Things have been busy in the Flynn household, which as many of you know doubles as my office space.
With an almost 3-year old and a 3 month old in the house together, things can get pretty wild. My wife and I make a decent tag team and surprisingly managing two kids hasn’t been as hard as we thought it was going to be.
(I say that now, but check back with me in a few months.)
Within the office walls I’m balancing multiple projects, as usual, and with the speaking circuit I’m on in the first half of 2013 things are definitely not going to die down.
As the new year approaches I’ve been thinking a lot about The Smart Passive Income brand – how far it has come, where it’s at and where I want it to go. I know I always say this, but this blog wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you, the fans. I’m humbled, blessed and amp’d to pay you back for all of your support you’ve given me these past 4 years.
Because I know you invest a lot of your time with Smart Passive Income, like a good company would do with its shareholders, I want to give you some details about where I want to take the brand in the future.
I wouldn’t consider this post and what I’m about to outline below a “brand new” direction. It’s not a reaction to anything except the fact that I know I could do even more for you.
The words “fine-tuning” might sum it up best, and being more purposeful.
I’d love to hear what you think about where things are headed…
This blog has been through a handful of redesigns in the past, and although I realize that the current design is not necessarily broken (it’s obviously “doing its thing”), there are still aspects of it that can definitely be improved upon.
User experience will play a major role in how it looks. Form follows function (as we used to say back in architecture school) and everything will have its purpose. The current design, unfortunately, incorporates a lot of random “hey this is cool”
or “I heard this might work” items, especially in the sidebar.
As much ‘stuff’ as I put on the site (which only adds to the clutter) very little of it actually gets clicked on or used. That’s not good.
For full disclosure, I’m working closely with Chase Reeves who did the amazing redesign for ThinkTraffic.net, along with a Thesis designer too. The new site will be on the incredibly powerful Thesis 2.0 (affiliate link)
theme framework.
On Facebook, I asked my fans to share one thing that they liked about the design of my blog and one thing that could be improved. The 60+ responses were absolute gold, but here’s one from Joshua Natella that made me shift forward in my chair:

The most successful series on SPI is the niche site duel, by far. That case study and experiment has helped countless people start their own websites, earn their first dollar online and it has actually helped a number people quit their day jobs and start a new life.
The series started in August of 2010. Although I’ve gone back and updated some of the content so that it’s still current, Joshua is absolutely right – there hasn’t been a “niche site duel” type case study since.
In 2013, you’re going to see a lot more of me starting from scratch and taking you along with me, sharing everything along the way. That’s the kind of stuff you won’t want to miss out on.
I think part of the delay is that I’m still working to improve the security guard training site that came out of the niche site duel. It’s on pace for a record month of earnings in December and there is still so much more potential.
One idea I had was that when the sites and businesses I build become sustainable and are as automated as possible, I could hand them off to someone to manage, we’d share the revenue and the site could continue on it’s path so that I can focus on something new. I could
sell them off instead (the latest offer I had on my security guard training site is $38,000), but I’d rather continue to earn that passive income and keep that business as an asset as it continues to grow.
This way, I can help more people by doing more case studies, I’d have a portfolio of businesses that I can test various marketing strategies on to share, and the income I earn outside of the make money online space can continue to grow.
Plus, it would make creating content on the SPI blog incredibly easy and I think that information would be more educational and more memorable than just writing “top 10 tips for” posts all day long.
Every day my inbox welcomes at least 3 or 4 emails from people who ask me to personally coach or mentor them. Some of those people are starting from scratch, some of them already have an existing blog or business.
As much as I would love to help every single person who asks, it is just not humanly possible to do so and I feel terrible when I decline their requests. I put a lot into my blog posts, videos and podcast sessions because I know I can’t help everyone individually. I let my content become the coach or the mentor, but of course everyone’s situation is a little different, as are the skills they have to tap into.
To go along with the idea of regularly starting or exploring something new (i.e. every 2-3 months, more or less), I’d also love to help others do the same with
me. Of course, the blog posts and reports that I publish will educate those who decide to consume that content, but I want to actually take in a small group of fired-up, enthusiastic and committed individuals and form a “learning group” so we can all work through our own projects together.
In the “learning group”, we’d all have more motivation to get things done, we can all learn from each other and we can see what works and what doesn’t across the board. I’ll then be able to report more confidently on what works and what doesn’t for everyone. It’ll be fun for you to not just follow my own progress, but the progress of others in the group too.
Lastly, I get a lot of emails from people who think that I’m something special. They think, “I’m no Pat Flynn, I can’t do that”.
The truth is, I am nobody special. And hopefully by showing how others succeed too, we can all gain the confidence to take action together.
I still have to work out the logistics, but there will most likely be an application and interview process to figure out who will be in the groups. When I move onto a new project, that group can choose to continue to meet as a little mastermind group.
I love to teach. I love to take complicated, foreign things and break them down so that you can learn much faster, and therefore get results much faster.
Doing this in the context of actually building a business from scratch or trying something new in an existing business and taking you along the ride would take my teaching to a whole new level, and I know it would help the SPI blog grow even faster and reach more people.
Again, I’ve done this before, but it needs to happen again and more often, and it will.
Do you like where this is headed? Would you prefer more regular, deep case studies like the niche site duel? I write for you, so I’d love to know what you think.
Cheers, and all the best!
Tagged as: purpose, website design
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Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of emails about niche selection and how to choose the right topic when starting a new website or a blog.  Most people tell me that all of the good ideas (or keywords) are already taken, that there is too much competition and no more room left for them.
If you feel this way, or you know someone who does, this post will help.
Why?
Because it’s important
.
It’s right up there with choosing where to live, who to date, or what degree to get. Your actions and your entire future start the moment you make a decision – and of course, you want it be the right one.
When someone says “the good ideas are already taken” or “there is no room left for me”, what they’re actually saying is this:
“I’m this
close to giving up.”
There are an infinite amount ideas that can turn into successful websites and online businesses, even within saturated markets, you just have to spend time to figure it out. It is NOT easy, and if you really want this, you cannot give up.
Selecting a niche is a long-term decision, but if it’s the wrong one, it’s not a long-term loss. You may fail, but as long as you learn it is time well invested.
Of course, it’s always good to start off on the right foot, so here are some tips and strategies to help you during your niche selection process so you can give yourself the best chance.
In order to succeed online, you cannot do what everyone else is doing.
Follow the crowd, and get lost in it. 
You know this.
Unfortunately, many people interpret this to mean that they have to create something totally
brand-spanking new, something completely innovative that has never been done before, in order to succeed.
This creates a tall mountain to climb because:
It’s difficult to think of something totally brand-spanking new.Even if you do, you are playing in unknown territory.
The more intelligent approach is to forget about starting fresh, and start with something that’s already working, and make it better.
In the early 2000s, the Segway was invented to revolutionize how people walked and how streets and cities were designed.
So what happened?
Segways are now banned on the sidewalks of 30 states in the U.S. and security guards at the mall are taken a little less seriously.
Changing how people walk is a tough mountain to climb.
Now take Tesla Motors, on the other hand. Tesla isn’t reinventing how people get around – the company is still making cars – it’s just making the car better by making it smarter and more efficient.
The Tesla Model S recently won the award for the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year.

