This is simply a great compilation of resources that are available to freelancers. I didn’t go though the full list yet. I noticed that I already had invested my time and money into some of the tools. I also found tools that I had never heard of before.

I believe that every freelancer will find a new useful tool from this list. Why not use the available resources to make your life easier and work better?

If you have time you should also check out what Mike wrote about site valuations. If you’re considering selling your site you should read this piece. It’s an informative read on how blog negotiations work. Who would have thought that we would be discussing selling blogs just a few years ago?

I also wanted to shamelessly promote something from my own site, The Shocking Numbers About Making Money After College. I just want young people to be realistic with their income expectations post-college.

I didn’t just want to share my own life changing moments. I wanted to try something different. I’m going to look at life changing moments worth chasing after in your 20s:

Finishing your education.

Many bloggers like to claim that an education is overrated. I have to disagree with this for the simple fact that college is the best option for the majority of us (unless you’re running a million dollar business at 18) right after high school. What else do you plan on doing at 18 years old?

Finishing your education is a life changing moment because it provides you with a great sense of accomplishment. You were able to complete four years of study. You were able to stick it through. You were also able to survive all of the late night cram sessions and binge drinking weekends to actually make it out alright.

I highly recommend finishing your education in your 20s. You won’t regret it.

Starting your own side business.

There’s nothing like starting your own business and making that first dollar on your own. You can go the traditional route of starting some sort of a service business or you can jump on board and start making money online. Either way it totally makes sense to try starting some sort of a side business while you have all of this energy and youthfulness on your side.

The best part is that you can start a business right now with no money. If you think that you need money to start a business, I have to let you know that you’re thinking is incorrect. With a few dollars, some time, and lots of ambition, you can easily start some sort of a side business in your 20s.

The toughest part with any business is just getting started. Once you start and get momentum on your side, anything can happen. There’s just so many opportunities out there in 2012 and moving forward.

Traveling on your own.

I traveled over a dozen times in my life. In 2011 I finally ventured off to Europe on my own. This was easily one of the most life changing experiences of my life. It’s easy to go down to a party place with your buddies for a week and go wild. It’s another thing to go somewhere on your own and have to fend for yourself.

I showed up in Poland with no real plans. I had to find a place to stay, grab some food, and of course meet new friends somehow. Traveling alone was very humbling. I would totally advise any 20-something reading this to try traveling on your own at some point. It’s the best way to grow as a person and decide what you want to do next.

Getting married.

I’ve been told that getting married can be a pretty great thing. I don’t know much about the topic, but I’ll let you guys add your thoughts on this one.

Life changing experiences define who you are. It would be a shame to miss out on all of those great moments that are waiting for us.

Those are life changing moments that I recommend chasing after. You can have totally opposing thoughts on this topic. What did I miss? What are some of your most memorable life changing experiences?

How to buy blog – intro

How to assess the value of a blog part 1

How to assess the value of a blog part 2

Finalizing the transaction and integrating the community

But these articles were written back in 2010 and we are now in 2012. It’s kind of funny as not even 18 months have passed between this series and today’s post but we are already evolving in a whole different world. You don’t believe me? Here’s a few difference between 2010 and 2012:

-          I’m not the only player in the blog acquisition field (there are several other bloggers doing it now)

-          Well known blogs have been sold for over $1M (GRS, Bargaineering, Simple Dollar, etc)

-          There are advertising brokerage services offered (contact me if you want to learn more about that)

-          We even have a conference just for financial bloggers! (Fincon12 coming in… I already have my ticket!)

As you can see, in a span of less than 2 years, the financial blogosphere has completely changed. In fact, I’m not even sure we say “blogosphere” anymore . I’m already a dinosaur in my own field! Lol!

What’s up with blog valuation?

Amongst all these changes, the thing that I am most interested about is seeing how blog valuation models have evolved. It’s very interesting as you have the story that is accessible that you can read about and the story that happens behind the scenes. Players behind the scenes want to keep their things hush hush and this is why we have 2 stories to tell. I can’t blame them, I sign a confidentiality clause for each site I buy and sell too! So, I can’t tell you how much I paid or sold my sites for, but I can tell you that the blog valuation model has evolved over the past 2 years. This is great news for me as it is an obvious sign that there is a market emerging and assessing a blog will become easier over time as we will get more information.

