down and make them both clear and specific. Give them a time limit if possible. While you may not always reach them, making them and knowing specifically what you want to achieve will get you a lot closer to them than not doing so. Set them for various time periods: 3 months, 1 year , 5 years, etc. and then begin working toward them.

Create a Blog or Website: Create a blog or website about your chosen career can be a great way to meet new people and share ideas. It can also be a great way to begin that part-time business mentioned earlier and may even end up being your full time job. I have found that creating content has a way of helping to crystallize the things that are truly important to me which goes a long way to helping me know what goals are most important for me to achieve. Starting any type of blog or journal will help you do the same. Just be sure that doing so will not get you in trouble with your company.

Love Your Job: Learn to love what you’re doing or begin looking for something else. Life is far to short to do something that you don’t truly enjoy. There are times when you may have to take a job that you don’t particularly like, but there is no reason that you have to be stuck there. If you don’t thoroughly enjoy what you’re doing, start implementing steps to get a job that you do love. There is nothing better in the world to get up every morning and knowing that even if you weren’t getting pays a dollar to do so, you would still be doing the same thing that you are doing. It’s also much harder not to improve your career opportunities when you love what you do because the energy and enthusiasm you have for what you do tends to be infectious and draw people to you. And if for some reason you don’t know what you love, start experimenting. That’s the only way to find out.

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Image courtesy of varshesh

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I’m looking for new business cards. In the past, I have made my business cards out of used Japanese telephone cards. This is a cheap (I’ve gathered a large collection of used telephone cards while living in Japan for free by simply picking them up when I came across them). These tend to stand out (most have very colorful photos on the front) which means that people will generally keep them and remember who I am. An example would be this phone card of Mt Fuji:

This is an effective and cheap way for me to give out business cards at conventions or other large gatherings. The phonecard is more rigid than a typical business card, but not as thick as a credit card. The cards are just unusual enough as a business card that it will prompt several questions, especially since it has holes in it and has Japanese on the back. This conversation reinforces me with the card. I think I have used these quite successfully, although they do take some time on my part to create.

The problem is that they aren’t very “professional” since I simply write my name, url, email address, etc by hand on the back. Thus I’ve been a quest to find a cool business card that people would never throw away that is a bit more professional that would still stand out. Here are some of the ideas I’ve found:

bottle opener business card

shoe scoop business card

toothpick & mirror business card

These three cards are all concept designs by Ji-Young Chun as smart credit type cards, but I think any of them would make an excellent business card - especially the bottle opener card. Not only would a person keep a card like that, they would be showing it left and right to all their friends and family which would be great. If they ever makes business cards like this, I’ll be first in line to purchase them.

Along the same thoughts, another good idea if a lot of your clientele are women would be a mirror business card that was quality enough to allow a woman to put on make-up when they are in a hurry and didn’t have a regular mirror handy. I know this would work because my wife often uses a Japanese phone card which reflects well as a mirror when she needs to put on make-up in a pinch.

Paperclip business card

This is also not supposed to be a business card, but I think it would make a great one. This was actually part of an advertisement for a brand of Japanese rice wine (sake) that I bought a few weeks ago which is the same size as a business card. You can see die-cut into the card are three paperclips. It’s unusual enough that I think most people would keep it and might even show it to friends.

lock pick business card

This is one of those cards you see and just think, “I want one of those.” Putting together something like this would certainly make a huge impression on anyone that received it and you could bet it would be shown to a lot of other people in the future.

USB business card

This seemed like a good idea on first impression, but on further thought I don’t think it would work for me. People would keep it, but because memory has become so inexpensive, it is like putting you name on a pen that happens to be digital. I think if you have a small business that you want to brand, this might be the way to go, but it probably won’t leave the lasting impression that I’d like (especially as prices fall even further).

Here are some more business cards that I came across that I thought were creative. Although I don’t think they’re right for me, they may get your creative juices flowing if you are looking for new business cards too:

cord business card

chocolate business card

CD business card

metal business card

PCB business card

tape measure and level business card

peanut business card

ruler point business card

seeds business card

liquid business card

rubber band business card

ticket business card

I’m still undecided which way I’ll go until I can find out if some of the concepts above can be made for a reasonable price. Any other suggestions on cool business card that you think would leave a positive impression that would help that person to easily remember you would be greatly appreciated.