People want better, so give them better.
It doesn’t matter how much competition there is – if you can give them better, and milk it, you’ll win.
So how do you know what’s better?
Simple: Be the market.
Be a consumer, a customer of products within that market, and be conscious of your experience and the experience of others in that market as well. Read comments, reviews, participate in forums and discussions and truly get to know who your potential target audience is by becoming a target yourself, and figuring out, along the way, what needs to be improved.
The only difference between you and everyone else in that market is you’re there on a mission to make things better.
Another issue I come across when I discuss topic selection with people is that they think too big:
“I want to start a site about photography, but it’s way too competitive.”
or,
“I want to create a blog about cars, but I don’t think there’s any room for me.
“ or,
“I want to start a site about pets, but the first page of Google is all PR6 and PR7 sites!”
In general, it’s great to think big and shoot for the stars, but when it comes to niche selection you can get more results, faster, by thinking specialized. 
Not small.
Specialized.
Start by picking a market that actually interests you. The competition doesn’t matter at this point – just pick something you like.
Then, you’re going to pick a sub-section within that market, and then keep going deeper and deeper until you can get to a point where there’s a need and you feel like you can create THE GO-TO RESOURCE or become THE GO-TO PERSON for that topic.
Whenever anyone mentions that topic in conversation, your site or your name will surface.
Quick tip: If you’re looking for sub-sections of a particular topic, visit Amazon.com or some of the top websites and blogs that discuss that particular topic. Notice the hierarchy within the categories and menus.
Other people call this “niching down”, and that’s essentially what it is, but when you approach it as a specialization within a larger market, your approach and mindset with your site and the content that you will provide on it becomes much different.
It becomes meaningful. Purposeful.
When you specialize, a few neat things happen:
YOU become the expert, and as a result, it’s easier to get featured or land a guest post on larger sites with larger audiences.It’s easier to get found in Google. The deeper you go, the less competition there is in Google. Plus, think about this: when people search for specific information they don’t search using general terms – they get specific because they want the most direct path to the information they need, which hopefully you can provide.It’s much easier to build your tribe. People in your specialized, target audience are more likely to have the same, more specialized interests as you and everyone else in the community. The connections made will be much stronger. The popularity of Mini Car Clubs is a prime example of the strength of community of a niche within a niche within a niche (i.e. car -> brand -> local).
It’ll be easier to sell something. Since you become THE expert (or your site becomes THE resource), and because you know exactly who your target market is since they are all hanging out on your site, you can more easily (and without force) sell products of your own or products as an affiliate. If the niche enables you to work with clients, then of course people are going to want to work with you.
In photography, dig deeper and specialize in studio lighting for photographers on a budget. Be that person.
In cars, dig deeper and become the person who knows anything and everything there is to know about mini-vans for families with 2 or more children.
In pets, think fish. In fish, think betta fish. In betta fish, think breeding. Breeding betta fish – own that space.
We are at a point now with online business where you can be successful and make a decent living by specializing. You don’t need to own the entire market. You just have to own a specific piece of it, and it doesn’t have to be incredibly big.
Below is video that I created for the Niche Site Course that I was going to release last year, but never did because after Google’s algorithm changes and some further tests that I ran, the process (the course in its entirety) only worked sometimes
. I was not comfortable selling a course that only worked sometimes, so I scrapped it, even though it was practically done.
That said, I still recorded some valuable content, including this video in Module 1 about what to do if you’re still having trouble with keyword research and niche selection.
If you use a keyword research tool such as Market Samurai or Long Tail Pro (These are both affiliate links. I’ve used and love both!)
, you’ll find the 2nd tip in the video about the Chain Method extremely helpful (at the 8:37 mark).
I also show you the exact method and seed keyword that I used to find the security guard training
niche, which I used to build my niche site that is now earning about $3000.00 per month. In the video, which I recorded a year ago, I mention that it was earning about half that amount.
Please note that this video runs for roughly 50 minutes.
(Or click here to view this video directly on YouTube)
However you choose to select the topic for your new website or blog, there are two important things that you must do:
Actually select a topic. You can conduct research until your eyes bleed, but the truth is that until you have something up and running online, until you start producing content for something, you’re not going to get anywhere. It’s more beneficial to pick something that you could be slightly unsure of than to never pick a topic at all. You’ll learn more by doing than not.BRING IT. It doesn’t matter exactly how you say it: bring it, own it, dominate, blow people’s minds, go all out, crush it, kill it – whatever phrase you like best, it’s the truth. You must make something awesome – none of these little crap sites that don’t provide any value to anybody – those don’t work anymore. Work on impressing the end user, and Google will eventually figure out what deserves to be where in the search engines. 