It’s also bad news for me since I’ll have to pay more for my next purchases! But that’s okay… since I the day I will want to sell, I’ll be able to get a lot of money for my network .

We are not talking about 12-18 months anymore

Some people claim while standing on the top of the mountain that a blog is worthless, it is attached to the author and that paying more than 18 months (or 24 months in certain cases) is being foolish. I even read in a forum that a guy would only pay 5K for a site generating 12K in income that came from private advertising… I guess this is a buyer’s speech and he doesn’t want to pay a penny.

But let’s put the situation the other way around: what if you are the seller? I you have a blog raking $1,000 a month, why in the hell would you sell it for 6 months, 12 months or even 18 months worth of income? Think about it: you have been making a steady $1,000 for the past 12 months or more but you are tired of blogging on a daily basis. At this point you have 2 options:

a)      Sell your blog

b)      Slow down your posting schedule and let the blog die slowly (which can take more than a year).

If you look at the latest option; I can tell you that if you drop your post to once a week or even twice a month you will be able to make almost as much for a very long time. The only difference is that you won’t see anymore growth and your blog will eventually be fed by Google and not by commenters. So if you can’t get more than 2 years of income, why would sell?

Because private ads are risky

Most bloggers will tell you that private ad income should not be as good as Adsense or affiliate income. I would have agreed 12 months ago but now, it’s a totally different ball game. Why? Because of the Panda updates. We have seen the power of Google last year when they decided to modify their rankings. What happen if you lose your high ranking keywords in Google? Both your Adsense and affiliate stats will go down the toilet. In reality, you will make 10 times more with search engine visitors than with your loyal readers when it comes down to Adsense and depending on the type of affiliates, your chances of making more money from SE visitors is pretty good too! I’ve seen bloggers lose more than 50% of their income in a single month after the Panda update. Do you really think this is not risky? This is why I’m giving almost the same value to private advertisers than other sources of income.

What is risky about your blog

When I look at a blog I want to buy, I’ll tell you what I find risky:

a)      Concentration in sources of income (per type)

b)      Concentration of traffic sources (Search engine, references or direct hits)

c)       Concentration of a few high ranking keywords (I’ve seen sites getting 90% of their traffic with only 5 keywords!)

Therefore, what is really risky about your blog is when you are too concentrated! It is kind of ironic that the best way to rank in search engines is to find a specific niche (such as Dividends and The Dividend Guy Blog for example) and master it. But then, you may become “too concentrated” in a few keywords or sources of income/traffic. This is why you need to find your niche and cover each aspect of it to make sure that you still get different sources of income, traffic and multiple high ranking keywords.

Once you reach this level, then you can ask for more than 24 months!

Oh shoot! I’ve said it! YOU CAN GET MORE THAN 24 MONTHS OF REVENUE FOR YOUR BLOG!

Yup… this is what the industry wants to keep hush hush . To be completely honest, I’m now only looking at sites with over 10,000 visitors/month. For smaller sites, the 18-24 month rule probably still applies for a while as there is too much volatility associated with lesser traffic. However, when you look to buy bigger sites, you can see them more like a long term investments. These sites usually have over 2 years of history and demonstrate great diversification in terms of topics, traffic, income sources and high ranking keywords.

For these sites, we are still using the same valuation model as in my previous series (start with How to buy blog – intro) but we will use a multiplier of 2 years + premiums to assess the value of a site. Depending on the site and the situation (blogs that sell at an auction gets more), our own business model allow us to pay up to 4 years the income. WAIT!!!! Don’t start thinking your site worth that much yet! I currently have a steady network generating over 100K per year and I don’t even value my blog at 4 years the income. I’m just saying that if your blog meets the following points, you should be able to get about 3 years worth of your income:

-          High RSS readers (over 2,000)

-          High traffic (over 20,000)

-          Traffic diversification (not more than 60% in a single source)

-          Revenue diversification (not more than 60% from a single source)

-          Mailing list

-          2 Years + of history (or more than 500 articles)

-          Steady income proof (for over a year)

-          Growing traffic over the past 2 years

The more you get closer (or surpass) these criteria, the more your blog will be seen as a business and not as a simple page with financial babbles on it. And the more I’ll be interested to buy it . But I can guarantee you I will start the negotiation with 2 years + premiums and not 4 years worth of income lol!

image credit

Last Friday, our Epic Shiz of the week was about a “punch in the face” article by Sam, The Financial Samurai at Untemplater titled Quit Your Job And Die Alone. In this very well written article, Sam outlines the entire BS about the people who tell you to quit your job to pursue your dreams. He outlines 4 examples:

Adam Baker

Erica

Myself!