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I’m big on goal setting. While I don’t always reach my goal, I know that I get a lot further toward it than I ever would had I never set the goal in the first place. Some of the goals I set are quite difficult and there are definitely times that I want to give up on them, but more times than not, I reach down inside and keep moving toward the goal. Whenever I want to give up, I think about the Marathon Monks.

The Marathon Monks are a group of Japanese Buddhist monks that are part of the Tendai sect located in the mountains looking over the ancient capital of Kyoto and have a quest called Hieizan Sennichi Kaihogyo (Mt. Hiei 1000 Day Journey) that would seem impossible. Yet over 45 have completed it, the last being Genshin Fujinami in late 2003. The goal is to run the equivalent of the entire equator - or once around the world over an 8 year period. Here are the details of the journey for those that try:

The first three years the monk will run approximately 18 miles a day along narrow paths in the mountains in nothing more than a pair if straw sandals and a robe (sorry, no state of the art running shoes or other gear). He must do this up and down trek along the mountains paths for 100 straight days during each of the three years. He starts at 1:30 in the morning each day and he needs to return by 9:00 AM because he is not excused from his regular daily chores which he also must complete each day.

Oh, and lest the monk decides somewhere along this stretch of eight years that it’s too difficult and he wants to give up, each and every day that he runs, he carries a rope and a knife with him. If he should fail to complete the course, the monk is ready to use one of these to either hang or disembowel himself.

Whenever I think about this story, the obstacles that I am facing with my goals seem pretty minor in comparison and the story gives me the motivation to keep going after my own goals. Here are some of the lessons that I come away with from this story:

Consistency pays off: While I wouldn’t exactly call starting off by running 18 miles a day for 100 straight days as taking baby steps, it does show that getting into a routine and consistently moving toward your goal on a daily basis will eventually get you to your goal no matter how impossible it may seem. As I have mentioned previously, 90% of game is not quitting. There will be times that you want to, but if you can come up with ways to motivate yourself to keep going during these times, you will eventually reach your goals.

Make the consequences of failing worse than to keep going: Being expected to kill yourself if you decide to quit is a pretty good motivating factor to keep going even at the lowest points. While I would never suggest that you make quite this drastic a consequence if you should give up on your goal, I know that putting in place consequences that make it more difficult to give up is important when I set up my goals. If I keep my goal to myself, then it is much easier for me to quit because nobody but me knows that I didn’t accomplish it. This is not the case if I tell everyone I know about the goal since I know many of them will hold me to it. Be willing to make consequences for not reaching goals and you will work much harder at achieving them.

Continue to do your regular daily stuff even when pursuing your goals: There are a lot of people that believe that they should give up everything else to concentrate entirely on one specific goal. While this may be appropriate in certain circumstances, I think it is a bad idea most of the time. Even during this impossible journey, the marathon monk is required to do the same daily chores as the rest of the monks.

When I started the sites and blogs, it was in my free time. While I did work a lot of hours each week on them, it was after finishing up my regular job. Had I quit my job and tried to build the income from day one, I would have failed. The income that I was earning at the time allowed me to live while putting in all my extra time into the sites and blogs. That’s not to say that you don’t have to make major decisions on time allocation, but in most cases you can reach your goals while still maintaining the daily necessities. Disregarding your daily tasks will often lead to failure.

Plough through obstacles: There are going to be a lot of obstacles no matter what your goals are and you are going to have to fight through them. Just as the Marathon Monk has to run no matter what the weather conditions, you are going to have to face the obstacles that are put in front of you and plough through them. While it would certainly be easier to wake up in the morning, look at the crappy weather and say that you were not going to work toward the goal that day, being able to get yourself out of bed and face the obstacle will get you closer to your goal.

The impossible is possible when you set your mind to it: Take a minute and reread what the Marathons Monks do over an eight year period. If you asked anyone if they thought it is possible, I would guess that most people would simply laugh in your face. Having run a marathon and being able to barely walk the next three days after finishing (this despite training extensively for it), it boggles my mind that 1 person has completed it, let alone more than 45. It goes to show that when you set your mind to reach a goal and if you are determined to reach it, the impossible often becomes possible.

