September goal update and new site launch

It’s the first of September, so I just wanted to take stock of what I have left to do for the rest of the month. My goal is to have 50 Infobarrel articles written of at least 450 words in length by the end of September. I have already done 19, so that leaves 31. Just over one a day.

Also, I want to have 80 hubs done by the end of the month, of which I have written 59 hubs of various degrees in quality, so that leaves 21 hubs to go. Finally I want to have 10 Ezine articles done, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is getting harder to get articles published there.

I know this doesn’t sound like a lot of work. I don’t have a job, so this is my full-time business. Actually I think I worked hard on my websites when I did have a regular full-time job.

I know it’s a tough life, but there are a lot more interesting things to do here in Bali, than sitting at my computer all day! I did spend quite a bit of time today, putting together a property website. My girlfriend is getting into the property business here in Bali and I helped get a website up online, listing properties in Lovina.

It is the first time I have used Open Realty on a website and it was pretty simple to get going. There were a couple of bugs in it, but I found the solution just by searching Google for a fix.

When I started this blog, I wrote more about property investing than making money online. So if things go well, hopefully I will be also writing about this new business venture. I love looking at land and houses and trying to get a handle on a particular market. I am also following the build of one of my friend’s here in Lovina, Bali. You can see the pictures here: Lovina villa for sale.

At a crossroad

Wow, last year went so fast. I didn’t even have time to make summary of 2008 post like many blogs do.

I suppose the Olympics and spending 6 months in China was the high(low?)light for me in 2008. It was an unforgettable experience in so many different ways. One thing is for sure, I won’t be going back to China for a long while.

The past few months have also been fun and interesting. Two months in Thailand, a bit of time in Malaysia and the past couple of weeks in Sumatra, Indonesia. I had another bad experience in Indonesia a few days ago, losing my passport on a bus. Long story, but I manage to track it down and recover it, along with some cash and my valuable ATM/credit cards, but it was a harrowing few hours wondering if it had been stolen or if I would even be able to get it back.

At least it had made me to be me careful again for a while.

The Olympic site wasn’t so much of a success and although I love blogging and building websites, perhaps I need to sit back and have a hard think about what I am currently doing and what I want to from now. My family also miss me terribly and I have to admit that it is hard not seeing my sister’s children grow up. I also read about so many people actually wanting to move to Australia that it sometimes makes me think, maybe it is not such a bad place to live.

I have thought about running some kind of guesthouse on a nice beach in Asia, but I sometimes wonder if that would be sustainable, with constant threats of terrorism and political instability. Perhaps I should look to my home country where at least I will have full legal rights to own and run my own business.

Some of the things I have thought of doing include:

- getting a job in SEO/SEM for a company in Australia
- becoming a migration agent and leveraging my Australia Forum site to find customers
- starting my own SEO/SEM company and taking on real clients
- starting a website targeted for Australia based on successful models I have seen overseas

Or a combination of any of the above.

Of course I don’t plan on doing any of this right now, with the economy the way it is.

Website idea: industry blog/news site

Many internet gurus will tell you to build websites based on niche areas with high search volumes. If you are looking for something different, why not start a news site or blog (if there is any difference) on a particular industry. Most industries have some kind of trade magazine that all companies that belong to that industry subscribe to.

Most of those publications are pretty dry reading and are published about once a month. If you need an idea for a website, why not create a blog on that particular industry. You could spice it up a little with lots of industry gossip and news. I would probably restrict it to an industry in just one country or region. You aren’t going to get a huge amount of traffic, but it would be easy to become the online authority for that particular industry.

I imagine you would have to start with doing fairly boring news, but you could then start doing interviews with CEOs and key players in the industry. Most executives love seeing their name in print, so they will send interviews to all of their colleagues and friends. Eventually I think you would get people sending you anonymous tips, which you could then break news and regular business newspapers and magazines might pick up on. Of course, you would need to be careful not to publish anything defaming.

I doubt that Adsense or affiliate links would work. You would probably need to sell advertising directly like what magazines do. Since your costs would be much lower than a printed magazine, I think advertisers would see this as a good deal. Most executives have email and internet now, so I don’t think it would take too long to get recognized in the industry.