Himself!

I like Sam’s writing skill and there are a lot of things that he wrote that were true and was fair about quitting your job to become self-employed or to create a business. However, I think he purposely picked an angle from which to see this problem and hit it hard with his hammer. I have a feeling that he *forgot* a few details in his article. I’ve already posted a lengthy replied in his thread and feel that I have a lot more to say about it. This is why I wanted to write about my perception of the BS and the truth around quitting your job to create your own business.

Truth: Money doesn’t come easy

Well… the funny thing about this statement is that it has nothing to do with being your own boss or not. Money doesn’t come easy: PERIOD! I rarely see employees make 6 figures while chilling like a villain on the beach… oh wait, I’ve seen entrepreneurs do this… But when you start your business, regardless of your field, money won’t come easy. It requires a lot of work and patience. I keep saying on my blog that I’ve made 125K with my online company but I also explain in the very same post that I went from 18K to end at 125K!

BS: Money doesn’t come easy

I just told you that I’ve seen entrepreneurs chillin’ on the beach right? I guess this is one of the biggest differences between an employee and an entrepreneur: if you work hard and succeed, the employee will always have to come to work on Monday morning. The entrepreneur doesn’t always have to come in. Some say that the entrepreneur has to work like a donkey to get there…. Well not necessarily! After all, I can manage my 6 figure online business in less than 10 hours a week! This is called productivity. So while money doesn’t come easy at first, I can tell you that if you have the right setup, money will come easy. I actually work less than I ever have and my business is still growing. Why? Because I run my business as an entrepreneur and not as an employee. On the other side, I’m very successful with my day job too. But my bonus meter hits the big fat ZERO each year. I still have to come in each Monday morning if I want to see the money rolling.

The truth about being self-employed vs being an entrepreneur

This is exactly where I want to go: some people will quit their job and work as self-employed folk. They will do freelance work and will have to work hard every single day of the year. This situation is pretty similar to being an employee. In fact, it’s the same thing besides the fact that you don’t have a boss and have some more flexibility. However, you work the same number of hours and if you don’t work, you don’t see any money. Being an entrepreneur is being able to setup a money making machine. I don’t care if I have to spend 35K in VAs as long as I don’t have to work hard . The funniest part is that I never ended-up paying the 35K in VA’s since my main VA went on maternity leave 7 months after we hired her. Therefore, we didn’t grow as fast as expected, but we “saved” a few thousand .

The BS about people who can’t make it and bash others for their incompetency

I was surprised to see this point in Sam’s post: basically, he says that people bash employees is because they couldn’t make a great career in a big corporation. I was surprised because so many times I’ve heard the opposite (that people who bash entrepreneurship are the ones who couldn’t make it). In the end, I don’t think it’s the case for either. And for the record, I don’t really bash employees; I’m one myself anyways so would be pretty stupid to do so! There are some great employees who could become great entrepreneurs but never will and some great entrepreneurs who could have become great employees too! It’s not a matter of competencies or failure/success, it’s a matter of choice in your life.

The truth about my own company

Since I publish my monthly income report, you can tell that I’m focusing on gross income way more than anything else. I rarely breakdown my expenses because they don’t really matter to me. Why?

-          Because I’m making more than I spend

-          Because I’m growing my business month after month

-          Because I don’t need this money right now

-          Because I value my lifestyle more than working and therefore need to pay people to work for me

-          Because I’m not spending, I’m investing

There is a huge difference between spending and investing and while I have the feeling I’ve written this before on this blog, I need to do it again. If I really need 60K or 70K to run my business as is, then, I’m in big trouble. But I spend this money to grow and not to maintain. This means that if I stop my aggressive growth plan, I can stop my extravagant spending too! This year, I want to go from 10K to 15K/month the very same way I went from 6K to 10K/month in 2011. But this, my friend, can’t be achieved without some serious investment. Growth doesn’t happen over time just as your next raise in salary won’t happen over time either.

What’s the most amazing thing about having a business?

Yes, you can pursue your dreams.

Yes, you can do what you do.

Yes, you can be your own boss.

Yes, you can work offshore.