If you found this post useful, please do me a quick favor and share it!
Image credit: cytech
Tagged as: keyword research, niche selection
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This is a guest post by my good friend and mentor, Todd Tressider of FinancialMentor.com. Todd and I are in a mastermind group together (the same one as Jaime Tardy who recently wrote a guest post about masterminds and mentors on SPI a couple of weeks ago) and he’s also coaching me on the side about investments. Besides being ridiculously tall and a super nice guy (I met Todd in person at the Financial Blogger’s Conference in Chicago last year) he’s incredibly smart when it comes to money. He’s been experimenting with a lot of cool things online for his brand and he wrote this in-depth guest post to share some findings with you when it comes to giving stuff away and strategies to monetize. Enjoy!
Pat makes it look so darn easy it can be frustrating.
He gives away his best stuff and his income skyrockets. I give away my best stuff and, well, I give away my best stuff.
Maybe you can relate?  Your results pale in comparison to Pat’s. You only see a trickle of income for your efforts while his income skyrockets.
Did you ever wonder if you were missing a piece of the puzzle?
In this article I’ll dive deep into Pat’s “giving it all away” model so that you can learn a few advanced tricks and tips for applying it profitably in your business.
Pat’s model looks simple on the surface.
Develop niche expertise and give it all away to your followers through high quality posts, podcasts, and videos. The premise is that great content eventually draws targeted traffic. You then monetize throngs of hungry visitors with the best tools available to satisfy their unmet needs. They joyfully buy from your site because they know, like and trust you to direct them to the best resources.
It’s a simple formula where the triangle of profitability appears to be formed by three sides. Let’s use SPI as an example:
Pat is a content marketing machine applying the “Be Everywhere” philosophy to the internet marketing niche.Targeted readers are attracted to Pat’s site by his useful, high quality content thus building authority and trust.Pat offers affiliate products that match the needs of his readers thus he converts without pitching. They just click on the links naturally connected to the useful tutorials and resources he provides.
For example, if you want to make money on the internet you’ll need someone to host your WordPress site and run your email marketing. Bluehost and Aweber are industry leaders that anyone starting out would be well served to use. Pat produces content showing you how to set up a blog in minutes on Bluehost or build an autoresponder system using Aweber. These products are a natural fit and Pat makes a killing offering them. No sales pitch required. They trust Pat’s expertise, he tells them the preferred vendor, they need the service, and conversion results. End of discussion… or is it?
What happens if your niche doesn’t offer high quality affiliate programs?
Is there a deeper level of understanding to what Pat is doing? Are there other ways to apply this triangle of profitability to your own business in ways that aren’t obvious based on what you see at SPI?
For example, I’m a financial coach who teaches wealth building strategies. The affiliate programs in my niche are the garbage I educate people to avoid. I can’t offer credit cards, payday loans, and forex trading because it’s out of integrity with my teachings. So how do I monetize?
The obvious answer is to develop my own products and services but that introduces a new problem. You can’t give it all away when the product or service is your own. The triangle doesn’t exist when there is no third side.
In other words, one of the many keys to Pat’s effectiveness is how he monetizes through independent third party products and services. We know there are multiple hosting companies and email service providers with affiliate programs, and we trust Pat to pick the best. He isn’t selling “Pat’s Web Hosting” because then he would be biased. He is telling you about the well-known, trusted name brand that he prefers above all others. We trust he did his homework.
The key point is the sale must occur as a result of something else. The pitch cannot be direct. This is critically important to the system working. In fact, it’s the key to taking the strategy a cut deeper and applying it at every level of your business.
Think about it. We trust Pat because he is truly giving us his best stuff which establishes his expertise through content marketing. We all need the products he offers and fully expect that he has handpicked the best from what is available. We are leveraging his depth of knowledge in the industry by buying what he thinks is best, and he is leveraging our wallets. Both sides win.
This is all fine and good if you can mimic his model, but as I already stated, I can’t do that. There are no affiliate programs for persistence, financial intelligence, and a strategic wealth plan. In fact, very few market niches have the depth of quality affiliate programs that Pat’s niche provides, and that’s a key problem for many of us.
Well, necessity is the mother of invention, so I dug a little deeper into what makes Pat’s model work. I redefined the triangle of profitability so you can figure out how to apply Pat’s model to all those situations in your business where the superficially obvious solution doesn’t fit. Let’s explore this a bit…
The key to gaining a deeper perspective on Pat’s model is to redefine the sides of the triangle.
For example, if you redefine the content marketing leg to “giving something of value” many possibilities open up. You can give away personal attention through email responses, a teleseminar or group coaching program, an ebook, a networked resource, a guest post, and much more. The key is you must give something of value that builds trust and authority.
You can redefine the second leg of the triangle from “reader” to “anyone”.  In other words, you can give to every human connection you have. It could be the network of bloggers in your niche, it could be your friends and family, or it could be someone else’s list. In fact, it could be all the above. And yes, it can also include your email list of readers. Just don’t limit your thinking to your own list. The concept is much bigger than that.
Finally, redefine “affiliate program” to include any third party monetization strategy. This is critical to shifting your thinking when your niche lacks quality affiliate programs. It could be as simple as an advertising network or it could be two layers removed from your business like Amazon’s targeted client base or Google’s search traffic.
These redefinitions are more than just semantics because they open up possibilities. These broader definitions allow you to create a virtuous triangle of profitability in situations that extend beyond what is superficially obvious from Pat’s affiliate business model. There is far greater depth and potential to what he is doing.
Let’s look at some examples…
Amazon is a massive marketing machine holding the dominant position in the book market. Think about it. If you are looking for a book you don’t Google it. You go to Amazon to search for it similar to how you would search for a video on YouTube or a podcast on ITunes. Just as YouTube owns the video market and Apple owns podcasting, Amazon owns the online book market.
In addition, Amazon provides us with an example of a third leg in Pat’s giving it all away strategy – an independent third party monetization platform – but it operates on two levels simultaneously. The superficially obvious level is their affiliate program where you drive traffic to Amazon and get paid on purchases. That’s one monetization approach we all know.
What a lot of people don’t understand is the incredible power of Amazon’s internal marketing machine. The key to monetizing long term on Amazon is you must provide a great book (sells well, receives great reviews, low return rates) and drive that book up the ranks until Amazon takes notice and begins marketing it for you. That is when it becomes smart passive income.
You’ve probably seen how the Amazon marketing machine works through their direct emails, the “customers who viewed this item also bought this” recommendations, and so on. Amazon has multiple ways of direct selling and cross promoting built right into the largest third party book marketing platform in existence. You just have to figure out how to rise up and get your product noticed on that platform thus leveraging Amazon’s marketing prowess producing sales and passive income beyond anything you could have done on your own.
But how do you achieve that goal? By giving it all away, of course!
As a neophyte, I tried just giving my book away. That’s the duhh-obvious idea. Rather than content marketing I gave the book itself as the item of value (again, we are redefining each leg of the triangle). Unfortunately, this is a problematic strategy when the “something of value” you give away is the very product you want to sell.
The new world of book marketing says the concept works like this: the market for my book inside Amazon is huge so when I give the book to my 7,000 (and growing) loving readers they will “like” the sales page and leave favorable reviews. I give them extraordinary value in the form of a quality book and they help drive the book up the ranking scale with their downloads, likes, and reviews. Amazon’s massive built in market takes notice of the social proof and reader interest thus lifting it up their internal ranking system. The premise is Amazon’s market is far bigger than mine so it is smart business to give the book to my market in an effort to get noticed by Amazon’s market.
The result? It worked okay.
In exchange for giving the book to my best buyers thus pillaging future sales from my list I got 29 likes, 19 great reviews, and bounced around the best seller ranking between 10,000 and 30,000 in the weeks that followed. Better than nothing, but not exactly retirement. It definitely gave the book a kick start selling hundreds of copies and got things moving, but there are smarter ways to apply the principles.
In hindsight, my big mistake was not having the paperback version of the book available for purchase during the promotion. The ebook giveaway would have driven paperback sales creating immediate revenue and greater total sales volume by allowing people to consume in their preferred format. All was not lost, however, as all other books in the same series experienced significant spillover sales from the giveaway.
My next lesson occurred when I gave away a promotional webinar demonstrating how to actually implement a critical aspect of the book’s teaching. The premise was to give “next step” education for people who had already bought and read the book. The only thing I asked was to prove you read the book first by leaving a review showing yourself as a verified purchaser (social proof in Amazon’s system). I didn’t want just anyone in the class – only people who had read the book. This encouraged both purchases and reviews.
Again, the key here is to give killer value to people (in this case, my readers) through value added content (advanced education webinar) and to monetize through a third party platform (Amazon’s massive marketing machine). However, this time I added a twist by requesting an action that cost the reader nothing (a book review showing them as a verified purchaser that can be completed in two minutes). Some might argue that I didn’t give it all away, but I did because I gave the book earlier to my list and invited anyone who wanted the next level of instruction to simply leave a review showing they read the book. The cost was nothing.
The results were surprising.
Many readers left reviews, but they were low quality. The book was 4.95 stars (19 reviews before the promotion) but dropped to as low as 4.7 stars (after 25 additional reviews during the promotion). What I discovered was these readers were leaving genuine reviews but they weren’t familiar with the review process. They didn’t understand how a 4 star review was lukewarm and a 3 star review was actually “critical” in the Amazon system. They incorrectly believed they were leaving positive reviews when they were actually lowering the average rating of the book. Once I pulled the promotion the reviews immediately returned to consistent 5 stars and delivered much higher quality statements about the value of the book.
In summary, these two “give it all away” examples provide a successful case study in creating passive income through Amazon. The book appears (as of this writing) on page 1 in Amazon for the competitive term “retirement planning” in both the “Kindle store” and “books” categories. I still have more work ahead of me, and I’m sure many readers will share great strategies in the comments below to build on what I’ve shared here, but for now I want to point out one more strategy I’m implementing that astute readers might have already noticed…
This guest post is walking the talk. I’m giving you (Pat’s readers) this valuable case study as a gift.
You are Pat’s fans and I’m demonstrating my expanded definition of “readers”. In addition, I’m demonstrating my expanded definition of “affiliate program” to include any third or fourth party monetization strategy.
For example, if you look over this post I don’t have an affiliate link in it.  I have no overt monetization that would cheapen this gift or break your trust. However, notice the anchor text links going into the sales page at Amazon and resource pages on my site from Pat’s valuable PR5 site.
It won’t take too many backlinks like this to drive the rankings for the book’s sales page to the top of Google for relevant terms because Amazon is such a highly trusted site. This will cause thousands of targeted searches per month to find my book as an authoritative solution to their question, “How Much Money Do I Need To Retire?” (on page 2 for this competitive term and rising). The sales driven by Google search (independent third party) will, in turn, further boost my rankings within Amazon’s marketing system which will drive additional promotion to their customers (independent third party).
Notice how the monetization is twice removed and never overt. Sure, a handful of you might buy the book, but that is not the intention (although I really appreciate it – oh, and make sure you “like” the sales page while you are there. Thanks!). The real goal is to drive thousands of targeted buyers through my Amazon sales page every month from Google organic search by giving value to Pat’s readers and receiving backlinks as a natural part of that process.
Notice how this strategy is totally different from Pat’s affiliate marketing model even though it is still the triangle of giving it all away. Rather than sell from my site I’m getting two huge marketing juggernauts – Google and Amazon – to do the heavy lifting for me and these two marketing juggernauts are taking their cues to market for me from independent, third party resources (Smart Passive Income).
In other words, this guest post is a meta example of giving it all away; yet, it is totally different from how Pat walks the talk. Pat would never publish this post unless I was giving something hugely valuable to you (creative insights to apply his strategies). In turn, I’m not using an affiliate program and I’m not even giving to my own readers. It is a creative twist on the same principles to fit my own business model.
The point here is to look more deeply at what Pat is doing here at SPI. His results aren’t random, but they also aren’t easily duplicated by you and me. You’ll need to get creative and find your own twist to make it work.
I had to look behind the superficially obvious to redefine the key principles from SPI into something I could apply in my own business. It wasn’t until I took the learning a cut deeper that I was able to produce meaningful results.
Always remember, when you give it all away you build trust and authority, but without a monetization plan you don’t have a business. That is key!
Everyone wants free ice cream so giving valuable content is the easy part. Figuring out the third party monetization is the critical component too many people miss. I know I did. For SPI the monetization was easy because of the niche. For the financial education niche I had to find more creative solutions.
So now it is your turn. Take these lessons and share in the comments below how you could apply the principles to your own business.  Or maybe you thought of more strategies for developing the book business at Amazon that will expand on the ideas shared here. I’m all ears and look forward to a great brainstorming session in the comments below…
Thanks to Todd once again, and don’t forget to visit his website at FinancialMentor.com if you’re interested in learning more about what he does. Cheers!
Tagged as: guest post
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In this session of The Smart Passive Income Podcast, we have Tim Ferriss on the show!
Tim is a two-time, #1 New York Times Best-Selling Author with his books The 4-Hour Work Week