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There is nothing worse than getting recognition on one of the big social networking sites just to see your site come immediately crashing down under the wave of visitors. There are ways to optimize your site to help remedy this but there is no guaranteed fix, no matter how much optimizing you do or how much money you spend on upgrading your server. So what do you do if your site does end up succumbing to the flood of visitors? Here is a simple hack that I have used on my blogs to keep them up under the digg effect without upgrading our server:

(It should be noted: This hack doesn’t take the place of normal optimizations you should be doing anyway, such as caching. It’s more of an emergency measure, in case your optimizations aren’t enough.)

Introducing CoralCDN.

CoralCDN is a decentralized, self-organizing, peer-to-peer web-content distribution network. CoralCDN leverages the aggregate bandwidth of volunteers running the software to absorb and dissipate most of the traffic for web sites using the system. In so doing, CoralCDN replicates content in proportion to the content’s popularity, regardless of the publisher’s resources—in effect democratizing content publication.

In basic terms, CoralCDN can make a copy of your blog entry or web page (including pictures) and host it on these volunteer servers so people can still read your entry! Ideally you would want people to come to your blog directly, but this is the next best thing if your blog does go down.

So how do you use CoralCDN?
To use CoralCDN, a content publisher—or someone posting a link to a high-traffic portal—simply appends .nyud.net:8080 to the hostname in a URL.

By appending .nyud.net:8080 to the end of your host name (i.e. http://www.financialhack.com.nyud.net:8080/your_entry) visitors can reach a copy of that same page. It’s not really important HOW CoralCDN accomplishes this (although if you are interested, you can read more on their website). The important thing is harnessing this awesome service in a useful way.

Enter the unprecedented fix

Okay here’s where we get just a little more technical but bear with me.

On most web servers you can run a command called “uptime”. When you run this command it will return some text to you that will look something like: “09:53:15 up 119 days, 19:08, 10 users, load average: 3.73 7.98 0.50″. It’s at the end of this returned information that we’re most interested in. Load average.

Load average tells you how busy your web site or blog is. The first number, in this case 3.73 indicates how many processes were running (on average) in the last 1 minute. The second number 7.98 indicates the same thing for the last 5 minutes, and the last number indicates the last 15 minutes.

If through some server side code, in our web page, we determined what that first number was (lets say 16.73 for example) and at the same time decided on a maximum load (lets say 15.00 for example as this may be indicative of the “Digg Effect”) we can tell our web page that 16.73 is too high of a server load and that we want to start redirecting the page to the CoralCDN copy! Instead of running hundreds of lines of code, dozens of database calls, loading images, etc (as is the case with most blogs), we run just a few lines of code (thus using far fewer resources) and redirect the visitor to CoralCDN (this time using NO resources). The result is your blog has time to catch up to this huge demand of traffic and visitors never get the dreaded “Page has timed out”.

Since PHP is one of the more commonly used languages for blogs and websites I’ll present the code for just such a hack. This code should be pasted above all other code in your web page. If you are using wordpress, you can place this inside index.php at the very top (just below < ?php ).

-------------------------------

$cpuload = get_cpu_load();
$maxload = 15;
if((float)trim($cpuload[0]) > $maxload && !strstr($_SERVER[”HTTP_USER_AGENT”], “CoralWebPrx”)) {
header(”Location: http://” . $_SERVER[”SERVER_NAME”] . “.nyud.net:8080″ . $_SERVER[”REQUEST_URI”]);
exit;
}

function get_cpu_load() {
$cpuload = shell_exec(”uptime”); //looks like this 09:53:15 up 119 days, 19:08, 10 users, load average: 3.73 7.98 0.50
$cpuload = explode(”:”, $cpuload);
$cpuload = trim($cpuload[4]); //looks like this 3.73 7.98 0.50
$cpuload = explode(”, “, $cpuload);
return $cpuload; //[0] 1 min [1] 5 min [2] 15 min
}

——————————-

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I often here people complain that they want to begin niche sites, but all the good domain names have already been taken. While it is true that the best names have been taken, it’s important to remember that the people who claimed these names did so when it wasn’t obvious that they would be worth a lot of money. They took a risk at the time and that risk paid off for them.

It’s also important to remember that even though the best names have been taken, there are still a lot of good names available, especially since the English language is so dynamic and new terms and phrases are constantly being created. There are many opportunities to claim good domain names if you keep your eyes open. Here are two that I recently picked up, how I found them and why I felt they were worthwhile to claim.