But that’s all “marketing BS” compared to the real reason why a business is so awesome. The truth about running your own business is that you can scale it. I’m being very successful at my day job (here’s the chronology of my income) but there is one thing that frustrates me: I can’t scale my job. Whatever I do this year, no matter how amazing I am, my bonus will always reset to a big fat 0 at the start of the year. A big fat 0.  How much can you scale at work: NONE! On the other hand, I’ve scaled so much with my online company that I barely work and still manage to make the equivalent of $45/hour NET OF TAXES. There is one thing I know: this number is going to grow year after year while my base salary won’t be able to follow the same hype. You can’t expect 20% growth in your salary for the next 10 years but you can definitely expect it from your business!

So what’s hip and what’s not?

Honestly, I don’t care about trends. I’m actually the kind of guy who goes against the trend just to not be a follower (I know… I still have a few teenager anger inside of me I guess!).

I don’t have anything to sell you (well I do but it has never been the pillar of my income in my plan anyways!).

And I still tell you: if you can quit your job and create your own business: DO IT!

I guess Sam’s article would have been different if he would added 4 more examples:

JD Roth who sold GetRichSlowly for probably over 1M$

Pat from Smart Passive Income who definitely live a healthy and wealthy life

Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff who makes a killing since she quit her job (she beat me income wise within a few months!)

Trent from The Simple Dollar who sold his blog not so long ago for a healthy profit too

As I written at the beginning of my article; it’s only a matter of taking a different angle!

If you live in another world and make $250K+ per year, this is not your article, not your blog and not your world. I totally understand you won’t quit your day job, but hey! You are part of the minority! While I make a smaller income, I haven’t quit yet for the very same reason: the money is too easy and too good to quit.

But if I lose my job, ask me if I’ll look for another one… 

image credit

I’m writing this post right before the birth of our 3^rd child; Caleb. My wife is due in a few days and we just can’t wait until we get the signal that Caleb is ready to see the world for the first time. As we can’t wait any longer until we see his face, I’m thinking about my life changing moments. How many have I had? How did they change my life? When did I realize they really meant something to me?

Here are a few of my most important life changing moments:

Seeing my parents go bankrupt at the age of 14

This was definitely my first experience with money. Since the age of 13, I was working for my parents and making a few bucks. In a single day (right before Xmas), all my dreams, all my money and basically everything we had just disappeared. We lost our house, cars and lifestyle. We ended-up in a crappy rented house where my mom looked between the cracks in the couch to find a few pennies to buy milk. This is when I decided that I will make money and never miss anything in life ever again.

Meeting my wife at the age of 15

Man… she was beautiful. I still remember the sparkle in her eyes when I first met her. She was my girlfriend back then and became my one and only love. Since then, we have become more than boyfriend/girlfriend or husband & wife, we became best friends and soul mates. Life taught me how beautiful it is to love and being loved.

Travelling across Europe for 40 days at the age of 19

This is when I bound my friendship with my partner, Pete. For 40 days, we travelled throughout Europe with our backpacks. At no time were we separated. The guy, who used to be a simple school buddy, became my best friend, the godfather of our child and my partner. This experience not only founded our friendship, it also taught me to adapt to any kind of situation.

Moving into my first apartment at the age of 20

After an argument with my father, I decided to move with in my girlfriend in Montreal. We had no job, no money but a brand new car, a cool apartment and 10K on our credit cards. This was my first experience with balance transfer credit cards when I was trying to simply avoid having a late payment (while piling up ridiculous interest to be paid!). I’ve learned that my independence had no price. Until today, this is still true.

Quit my first job at the age of 21

I just mentioned that my independence has no price, right? This is also why I ended-up quitting my first job after my first evaluation. After only 6 months, I decided that I would not continue working for someone who can’t appreciate me at my fair value. This is when I grew balls, once again, and find a great job.

Getting married at the age of 22

My wedding was not a life changing moment because my wife was the prettiest woman on earth and we threw a hell of a party. It was a life changing moment because we “fired” half of our friends not so long afterwards. It was kind of weird, but we didn’t keep the same relationship with a group of friends. So we just decided to “clean-up” our friend list after our wedding just to keep the “real” friends.

Having William at the age of 23

Being a father at the age of 23 was an awesome experience. I became more responsible; got insured and bought my first house. William is my “little boy”, he is my source of pride as he is a killer soccer player ;-D.