 and The 4-Hour Body, and he recently came out with the third book in his “4-hour trilogy” titled The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning anything and Living the Good Life.
Tim seems to be everywhere these days to promote his new book. Just check out the PR/Web summary for week 1 of the launch – it’s insane! Of course, I’m more than happy to include the SPI blog and podcast in his promotional efforts, but for this particular interview I wanted to touch on more than just his new book. I wanted to talk about all of his books, especially The 4-Hour Work Week,
which most of my audience is familiar with.
I ask him several questions (many inspired by you!) about each of his books and as always, Tim delivers the goods.
In this session, you’ll find out:
The true meaning and purpose behind Tim’s “4-Hour” series of books.How much work and exactly what he did to promote The 4-Hour Work Week with no following whatsoever, and how we could possibly replicate his success.Tim’s thoughts on what in The 4-Hour Work Week should be updated, since the most recent update was 3 years ago.What super rats are and what (not-so-fun) incident happened when he tried to become one.Tim’s advice on eating well, staying in shape and meeting income goals when you have a family, kids and a mortgage and other responsibilities that will absorb time and money.Why he uses food and cooking as a vehicle to teach about accelerated learning (meta-learning).Different strategies for meta learning, including how one could use his strategies for things that may seem more intangible (unlike cooking, a sport or language), such as marketing.Tim’s thoughts on where publishing is headed and some thoughts on the boycott of his books in major book stores, including Barnes and Noble.Where Tim makes most of his money.What’s next for Tim and the 4-hour series of books.Plus more!
Right click here to download the MP3
Items mentioned in this podcast include:
Note: some of the links below are Amazon affiliate links.
Like I mention on the show, it kills me that I couldn’t ask Tim more questions, but I really enjoyed interviewing Tim and I hope you enjoyed the interview too! If you haven’t yet picked up your copy of The 4-Hour Chef
, you can get it by clicking here!
Congratulations to the winners of the free copies of The 4-Hour Chef
that I was giving away: Ryan, Naomi, JP, Marjorie, Neel, Liz and Greg. I’ve sent you all emails already.
And finally, please subscribe to the podcast using the link below to get updated when the latest podcast episode goes live! The upcoming podcast episodes feature regular people who have built successful online businesses outside of the make money online, business and blogging space. It’s always great to learn from the masters like Tim, but it’s great to learn from people who are unknown and killing it too.
Also, you can click on the link below to leave a rating and review of the show on iTunes, which helps a ton!
Thanks again for your support! Stay safe, stay warm and stay productive!
Cheers!
In this session, Tim and I discuss archery for a little bit. He gives me some tips for my first lesson, which was a birthday gift from my awesome wife! I took my first lessons on December 12th and Tim’s tips totally helped out! Here’s some pics from the lesson:

Of course, there was a lesson from a professional at this venue who helped a lot, and this cluster (the green and brown feathered arrows) was one of my last rounds. The first sets were…not quite as tight.
Thanks Tim!
Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 51 (PDF)
Tagged as: 4 hour chef, podcast, tim ferriss
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In 2011, the site was found from 27,946 total keywords.In 2012, the site was found from 59,861 total keywords. (a 114% increase)

The success and growth comes from the long tail. Although I saw an increase in rankings for all of my top keywords (see this), most of my traffic comes from the keywords that I didn’t purposely target. It happens as a result of just publishing more.

Some of the long-tail keywords that I’m being picked up for are from new articles that were published in 2012, and others are from articles that I published within the first few months of the site.

The big lesson is: just write more, and be patient, and if you haven’t started yet – get started already! It takes time for results to happen.

Other Forms of Monetization

Since 98% of the income from the site comes from Google Adsense, one of my goals was to expand outside of Adsense and diversify how income was being generated from the site, and I didn’t waste any time trying to figure it out.

In January of 2012, I started with private advertising. I did sell a number of advertising banner spots in the sidebar of the site, however the addition of those ads dramatically decreased my Adsense earnings and overall income generated from the site, so I ditched the private ads.

I then re-attempted CPA (cost-per-acquisition) offers for Criminal Justice degrees, the only CPA offer that seemed to align with the niche site, but after over 50,000 impressions, a 0.05% click through rate and no leads, I took down the banner ads and links that were promoting this offer.

Finally, with a couple of months left in the year I connected with a security guard training company in California that has an online training course. I convinced them to create an affiliate program so I could start promoting their course to my California visitors, and immediately I saw sales coming in. It’s nothing spectacular and relatively speaking it’s small change, but it’s an additional $100-$200 a month without affecting my overall income like the private ads did.

I’m happy that I’ve at least explored other monetization options, but I have yet to really find something as profitable as Adsense, which still scares me. I don’t want to just rely on that one source of income. I have more options to explore in 2013, which includes a directory, adding gear to the site and also some B2B services as well.

We’ll see what happens.

After the success of the niche site duel, even though I shared the entire process of building a site from scratch for free, people still wanted something more. They even told me they’d be willing to pay for it.

So, I started developing an online course. I spent each day for about 3 months creating high-quality video content and daily action items that would guide people towards a successful niche site and also hold people accountable for their actions.

About three weeks from launch I was putting the finishing touches on the course and even had a few beta testers going through the program for pre-launch feedback. Then, Google came out with their penguin update.

The update forced me to reassess the validity of my course and I had to make the decision to put it on hold until I could test the new search engine environment. While creating new sites and testing various strategies to go along with them, Google came out with even more updates and that’s when I decided to scrap the whole thing.

Although I was disappointed that months of work was all for nothing, I just simply cannot ask people to pay for a course that I’m not 100% confident in. Even today, after testing even more sites, the strategies I outlined and update do work, but only sometimes.

Sometimes isn’t good enough.

Money was left on the table, yes, but that’s okay. I’d much rather continue to build trust with my audience than try to earn a few (or a lot) of extra dollars from them up front.

Putting my audience’s interest ahead of everything else has always been my best strategy and will continue to be.