When I do my daily round of news reading, I am also always looking for possible new niche sites. If I see something in the news that captures my interest and I read a new phrase or term I have never heard before associated with the news, my first reaction is to see if the domain name for that term or phrase is available. The vast majority of the time it’s not, but there are a few occasions when it is. This is a great way to pick up niche sites for terms that are just beginning to make their way into people’s vocabulary.

For example, I picked up the domain name MoneyBomb.org a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, I just placed it up and it’s very basic. The number one priority was for me to get something up as soon as possible so that search engine spiders can find it. I will likely add some eye-candy and make it look more professional when I have some extra time, but if I waited until then before I did anything, this site wouldn’t go up for a few months at the earliest.

I opted not to go with my normal niche template because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this site yet and I didn’t have any content written for it as it isn’t a topic that I regularly write about. Even so, it is a domain name that has the potential to be worth something in the future.

“Money Bomb” is the term that is being used by the grassroot supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul for their one day fundraising events. On November 5 they raised $4.2 million and December 16 when they raised $6.03 million each in a 24 hour period. The news media has started to refer to these one day events as a “money bomb” and I think this will be a common term used during election years in the future when grassroot supporters donate money on a single day to a candidate. If my thoughts are correct, the domain name could be a valuable niche site in the future.

This is actually the first .org domain I’ve ever purchased. I was way behind the curve to get the .com or .net for this one which I assume were claimed before the first money bomb on November 5th was launched. Still, the .org name was available even after the December 16th money money bomb. When I saw the .org url available, I went to both the .com and .net sites and noticed that both are simply default ad templates meaning the owners are looking to resell them or sit on them rather than develop them at this time. That means that if I put up some basic content on the .org site, I’ll likely rank fairly high for “money bomb” even with the .org domain.

If I get motivated in the future, I think it would be a wonderful url for a grassroots political blog since that is what the term “money bomb” invokes for many people. It might also work as a network site for those creating money bombs. It could even be a great site to lend to candidates that I support to launch money bombs from if I ever choose to do something like that in the future.

The other domain name I picked up was CheerChain.com after reading about the Starbucks spontaneous (or pr stunt) where people in line were paying for the drinks of the person behind them - referred to as a “cheer chain.” I figure that anytime something like this happens in future years, the news will also refer to it as a cheer chain which could drive some traffic to this domain name.

Again, I spent less than 30 minutes to put up a few paragraphs of content and will spend some time making sure that search engines spiders find the site. When I find time, I will add eye-candy to make it look more professional, but the main goal was to get something up asap. This is another topic where I don’t have content already created to make a complete niche site so I chose not to use my usual niche site default template until I decide exactly what I will do with this.

This is a site where I may do some things in the future. It is a good name for a blog about anything to do with “pay it forward” or “random acts of kindness” which could be well received. It could also be a good blog to document all the times I try to create cheer chains or a community blog where people could write about their experiences with cheer chains. My hope is that the “cheer chain” phenomenon will take place each year around the holidays to create traffic for the site.

The risk, of course, is that these terms will be one hit wonders and will never find their way into the news again and simply die out. Since it takes time for niche sites to make their way up in the search engine rankings, if the term never appears again in the news or is never used by others, then they may never be worth much of anything. If, however, they do become words used on a regular basis to describe these events, then they will increase in value.

I’m certainly not an expert on finding new domain names and niche sites, but it is something that I enjoy doing and I believe is low risk with the potential of a high return. This is also not the way to come up with niche site names for content you already have written, but it does show that there is the potential to still grab some decent domain names if you keep current with what is going on. It will certainly be interesting to see how these names develop in the future and if they turn out to be worth taking the risk of grabbing them.

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When people tell me that they don’t have any skills to make money, I always think about a conversation I had with a man at a party I attended a couple of years ago. We were talking about jobs and when I asked him what he did, he explained that he was a “commute helper” and that his job entailed sitting in cars so that people could get to work more quickly.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know that the work commutes in certain sections are absolutely horrendous. The guy explained to me that while he was on his way to work one morning sitting in a traffic jam watching all the people in the carpool lane drive by while he was stuck barely moving, he decided that he needed to get someone else in his car so he could get to work on time and without spending hours in traffic. Initially he assumed that his only option was to start a carpool, but the more he thought about it, he wondered if there might be another option.