Having Amy at the age of 25

2 years and 7 days after William birthday came my little clown; Amy. She is my clown because she is always ready to follow me in my quest to do stupidity and have fun! Amy is the incarnation of smiling and makes every day my most awesome day!

Completing my MBA at the age of 26

The 2 years when I did my MBA were the toughest in my life in general. It was rough to manage my new career, 2 babies at home (while my wife was working) + my MBA. During this rough time, I developed a true friendship with 2 of my MBA buddies which I continue to see 2 years after completing our classes. I’ve learned a lot from them and had a lot of fun too!

Founding my online company at the age of 26

Oh Boy! Do you I really have to explain this one? If we hadn’t decided to create a corporation at that time and spend money on our company, I doubt we would be here today. I think that investing money in something is highly dependant on your degree of involvement. You can tell me that you are involved and blah blah blah and you didn’t have to spend money to get involved but trust me, there is nothing like borrowing 25K on your house to put it in a company to get you motivated!

Working 4 days a week at the age of 28

The age of 28 was when I first hit the 6 figure mark. I finished my MBA and asked to work 4 days a week. This is when I understood the importance of taking care of myself, my wife and my family. I understood that money and my career were not the most important things. In fact, I realized that it wasn’t important at all. Do what you love and don’t be a slave to your job. This is what I learned by working 4 days a week. Another unexpected result: I’m way more productive by working less!

Having Caleb at the age of 30

When you will read this post, my son will already be here (my wife is due on Feb 2^nd) but I wrote this article on Jan 30^th (to make sure that I don’t run out of posts while I’m at the hospital!). I don’t know how this new person in my life will change me and my family. I just know that he will. My first 2 kids taught me different things and I expect the same thing from Caleb. There is one thing I can tell you upfront: having kids is the true definition of living your life. They are by far the best things that ever happened to me.

What are yours?

All right! Now I feel completely naked! So tell me, what are your life changing moments? When and how you changed something in your life due to some event? In other words; what have you learned from life?

What was so epic about this article?

This reminded me of my harsh reality check on full-time blogging. There are too many of us falling for the dream and wanting to be “our own boss.” Do you really want to be your own boss or do you just hate your job? I find that it’s usually the latter. We hate our jobs so much that we want to quit and work for ourselves.

Do you realize how tough it is to be your own boss? When you’re the boss you can’t pass the buck, leave early, take it easy, or be stress-free. Everything is now on you. You can’t blame Steve in Accounting for the money problems. Everything is on you.

What’s the best part of this piece?

“Someone can sell you a product to give you that motivation, but guess what happens after you’ve failed at going at it alone for 2 years?  You have one big gaping hole in your resume and a lot less money.  Meanwhile, the person who sold you the dream of quitting your job has your money and is relaxing on the beach, thank you very much!”

This is so true. I also must admit that I’m guilty of this. I’ve consumed far too many products on how to work for yourself and be your own boss. I’m just enamored with the idea of making money on my own. I love making my own money. I love helping others. I love being compensated for my passions. I do however realize that there’s a lot of delusional people out there that want to be full-time bloggers because they hate their jobs.

I must argue with one point. Sam goes off at the end about how starting your own business and quitting your job could lead to disaster. I do agree with some of his points, but I don’t think that it’s that bad. The worst case scenario is that you have a few empty years on your resume. I think that beats the feeling of regret that would come with not even trying.

Before we part ways for the weekend, I also wanted to remind you of another piece from here about calling it quits. There’s nothing wrong with giving up on something that’s obviously not working out.

Are you always chasing the next buck? Are you after that huge money? Are you waiting to get rich quick?

“If you enter a niche because you’re following the dollars, you wont keep it up. It’s too much work, and you will get tired and frustrated and you will eventually fold.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

There’s nothing wrong with hustle and working your butt off. There’s a problem with always trying to chase the next trend or big money opportunity. Trying to get rich quick is a pretty serious problem. There’s a cure though.

How you can avoid chasing the next buck and actually focus on what really matters (aka crush the fear of getting rich slowly):

Success only comes before work in the dictionary.

This isn’t just some corny line that you hear on the first day of grade 7. The average person (not including Jersey Shore characters) won’t have the ability to become successful if they don’t put the work in first. That’s just how it works. You can argue all that you want but you don’t want to risk missing out on life by trying to get rich quick.

You need to focus on one thing.