Mid-year, I started working on my first book, Be Everywhere. To say that it’s been a challenge is a huge understatement – it’s been a war!

I say that because I’m battling a two things that are delaying completion of this project: time and myself.

Time is a factor because in order to write this book, I need large chunks of time which I do not have anymore since the birth of my daughter in September. I was 20,000 words into the book and had planned to finish it before she was born, but she came a month early and I haven’t added much to the book since.

It’s been one of my biggest disappointments of the year, but family will always come first and I’d much rather invest time with my daughter now while she’s young because she won’t be young for long. I can always continue to write the book later, and I will starting early next year.

The other factor is myself. When I actually had time to write, it was always a constant battle of “this isn’t good enough” and “it needs to be perfect”. Since this is my first book, I know those feelings are natural and I should follow my own advice and just write and forget about being perfect – but it’s hard.

Bird by Bird has been a huge help, as well as the wonderful and inspiring Facebook community I formed around my first book (which is 3000 people strong now!), but still – this isn’t like writing a blog post, which I’ve become very good at. It shouldn’t feel any different, but it is.

I hope to plow through the book in 2013.

The lesson here: nothing great comes easy, and if it’s a struggle to complete something it’s something probably worth completing.

This might sound really weird, especially after I just wrote about how I wasn’t able to finish Be Everywhere yet, but I’ve recently started and completed the content for a second “book” already.

What?!

Okay – it’s not exactly a book, but it’s close. It’s actually called a Snippet and it’s a new publishing platform coming out early next year that combines a book and a blog to create short and enjoyable reading experiences. I was lucky enough to be contacted to be one of the first publishers to use the platform, and I have to say that I’m pretty excited!

Each chapter in a Snippet is a mandatory 1000 words or less, and it incorporates all types of multimedia, from high-quality images and slideshows, to audio files and video. There’s also the ability for developers to create specialized apps for this platform, allowing snippets to possibly include things like polls, Twitter hashtag streams and much more, right inside the content itself.

I wrote my Snippet in a week last month. For those of you who saw I’m Fine, Thanks and wanted more about my story, you’ll see more of it in the book.

Snippets are not yet available, but when they are you can be sure you’ll hear from me about it!

Will this take off? Who knows, but when opportunities present themselves to you sometimes it’s worth putting a little extra effort in to get things done.

#excited

At the beginning of the year I had planned to purchase a website, improve it and then see if I could turn it into a profitable addition to my passive income portfolio. A lot of you knew I purchased a website, however I never went into much detail about this project which I was hoping to share much like the niche site duel.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned.

I did end up purchasing a website from Flippa.com, a golf website at http://www.beginnersgolftips.com.

I purchased the site for a total of $2750.00 (see auction page here), which was a gamble because the site had never been monetized before. That was my first mistake, although I was willing to take that risk.

The search engine traffic and keyword rankings were very attractive to me as it had been sitting in the top spots for some decently trafficked keywords for a very long period of time. It was showing similar numbers to that of my security guard training website, including cost-per-click in Adsense. Plus, I do golf myself so I could potentially create content on my own if I needed to, although the plan was to hire a golf writer to add content for me.

When I purchased the site, I was happy that the transaction went well. I hear horror stories of people getting scammed when transferring web property from one person to another. We used escrow.com to handle the payments to ensure that everything was legit.

After that, my first task was to convert it to a WordPress blog, which was an interesting experience. In order to do this and keep all of it’s ranking and traffic I had to manually create a secondary site and make sure all of the articles and link structures were the same. I could have made my VA do it, but I wanted to see what the process was like.

It wasn’t too difficult – it just took a long time because there were 60 articles on the site when I purchased it, all with links to deeper articles within the site that I had to make sure were still there when I flipped the switch to the new platform.

After the switch to WordPress (using the thesis theme) I let the site sit for a month because I wanted to see if that affected the traffic one way or another, and it did. I actually started to see a slight increase, which was pretty cool. I was getting about 150-170 unique visitors a day.

My next task was to keep everything and add Adsense on the site to monetize it. Immediately, the site started to make money – but not too much, only a few dollars a day.

I was able to move around the Adsense blocks and optimize the colors to the point where I was making up to $10.00 per day on Adsense. Remember, I did nothing to improve the site except move the site to WordPress, so $10/day is pretty good in my eyes, I could make up the cost of the site in less than a year at that rate.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last too long. A few months later and failed attempts to hire a golf writer, Google came out with an algorithm update that cut the traffic by 66%. That update appeared to be the EMD or Exact Match Domain algorithm update.

The results of this update were a little weird though and hard for me to understand. The site still ranks #1 for it’s primary keyword, beginner golf tips and #2 for golfing tips for beginners, but a lot of the terms that were more heavily searched for in Google that was driving traffic got hit, such as golf tips and golfing tips. Where I was at the bottom of the first page (and getting a lot of traffic), I was no longer within the first 100 results.

It probably didn’t help that the content had not been updated for a couple of years, although it is evergreen content related to golf.

As such, you can see what happened to my traffic around that time (in late September). You can click to enlarge if you wish:

With less traffic coming to the site, less people were there to potentially click ads and my revenue went from $6-10 per day, to $2-3 per day.

Here are my income results since starting this experiment:

That’s a total of $956.01.

The earnings are poor and it’s going to take me much longer to make up the cost. Part of the reason for the poor performance is Google’s algorithm update, but probably more so because I just haven’t put very much time into the site, and I probably did overpay for it.

Buying websites is tough business, and I’ve learned that if I ever do this again I will do my homework better and actually make sure I have a plan to put more time into the site.

All that said, it’s nice to finally share the results of what happened with you.

Things didn’t go according to plan, once again, but it was definitely a learning experience.

These are just some of the major things that happened in 2012, amongst a number of other things, big and small – wins and fails.

The best thing that happened in 2012?

Easily, the birth of my daughter. She’s reminded me, once again, about why I do what I do and what’s most important to me in my life, and for her and my family, and for you who I consider family as well, I will continue to push forward in my business in and do everything that I can to help you reach your goals in 2013.

I have some major plans for SPI next year. In case you missed it, check out what’s on deck by clicking here!

Thank you for an amazing 2012!

Happy New Year to you, be safe and here’s to a profitable and healthy 2013!

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I’m back home from New Media Expo in Vegas, and WOW – what an amazing trip! A lot of you have been asking if I’m going to publish my presentation (especially after hearing about it on Twitter), and the answer is that it will be published as soon as it’s done being edited. It’s a special presentation that requires some additional edits in order to get the full experience.

In the meantime, before I publish my December monthly income report next week, I just wanted to write briefly about what I had learned these past few days – not from the presentations that I attended, but directly from the SPI fans who I had a chance to meet and speak with while at the conference.

I spoke to hundreds of fans individually in the halls of the Rio Hotel (thanks to this), after my presentation, at the SPI meetup and at the evening networking events. During those conversations I was able to hear what most people were excited about, appreciated and needed help with. The information was invaluable to say the least, not just for me, but for anyone looking to build any rabid fan base.

Here’s a summary of what I remember most from those conversations.

(And a thank you to Jared for the Kelly Kapowski T-shirt. She’s It’s perfect!)

The most interesting fact from the conversations I had with fans this week was that after a greeting, 9 times out of 10 they would mention that they listen to my podcast first. Some would then mention specific parts of my blog that helped them, including the Niche Site Duel and my Podcasting Tutorial, while others mentioned or asked about how my family was doing or how my presentation was coming along, but not very many people mentioned my blog first.

Maybe this is because those who listen to my podcast hear my voice so when we chat in person it’s the first thing they are reminded of. Or maybe it’s because the podcast allows me to create deeper relationships with my audience and those are the people who feel like they know me well enough or feel comfortable enough to talk to me.