Adding a job board could be another source of revenue. Make friends with recruiters and I am should you could pick up on some great gossip.

The tech industry is already so well covered, I would target an industry that is traditionally not so tech savy. Hotel, airlines, mining are some ideas.

Mobile sites

I bought a couple of .mobi domains during the domain landrush period. The names aren’t too bad and after seeing this travel site for sale on sitepoint it has given me some motivation to do something with them.

I never liked using a mobile phone to browse the internet, but I know it can be useful particularly if you are out and looking for a bar/restaurant. I just checked my .mobi domains and it looks as though they are getting some traffic, which is always a good start.

Google has also released Adsense for mobile phones, so I think this could be something worth looking into, particularly as the market won’t be as competitive as the www.

A-ha moments

I think it is interesting to look back and try to find the moment when you discovered something like a new way of making money. You discover something you had never heard about before or haven’t given it any thought. It could be from reading a magazine or newspaper article or reading something on an internet forum.

I can remember the time I was reading a post on a Japan forum, by a guy who was boasting how he had just made $3000 selling a Japanese antique on ebay. Just that one post turned on a light for me and I got into buying and selling Japanese antiques. I had never given it a thought up until that day.

I remember just after I had started this blog, I did a search on “make money blog” and I found Probogger.net

I have lots of different ideas every day for new businesses and the last few days I have been thinking a lot about this one idea. I have had the idea for quite a while, but I came up with something related, while I was reading the 4 Hour Work Week. If I go through with the idea, I could say that was the A-Ha moment. The more I think about it, the more I can see the potential.

I have registered a couple of domains that I could use and have started doing more research.

I enjoy travelling, but it would be nice to settle down in one place for a while.

Business Ideas: Internet payment processors

Other than discovering various beautiful spots around the world, travel is a great way to meet new and interesting people. In my hotel in Vientiane the capital city of Laos I met a fellow Aussie who runs his own internet payment website, kind of like Paypal.

He is a solicitor by trade, so he has no technical skills. He is good evidence that anyone with a good idea for an internet business can successfully set it up and get it running without needing the technical knowledge. Sometimes I get the feeling that people who have great technical skills are actually the worst people to start an internet business. They generally have too much pride and want to do all of the design and programming of the website.

This results in the project getting delayed and by the time it is complete they don’t have the energy or possibly the finances to market it properly. I don’t want to downgrade people who have great technical skills, but with the ability to outsource website design and programming functionality it hardly seems worth the trouble of trying to do it yourself or employing an individual to do it.

A payment processor seems like a great business to run. Once it is set up, you basically just receive a commission for every transfer completed. Get a few big ecommerce websites using your service and you have the perfect cash generating system. Paypal doesn’t cover every country around the world, so I believe the market is still pretty much open.

Wifi business idea

If anyone has been reading my travel blog you will know that I am in Hanoi, Vietnam now. I have found the number of cafes that offer a free Wifi service to be pretty amazing. I don’t know if it is just me, but when I was in Australia, I saw very few places that were advertising Wifi.

I am sure that there are a few cafes that would like to offer Wifi, but don’t want the hassle of setting it up or maintaining it. I believe there could be a good business opportunity to start a Wifi outsourcing business to restaurants/hotels and coffee shops.

There are probably some cafe owners that would be worried that their business could suffer from offering free Wifi. You could find that people come in with their laptops, order a single drink and take up the seat of a potentially higher paying customer. To get around this, cafe owners could make a Wifi corner or only offer the service outside of busy times.

Once you have installed and set up the modem for the business, there wouldn’t be too much else to take care of, but you could still charge them a monthly rental fee.

Travel to develop your internet business

Travel is usually associated with leisure and anything but work, but if you are developing an internet business, it can be possible to combine the two and even improve your financial situation and build your business at the same time. This idea is not going to work for everyone, especially if you have children, but if you are single or have a partner who is willing to accompany you, it is entirely possible.