He began to realize that a body was actually a valuable commodity and it might be something that others would be willing to pay for. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced he could sell himself and that is exactly what he decided to do. He made a sign, walked to the freeway entrance and held it up. It read:

“Traffic is bad. Spend 2 hours or pay me $10 and get there in 20 minutes”

He explained that on the first day someone stopped to pick him up within 15 minutes. When he was dropped off, he simply walked across the overpass to the other side, held up his sign again and got paid to go back the other way as well. He said that on a typical day he was able to make 2 to 3 round trips during the morning commute hour and 3 - 5 round trips during the evening rush hour. On days when there was an accident or the weather was bad and traffic was really slow, his doubled his price.

This man had figured out a way to make $100 - $300 a day for a few hours of work doing nothing more than sitting in a car on his butt so others could get to work and home faster. I actually laughed out loud as he told me the story at the simple brilliance. Here are some of the entrepreneurial lessons you can learn from him:

Don’t Overlook Skills: When we look at the things we do, I think we often overlook many of the skills that we have because we assume that others are looking for particular skill sets. Virtually everyone has the skill of being able to sit on their butt in a car, but not many would consider listing this as a skill when trying to find a job. While it helps to have technical skills, anything you can do can be turned into a profitable job if you’re creative enough to position it in the correct way.

Take Advantage of Your Skills: If you told most people that they had the skill to sit on their butt, I would wager that most, if not all, would say that yes they could, but that it was a worthless skill and would do so before they even considered whether this might be a valuable asset to someone else. If you have something that you can do, spend some time critically thinking about who might be interested in the skill before writing it off as something that has no value.

Virtually Any Skill Can Earn Money: As the man figured out, even sitting on your butt in a car can have value in certain circumstances. I had a friend in college that loved to sleep and he used to make extra money by letting sleep experts do studies while monitoring his sleeping habits. There are plenty of bloggers that make money writing about their favorite TV shows. While most people would write off sitting in a car, sleeping and watching TV as possible ways to make money, there are people out there that are doing it. If you like to do something, there is a way to make money from it if you use some creativity.

Keep Your Eyes Open For Problems: Sometimes the simplest niches to fill are the ones right before your eyes. If there is something that is bothering you, learn to see this as a possible opportunity rather than something that is annoying that you can’t do anything about. Take the time to think of how the problem might be solved. By looking at those things that bother you as opportunities rather than problems, you may not only solve it for yourself, but create a money making opportunity at the same time.

Fill a Need: The key to being successful in making money is taking the skill you have, whatever it may be, and finding out how it can fill a need. If sitting in a car, sleeping and watching TV can all feel some type of need that can earn people money, whatever skills you may have can likely fill a need for someone somewhere. Find that need and you will be well on your way to making money.

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I mentioned previously that one of the things that I think every blogger should do is set up niche sites recycling the content that they have already written. The niche sites I have currently bring in several thousand dollars a month and deciding to create them as part of my plan to blog full time was one of the best moves that I made. If you are looking to create a full time income online, taking this route is something that you should seriously consider.

I received an e-mail asking me how I did this. There really is no secret to doing this and it’s the complete opposite of rocket science. The strategy is common sense and all it takes is time and commitment to accomplish, but for those who want to see, I’ll write down the steps I take and add a few comments along the way.

Pick a topic: When I’m writing, if I notice that I have written quite a bit on a certain topic, I will go back through my posts to see if I have 10 good articles on the topic. 10 articles seems to be a good number for creating a niche site. If I do have at least 10 articles, then I consider creating a new site on the topic.

Will it attract people multiple times: I didn’t ask this question when I first began creating niche sites, but I did as time went on. While this is not an absolute determining factor of whether or not I will put a niche site together, if it’s a topic that has the potential to bring back users multiple times, then I know it’s worth my time. For example, Grocery Coupon Guide attracts a lot of repeat users because many of the articles have links to other resources that people find useful. Even though the site is rarely updated these days, many people interested in coupons visit on a regular basis due to the content.

If the subject matter is not something that will encourage people to come back time and again, I have to consider other factors as to whether or not it is worth my time to create it. I also don’t put up niche sites that require frequent updating anymore. Even with the best intentions, I have so much other work that a site that requires a lot of updating doesn’t work for me. I did place up several before I realised this and I was never able to update them frequently enough and finally gave up trying. The niche site needs to have information that is basically timeless for me to consider creating it now.