Either way, it just shows the power of podcasting.

As I mentioned in my Be Everywhere presentation in Los Angeles 2 years ago, a survey revealed that podcasting is the number one way that people first hear about me or my brand (18% with over 7,500 respondents).

Today, it’s even more apparent that podcasting can have a huge impact on the success of your brand. This is reflected in the success of new shows that have recently come about, such as Entrepreneur On Fire by Jon Dumas (a recent favorite show of mine), and also in just how many people were there at the convention to attend presentations in the podcasting track and also the standing-room-only award show for the podcast awards.

Convinced yet? Click here for my 100% Free, no-email required 100% Podcasting Tutorial.

One of my favorite things to ask my fans when I meet them in person is, “How have I helped you?”

This question allows me to truly understand what has made the biggest impact on my audience, which can help me decide where to focus or what to work on next.

When asked, most people would mention one or more of the following:

They appreciate the inspiration – the drive that has helped them take action which was not there before. In other words, the understanding of what’s possible. Many people on different legs of the journey have started new lives because of SPI, which is incredibly fulfilling!They appreciate the honesty – the fact that they know that what I publish is real. Another way to rephrase this would be thanks for leading by example without hype or exaggeration.They appreciate the free information.

It’s always good to dig deeper, however, so I’d typically ask a follow-up question such as, “Is there anything specific that you have learned from me that you have implemented?”

I got a lot of great answers from all over the board, most of them mentioning at least one the following:

I think the big lesson here is that while looking at this list above, I can see that these are all epic, step-by-step tutorials with the exception of maybe Affiliate Marketing the Smart Way, which is more “mindset” than the others.

When people use a tutorial and it helps them create something new, such as a brand new website, an email list, an eBook or a podcast – people are going to remember that and want to support you because of it.

Are you publishing content that is “just sort of interesting”, or are you publishing content that helps people take action and create something huge?

Another favorite question of mine is “what do you feel is missing?” or “what do you want more of?”

By asking this question, I can get direct feedback from my audience and figure out what may be lacking.

Of course, many people would answer with something like: “Nothing Pat, everything is perfect just keep doing what you’re doing.”

I know for a fact not everything is perfect so I’m guessing that most people were just scared to be honest to me when I asked that question in person.

I LOVE constructive criticism, so please be honest with me just like Joshua Natella was with me in this post.

A few people, however, were happy to share their thoughts and most people wanted more case studies, just like the Niche Site Duel. More experiments, from scratch, and examples people can follow.

A few others wanted more podcast episodes, including those that feature success stories from regular people in non-blogging or non-make money online industries.

Those were always the most popular.

Whether you were at New Media Expo or not, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you – the SPI Fans.

The Flynnaddics.

I’ll never get used to the idea of people coming up to me asking to take my picture or tell me that I changed their life one way or another, but I appreciate it every single time. Thank you.

Here’s a quick video I shot before I left my hotel room with some more words of thanks, some information about the podcast awards and a few lessons learned, big and small.

Cheers!

Tagged as: new media expo, nmx

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In this session of The Smart Passive Income Podcast, I’m delighted to bring back (by popular demand) another success story interview with a someone who has built an online business outside of the how to make money online and blogging niche.

It has been 12 episodes since my last success story interview, which was an interview with Fraiser Cain who earns a hefty income and sees over 5,000,000 pageviews a month in the Space niche.

Before that we had Mike Doonan in speech therapy, Lain Ehmann in the scrapbooking, Sunil in travel and Ryan and Joshua in personal development.

In SPI Session #24, I interviewed Keith Snow in cooking, Raffael Schulz in (German) weddings and Daniel Himel in endurance training.

In SPI Session #25, I interviewed Jordan Cooper in video games, Cara Faus in GUTS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), David Risley in tech and Cornelis Fitchner in project management.

There are so many incredible, untold success stories out there in all kinds of niches, which is why I’m always so thankful when people come on the podcast to share their story with me to educate and inspire the SPI audience.

In today’s session, I’m happy to welcome Steve Nixon from FreeJazzLessons.com to the podcast! Steve sent me this email a few months back:

Hey Pat!

I just wanted to send you a quick thank you note. I just released my first product ever on (my) site and it was a HUGE success. Way beyond what I thought this could be. I’m currently still in launch week right now. It’s all very surreal but a lot of fun. Your advice over the last year  (an especially in the email where I asked you whether free in my domain was a problem or not) has been so helpful. You are the man! If there’s anything I can do to help you please let me know!

I invited Steve to come on the podcast to talk about how he got started online, how his launch went and everything in between, and he was more than willing to share with us.

In this session, you’ll find out:

The thinking behind Steve’s decision to use “Free” in his domain name.Exactly what he did to get started.Where most of Steve’s traffic to FreeJazzLessons comes from.Steve’s tips for video production.How Steve created his first product and how he launched it.The #1 tool Steve used to launch his product.How user experience plays a role in Steve’s success.How much traffic he gets to his website each month.How successful his launch really was.Plus more!

Right click here to download the MP3

Items mentioned in this podcast include:

Note: some of the links below are Amazon affiliate links.

Steve and I talk about video quality in this session and how much we have both improved since starting our respective YouTube channels. The lesson here is that you don’t have to be perfect to get started. In fact, you shouldn’t be, you just have to do it and you can perfect things along the way.

Here’s a comparison between the first video that he posted, and one of his latest. If you take 30 seconds to watch each, you can immediately tell how much better everything about his videos are. Here’s his first one:

And here’s one of his latest. Not only is the production value much better after the intro, but Steve just looks way more comfortable and confident.

Thank you all for checking out this session of the SPI podcast, and finally, if you haven’t done so already please subscribe to the podcast and/or leave a rating and review of the show on iTunes by clicking on the link below. That little gesture helps out a ton!

Thanks again for your support! Stay safe, stay warm and happy holidays to you and your family!

Cheers!

Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 52 (PDF)