This idea is also only going to work if you have a business that can be mostly run on the internet. If you need to be taking calls during business hours, it could be difficult. However, if you think from the start as to how you can structure your business model so you don’t have to be working 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, not only will you be able to travel, but you will likely come up with a business system where you are not tied to it, like an employee is tied to their job.

Living costs

One of the hardest things with starting a business is building and maintaining a cash flow which can sustain your living costs. One way you can use travel to improve on this situation is to live in a country or region where living costs are low.

Consider for example where I was staying not so long ago in Nha Trang, Vietnam. It is a beach resort with plenty of places to stay starting at around $5 a night or $150 a month. I heard that could rent a house for around $100 a month. If you are in a hotel you basically have no household bills to pay – no bills for electricity, water or gas.

You can get your laundry done for 50 cents a kilo. Food and beer is also extremely cheap. If you eat at one of the roadside food stalls you can get a rice dish with BBQ’ed pork and salad for 50 cents. A bottle of Saigon beer is just 50 cents at most places.

Internet access

As long as you have your own laptop, numerous places offer free WiFi for the price of a coffee, usually around 50 cents. Connections are not the fastest in the world, but usually fast enough to get your work done.

Benefits

Other than the obvious cost savings, you will also find yourself with more time on your hands to either work or to spend at your leisure. Think of it – no commutes, no housework (even at cheap hotels they have staff to clean your room), no cooking and no laundry. You can live wherever you want, whether it is on a hill station in India or on a tropical island in Thailand. Since you are free from the usual distractions in life, the time that you actually spend working is likely to be more productive. Travel often brings new experiences and the chance to meet new and interesting people from every corner of the globe.

Other considerations

Of course you still need to get to your ideal location, but if you fly out of season you can usually get a good deal. You will also need to purchase some travel insurance and you need to keep abreast of visa regulations of staying in a particular country. Working in an idyllic location may require a little more motivation for some people, but if you think of the possible alternative to being stuck in a cubicle it might help keep you motivated to do a little bit of work each day.

Get a domain and get users to fill it with content

I don’t normally buy magazines, but I could help buying the latest edition of Business 2.0. The article which caught my attention was on Richard Rosenblatt. He is only 37 and helped broker the sale of MySpace. In 1999 he sold his company iMall to ExciteAtHome for $565 million.

His latest company is Demand Media. He sees the value of buying quality domain names and rather than just putting up a page of PPC ads, he is developing the site, or at creating a site which allows submit their own content.

I couldn’t help feeling that I am trying to implement a similar strategy, albeit on a smaller scale.

You can read the full article here.

Money making ideas from two years ago

I am in the middle of cleaning up the hard disk on my desktop PC and came across this word document which my friend sent me who I was working with at the time. We had plans to work together, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that he was good at creating ideas, but not so good on the execution.

We both started blogs around the same time. His last entry was February 2005. Not necessarily because of his ideas, but I did actually implement a few of them.

Here is the complete document:

Objective:

To increase revenue streams to 450,000 yen (around $4100) per month by utilizing multiple revenue streams across various industries

Possible Revenue Streams:

· Translation firm
· Web design firm
· Web development firm
· Discount dedicated server service (JI)
· Job board (J1)
· New Business Consulting
· Startup board
· Importing company
· Google ad words
· Advertisement revenue for content (i.e. Blog site)
· Social Network site
· Social Enterprise: get government support, international agencies, philanthropy
· Amazon webstore (API)
· Find-A-Teacher clone

Time Frame:

Immediate. Of the above possible steams, at least one should be selected and fully developed (70/30 ratio) by the end of Oct. All other streams should begin once the initial stream is set up.

Key Rules:

· No multi-tasking unless human resources are available.
· No sharing of streams with each other. They must be separate streams. Though they can be in the same industry.

Strategy:

I will build at least four revenue streams established by the first quarter of 2005. The first stream by Oct. if at all possible.

For a stream to be viable, it must generate 100,000 yen in less than 5 hours per month. Though this level of revenue is dependent on the qualities of the stream itself.

Time available:

No more than 20 hours a week is available to commit to streams. That is about 3 hours a day, every day

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