Find a domain name: Finding a good domain name is getting more difficult, but it isn’t impossible. When you know the topic, it’s simply a matter of trying out names again and again until you find one that works. I think it’s worthwhile spending a decent amount of time searching until you find one you like and fits well with your topic. A good domain name can have a significant impact on the traffic the site generates.

Rewrite the content: I don’t simply copy the content and place it on the new niche site. I take a few hours and rewrite the content trying to add more content to each article to make the articles even better. This ensures that all the content on the new site is unique and even better quality than what was placed on the blog.

Put the site up: I have a set template for all my niche sites that I use. I began doing this before WordPress was as flexible as it is today. If I were starting today, I would likely opt for a good WordPress template since this would allow me to customize the sites a lot more easily and quickly, but my current template is also simple to use. Once you have created a template, putting up new niche site is pretty painless.

Cost: Since I have a dedicated server for all my blogs/sites, the only real costs for me to put up a new niche site is the cost of the domain name. I use 1and1.com, but there are a lot of places to register domains out there for under $10. The other cost is the time that it takes to set the site up which is usually a day counting all the rewriting involved. You will need to pay a bit more to host the site if you don’t have a dedicated server, but it shouldn’t be very expensive these days. For me, if the niche site can clear a dollar a month, then it comes out ahead which is not that difficult to achieve, especially once it has been indexed in the search engines.

Promotion: Once a niche site is up, I do a bit of promotion to make sure the search engine spiders find their way to the site. It’s a fairly simple process and there are a number of ways you can accomplish this. I have a set of blogs and websites that are fairly popular and get indexed well where I know I can place a link if I leave quality information in return. I’ll spend a couple hours doing this. The easiest way for someone beginning is to leave quality comments on a number of blogs that have to “do follow” enabled.

Variations: I have also put up a few niche sites for timely events. For example, when I first heard that the post office was going to create a Forever Stamp, I purchased a related domain name. Since the first round of publicity was about how the post office was considering making a forever stamp, I was pretty sure the eventual debut of it would attract another round of publicity. While I have never lost any money creating timely event niche sites, none of the ones I have built using this variation has been a huge hit either. The forever stamp site was probably one of the biggest earners which brought in several hundred dollars at the time the forever stamp was launched and continues to bring in a few dollars a month today.

Wait: Once a niche site is up and published, I don’t do much with them and let them sit. Once they get into search engines, smalls amount of traffic will come. Occasionally one will get a good mention that makes the entire process worthwhile. A few of the niche sites bring in a decent amount each month with the best one bringing in over $1000. Most make only a few dollars a month which doesn’t sound like much, but when you have a lot of them, adds up. And there are always a few that are complete flops and don’t earn anything, although these are a minority.

Managers: I did do an experiment where I hired some people to add content to the niche sites on a regular basis with the deal being that we would split any income the site produced. This was successful and not successful at the same time. There is definitely an opportunity to use this model to increase the amount niche sites make, but finding someone willing to put in the time and effort is quite difficult. It also took organizational time on my part to coordinate with those who are managing the sites. In the end, while the experiment did increase revenue, I stopped doing it because I didn’t feel the increase in revenue was worth the time I was spending on the project.

Final Note: Trying to guess which niche sites will do well and which won’t is quite difficult. Some that I was sure would be great successes have been some of the biggest flops while others I spent a long time questioning whether they would even generate any revenue have done quite well. I was there was a secret to picking good topics, but up to this point I have not been able to figure one out.

That’s basically all there is to it. It’s a pretty simple and straightforward plan. Of course, placing more time into the niche sites would certainly increase the amount they earned, but I feel my time is better served working on the main sites since time is always limited. If you have specific questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.

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Image courtesy of John Parres

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The very first post I made talked about what it takes to have success on the Internet, and I immediately thought of that when I came across this image (click on image to see in detail)

It’s a great little drawing that shows many of the pitfalls that will keep you from attaining success as you work your way toward it. Take the time to go through from the beginning to end and I’m sure it’ll bring a smile to your face at its accuracy. Enjoy!

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Image courtesy of surreality via Reddit