Tagged as: podcast, success stories

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Welcome to my November 2012 income report!
Every month I write a detailed report sharing exactly how much I’ve earned online and where it comes from. This isn’t all about the numbers though, it’s also about the journey, so I always make sure to include the latest going-ons within my businesses and the lessons that I’ve learned along the way, wins and failures.
I do this not only to motivate you and to be transparent, but I also feel that if anyone is talking about making money online he or she should let their readers decide on what to do based on legitimate results, not on hype, exaggeration or amazing copywriting skills.
That’s why I’m never afraid to tell you up front, especially if you’re new to online business, that none of this is easy and none of it happens overnight.
The first monthly income report I published back in October of 2008 totaled $7,906.55 – but what most people forget or don’t realize is that the website where that income was earned (via an eBook I sold greenexamacademy.com) was running for nearly 2 years before it was monetized with an eBook. Those two years were spent struggling through the technology, writing all the content, building connections with other people in the industry and most important, slowly becoming a trusted authority.
A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into building that business, and any other successful business that I own, but it’s all about putting in the hard work now so you can reap the benefits later.
I hope you enjoy this month’s report.
Let’s get to it…
In my last income report, I shared a miserable experience I had with a developer that I hired to work on Create a Clickable Map version 2.0.
I had originally created (outsourced) version 1.0 of this tool to help people easily create a clickable map of the United States that they could paste onto their own website, for free. I did this after I received a few dozen emails from people asking me how I created the map that I included on the homepage of Security Guard Training Headquarters.
After hundreds of people started creating maps of their own, I knew it was time to switch from flash
to HTML5 and add some additional features to the tool based on user feedback. I hired someone to do this for me in October, and halfway through the update everything was perfect!
That is, until he vanished. No communication for weeks and it was one of the most frustrating experiences ever – especially because there were so many people looking forward to the new version and willing to pay the optional fee I was going to charge to be able to save and edit the map later, a feature that wasn’t included in version 1.0.
In November, I hired a new developer (an SPI reader, actually!) and after a couple of weeks, the tool was finished! There were a few bugs to work out after it went live, but I’m really happy with the results and the tool has already served about 30 paying customers at $9.99 each, most of them coming to the site naturally since I didn’t make any official announcement about version 2.0, until today.
And yes, you can still create a map for free if you wanted to.
What I love most about this tool is not only the fact that it’s another addition to my passive income portfolio (albeit a relatively small, for now), but it’s that people use it and immediately
get something in return. This is unlike selling information, which you can sell to someone but that doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to see results, or even use it.
I’ve had a lot of requests for other maps from around the world, and the (new) developer and I are currently working on adding more maps to the product line.
Who knows, Create a Clickable Map could become much bigger than expected! We’ll see what happens!
Security Guard Training Headquarters continues to rock!
See the niche site duel for how it all began.
In November, the average daily income was just under $100.00 and the new affiliate products I added in October (for Guard Card courses specifically in the state of California) have continued to make some sales too. I should be adding more very soon.
What’s even more impressive is how much the traffic continues to grow, especially without having to do any extra work. This kind of untouched
growth can’t last forever without some sort of upkeep and fresh content posted on the site, but this just shows you that your site can continue to work for you, even when you’re not working on it.
It just has to have a lot of juicy, useful content on it.
This past month, the site was visited a total 30,111 times (over 1k visits per day), 74.33% coming directly from Google Search.
In an article I published in October of 2011, I wrote about how 9,900 exact searches for my primary target keyword (security guard training
) equates to $1500.00 per month, which is what Security Guard Training Headquarters was making at the time.
The reason? Because of the long tail, un-targeted keyword.
In October of 2011, “search sent 12,540 total visits via 4,727 keywords“.
In November 2012, “search sent 22,382 total visits via 7,826 keywords“.
click to enlarge:

In both cases, I was number one in Google for my primary keyword. My income has doubled since.
Go for the long tail. Publish more content. Win.

I was blessed to have been featured in the New York Times last month!
In an article titled How Pat Flynn Uses Podcasting to Build His Business (where I’m constantly referred to throughout the article as “Mr. Flynn” – hehe!), there’s a brief account of my story from architect to online entrepreneur, and then it highlights the success of my podcast and just podcasting as a platform in general.
The article even links back to my homepage and podcasting tutorial, which is a pretty awesome bonus. I did see a nice spike in traffic for a few days after the article was posted.
First Forbes and then the New York Times? I am truly humbled and I have you, the SPI fans, to thank for all of it.
Thank you!
My presentation at New Media Expo in Las Vegas is less than a month away, and I’m happy to say that my presentation is already 99% finished! Now, I can just focus on rehearsing it.
I’m particularly excited about this presentation because I’m working with a speaking coach to fine-tune it. Although I’m quite happy with my previous public speaking experiences, I know I can do a lot better and I can only learn so much about public speaking on my own.
I’ll be doing a lot of speaking next year, so I’m happy to invest some money upfront to become a better speaker and potentially get hired for more speaking gigs down the road. It’ll definitely help when the book(s) come out sometime in the future.
One thing is for sure: my slides will definitely be ready.
If you have yet to buy your ticket to New Media Expo in January, use discount code SPI20 at checkout for 20% off! Click here if you’d like to go through my affiliate link at no extra cost to you.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
It’s been over 2 years since I last touched the design of this blog. It’s about time for something fresh.
In early 2013, look out for a major redesign of The Smart Passive Income Blog, one that is no longer a jumbled mish-mash of random things that I’ve wanted to include on the site over time.
(Also known as blog design hoarding
)
Progress is already being made and a couple of people you might already know (Corbett Barr and Chase Reeves) were in San Diego last week to help me out. We rented a conference room downtown and just spilled our brains on the whiteboard.
It. Was. Awesome.
I can’t wait to show you what came out of it. I’ll talk more about the redesign as the date to flip the switch approaches!
Okay, let’s get to some numbers…
Disclosure: many of the links below are affiliate links that will earn me a commission if you purchase through them. If you do, I absolutely appreciate it and if you have any questions about any of the products or services please contact me!
Also, please note that a lot of these are figures from reports from each individual company for the previous month. It does not necessarily reflect the actual payment which, for some of the companies listed below, come 30 to 60 days later and may change because of potential refunds or corrections.
GreenExamAcademy.com Product Sales: Total: $3,012.84 Last Month: $3,302.12
Difference:-$289.28
SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: Adsense: $2,610.15Job Board: $19.38Affiliate Earnings: $167.92Total: $2,797.45 Last Month: $3,048.69Difference: -$251.24CreateaClickableMap.com: Total: $289.71 Last Month: noneDifference: +$289.71Other Mini-Sites in Portfolio: Total: $502.09 Last Month: $412.12Difference: +$89.97iPhone Applications: Paid Apps: $1,598.50Free Apps: $345.12

Total: $1,943.62 Last Month: $2,088.48Difference: -$144.86Affiliate Earnings (from SPI + other niche sites): Market Samurai: $3,161.28 (market samurai free webinar replay)Instant Article Factory: $86.00The Best Spinner: $1,644.00Unique Article Wizard: $1,554.40
Bluehost.com: $23,850 (Create a blog in less than 4 minutes with Bluehost)iPhone Apps w/o Experience eBook: $176.55Chris Guthrie’s Amazon Niche Profit Course: $104.44EasyAzon WordPress Plugin: $63.16Virtual Moguls Buying Websites Course: $70.22Affiliate Marketing for Beginners by Corbett Barr: $88.74Joseph Archibald’s 40 Day Challenge: $74.82Thesis Theme for WordPress: $1,229.50Long Tail Pro Keyword Research Tool: $193.54Keyword Researcher: $88.24Aweber: $995.63 (my collection of top email list strategies)Elance.com: $308.00Screenflow: $25.74E-Junkie.com: $92.20EasyPLR: $38.13LegalZoom: $14.85Virtual Staff Finder: $150.02 (outsourcing tutorial)Build a Blog That Matters Course: $1,089.49OptinSkin by Glen Allsop: $1,481.87 (my review and bonus!)Subscriber’s Magnet WordPress Plugin: $48.76Sucuri (website backup & support): $38.00LeadPlayer (my review): $1,865.50New Media Expo: $117.06Amazon.com from SPI: $350.48Total: $39,000.58 Last Month:$38,996.77
Difference: -$3.81Gross Total in November: $47,546.29 Last Month: $47,848.18Difference: -$301.89November Expenses (Below is what was paid last month. It does not include pro-rated yearly fees. Most are related to the Smart Passive Income Blog and new projects under development): Web Developer Virtual Assistant: $700.00Researcher / Admin Virtual Assistant: $400.00Servint Dedicated Server: $289.00Dropbox: $9.99Libsyn.com (podcast file hosting): $15.00Aweber: $333.00E-Junkie Shopping Cart Fee: $5.00Paypal Website Payments Pro: $30.00Certified Public Accountant / Bookkeeping: $260.00Skype $2.99Affiliate Payment for GreenExamAcademy.com: $376.36CreateaClickableMap.com developer: $1,500.00Writer for SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com: $110.00Transcriptions for Podcasts: $139.50 Total Expenses for November:  $4,170.84Net Total in November: $43,375.45Net Total Last Month: $46,221.80
Why do I include income from Smart Passive Income in my reports?
I’ll be the first to admit that a significant portion of my total online income comes as a result of The Smart Passive Income Blog – mostly from the products that I recommend as an affiliate, which are products I’ve used or am extremely familiar with and have helped me in one way, shape or form.
When I first started this blog back in 2008, I never intended to make any money from it. If you go back to my earlier income reports you’ll see that all of my income was coming from outside of this blog through other businesses. Over time, however, the SPI community has grown and as a byproduct of being helpful and giving everything away for free, I started earning from this site too. Because I believe in total honesty and transparency, I decided to include the income from SPI on these reports as well. It wouldn’t feel right hiding this from you.
My non-SPI related income has hovered around the $10,000/month mark for the past year, which is much more than I ever made working my 9 to 5 job in architecture, but I’m truly blessed that I have the support from an amazing community here at SPI who is willing to pay me back for all of the information I publish and the help that I try to provide for free. Some people go out of their way to make sure I get credit for an affiliate link, often emailing me to make sure I got it, which means the world to me. Thank you so much!
With this type of community comes great responsibility and I will never take it for granted. I will never promote something just for the potential income that can come from an affiliate offer, even though those opportunities are definitely there.
I’m incredibly grateful for everything and I will continue to give back with valuable content and my experience in return.
November was a BIG month for the Flynn Household. A day that my wife and I had been dreaming of for a long time has finally arrived!
What happened exactly?
My son (2 years old, almost 3) is potty trained!
If you’re a parent, you know exactly how big of a deal this is. No more diapers, no more messes, cool superhero underwear – it’s awesome.
There are two reasons why I bring this up:
Potty training is the epitome of “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again” – both for the parents and for the child. It was frustrating, but patience, consistency and adaptation played a huge role in our son’s success. Much is the same when learning how to build a business.It’s been over a month now and our son still gets so excited after he goes potty. Every single time. He is SO proud of himself, I smile every time he yells, “I did it! I did it!”. When you really think about it, he’s just using the bathroom – we all (er, most of us) do that several times a day and think nothing of it, but for my son, it’s something that makes him so happy.
The lesson? Celebrate the wins – big and small – and be proud of yourself for each and every one of your accomplishments . It’ll make your life much happier if you note these things as they occur!
And for you parents out there, I know you’re probably all interested in “how we did it”, or what the trick was. That’s what parent’s do – they share things like this.
Well, to keep it quick, our son got to a point where he’d sit there on the toilet for 45 minutes straight with no results, and then immediately after he was off, he’d go in his pull-ups. That was NOT fun. Eventually, we just put him straight into big boy underwear. Sure, he made a ton of accidents – especially at first, but because it wasn’t absorbed he felt it and it wasn’t comfortable for him. Plus, we told him he couldn’t have his Buzz Lightyear or Lightning McQueen underwear anymore when it was wet. That worked pretty well.
For #2, we took him to the store to pick out a bunch of small toys. We then put those toys into a “treasure box” that he could only access if he went #2. Not 5 minutes after we got home and told him the rules, he asked to go #2 on the potty. Winner!
Good times.
And lastly, I just wanted to congratulate a good friend of mine whose dream also recently came true, Scott Dinsmore from LiveYourLegend.net.
Scott had the privilege of doing an incredible TEDx presentation at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. He wrote an amazing post about how it all happened, in case you’re wondering how you might be able to get invited to do a TED presentation of your own. It’s a goal of mine, for sure.
Here is Scott’s presentation, which in a little over a week already has nearly 80,000 views. Well done Scott!
If you have 18 minutes to spare, I encourage you to check it out below:
I hope you enjoyed this month’s report!
Cheers, and thank you all for your support!
Tagged as: monthly income report
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In this session of The Smart Passive Income Podcast, I talk about several things that I wish I knew about before starting my online business and working on my own. If I could go back in time and tell myself these things, I would have been much better off.
When I was laid off in 2008 and started working for myself, I didn’t know what to expect. I was sort of forced to figure things out on my own as they were happening, which means I was stressed out and clueless much of the time.
Whether you are thinking about starting your own online business or have one already, there are definitely some valuable lessons to be learned here and I’m hoping this podcast session will, at the very least, get you ready for what’s to come or help you figure things out that you may already be struggling with.
In this session, you’ll find out:
A special announcement about the SPI Podcast!The one thing that separates those who are successful with their business and those who are not.What your job really is when you start working for yourself.Who I hired to help me take loads of worry off my shoulder.When you should incorporate – before or after you make money.About tax stuff and some rules I have to make sure I don’t overspend.A very personal story (i.e. nightmare) about healthcare coverage.One thing that sucks about being an entrepreneur that works from home and what you can do to fix it.Why you need a “9 to 5? even if you’re working on your own.What my daily schedule is like.About the “Crab Bucket” and how to beat it.
Right click here to download the MP3
Items mentioned in this podcast include:
Note: some of the links below are Amazon affiliate links.
Thank you all for checking out this session of the SPI podcast, and finally, if you haven’t done so already please take 1 minute and leave a quick rating and review of the show on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It would be extremely helpful for the show!
Thanks again, and all the best!
Cheers!
Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 53 (PDF)
Tagged as: podcast
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Andy West asked:

Every business out there is competing hard with others offering like products or services, thanks to the way the world has opened up and provided consumers with access to many different resources. Thanks to the pay-per-click marketing strategy found across the internet, someone requiring a service in Canada can easily hire a business in Florida or a product manufactured in Colorado can reach an end user in Australia. This is great, because the opportunities for higher sales and income are vast, compared to previous decades where your business was only locally known or only popular in the surrounding cities.

Stiff competition, however, has also meant that anyone with a business needs to promote and market their company effectively, encouraging and enticing surfers to visit their site and hopefully purchase their product or service. Having a pay-per-click marketing strategy to make sure your website gets seen and receives plenty of hits is integral to your business’s success, because if you’re not receiving traffic to your site, you’ve got a seriously struggling venture on your hands.

There are plenty of ways to boost sales and promote your website these days. Information is the current trend in tempting surfers to click links and reach your site. Articles posted on your website that teach people something new or give them pertinent information are helpful to draw in clientele. Press releases can also be effective to bringing attention to your business or company. Thanks to the way that individuals quickly turn to computers and the internet for their information, the written word and fundamental text has become the strongest venue to drawing in business.

Pay-per-click or PPC advertising is another growing method of boosting hits to your website. This principle of marketing is a venture of cooperation between websites, as you ask other sites to display a link for your website. When individuals are attracted to an ad displayed on a website, they click to follow the link through to your business portal. The company advertising your link receives income that you supply. In effect, this pay-per-click marketing strategy is paying someone to promote your company.

For someone adept with computers and having great interpersonal and negotiation skills, pay-per-click can be set up by an individual. Most people, however, don’t have the know-how or the time to work through the steps needed to set up this type of advertising. The best thing to do is to hire a PPC consulting firm that has all the resources and networking skills to build an effective promotion program. Not only that, hiring a pay-per-click consulting firm means that you don’t have to worry about links on dead sites, maintenance or creating a catchy advertisement.

Companies devoted to PPC consulting will work with you to develop a strong pay-per-click marketing strategy to know what product or service you’re trying to sell. From there, they’ll define your market target and develop surveys to help with the set-up of the promotion program. Once they’ve achieved result from these surveys, pay-per-click consulting firms will create advertisement that reaches the people you want it to and test the results. Revisions are sure to come into play, and businesses geared to pay-per-click consulting will compare their marketing against solid results. Considering the amount of work involved in this type of promotion, you certainly don’t want to go less than the full distance by trying to set up pay-per-click advertising yourself.

Reputable consulting firms that specialize in creating a pay-per-click marketing strategy for businesses are ones that are geared to website promotion. Every type of industry has experienced and skilled experts and the common jack-of-all-trades individual won’t be able to pull off such an intensive networking to boost your sales. If you’re serious about a successful business, you should hire companies that provide exactly what you need and you’ll soon be able to see that the cost of their time and efforts pays for itself over and over again as your sales increase.

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