When your mind is all over the place you dilute your focus and don’t give the right amount of energy to important tasks. I’ve seen too many friends get lost in the idea of starting the next Facebook that they lose complete focus on what matters (their studies) and they end up failing where it hurts the most (dropping out of school). This is why I truly believe in focusing on one major goal. This could be a dream job, a solid business idea, a trade, a job where you can move up the ranks, or profitable hobby. When you keep on trying to chase the big dollars you can lose yourself easily.

You have to create your own luck in this world.

You’re not going to accomplish anything by complaining and blaming the world for your problems. Henry Hartman said it best with, “success always comes when preparation meets opportunity.” If you’re prepare and working hard, great things can come to YOU. When you’re looking for a shortcut you’re not going to find the response that you want.

Think of the negatives of going fast.

Our generation is pretty concerned about slow progress. This is likely why workout supplements are a 24 BILLION dollar industry on an annual basis. We all want quick results. We all want a shortcut. We just rarely take the time to look at the negatives of trying to go fast. What are some of setbacks of searching for a shortcut:

• Burn out.
• Wasting time.
• Spending more money than taking in.

Are you sure you want immediate results? Can you wait?

I’m not opposed to chasing the big bucks and going after the big wins. I just think the problem is that you can waste valuable skills by not focusing on consistent and daily goals. You’ll be surprised by what you can accomplish over an extended period of time with just a few hours a day.

I feel like him because I LOVE eating and I made some delicious dishes over the past 2 weeks…

Oh wait… this is not where we should be going with the post.

There is another reason why I feel like Kung Fu Panda….

It’s because I’ve kicked ass in January!!!

It’s really about the income (I’m pretty stable on that side) but it’s more about how quickly the business evolved in a single month:

-          I’ve made major advances in my book.

-          I successfully monetized my mailing list for the first time.

-          We closed some great deals through our advertising management service.

-          We found a professional designer to do both our book layout and a mini site to sell it.

This is why I’m so excited!!! But the stats for January are cool too! Let’s look at them:

246,790 Visitors (+21%) and 346,292 Pages Viewed (+25%)

Ahhh, it feels good to be back to normal! This shows similar stats to the ones published back in November. However, we had a few server difficulties with some of our sites during the month of January. Therefore, I expect next month to be even bigger. I’m actually preparing a few great posts about servers and hosting services. If you have any questions, now’s the time to send them .

February’s stats should be a lot bigger due to the inclusion of our latest purchase too. I’m not going to disclose the site name since the transfer is currently in progress (so it’s not quite ours yet lol!).

Adsense: $2042.03 (-13%)

The Adsense December payment was obviously smaller than the previous month but stats have come back for January. There is one thing I find particularly interesting: my niche websites are starting to contribute more significantly of late. In January (for which the payment will land in February), What is Dividend and Canadian Dividend Stock generated over $150 in Adsense! If I can continue to increase their traffic, these 2 sites will become cash cows as well . I’m now waiting to see their PR increase to include a few private adverting deals on them!

Broker / Affiliate deals: $2,110.88 (-29%)

While I didn’t receive many cheques in January, the bulk of my income for this segment came from my broker activities. I’ve closed a total of $10,775 in advertising for my clients which generated a profit of $1,426. My profit is still higher than my 8.33% commission rate since I get paid for full commission on a 6 month deal (and the client gets the full 6 month renewal if I renew the ad). With this month, I’m getting closer to my $2,000/month objective for 2012. What will help me is that I’ll have a VA take care of managing the deals starting in February .This is why I expect to be able to rack up a steady $10,000/month worth of advertising for my clients (hopefully!). I must admit that since the beginning of this “official” program, I never thought of making this much with it!

Private Advertising: $6,551.47 (+14%)

I don’t want to go crazy on private advertising. I’ve written it many times but my goal is to keep an average of $5K-$6K. I see a trend from advertiser to aim for 6 month and 12 month deals. I can’t complaint about this trend since you get more money upfront and advertisers usually renew 6 month deals. They get a rebate by paying upfront while I get assured that my ad spot is taken for the year. If you want to know how I manage my ads, I suggest you start by reading my “build a media kit” series.

Niche Websites: $302.07 (-57%)

Here’s good news and bad news at the same time: the good news is that I was able to generate for $267 in adsense for the month. The bad news is that I wasn’t able to generate any big private advertising deals. So the “stable” income is increasing but it doesn’t put more money in my pocket either! I definitely have a long way to go before I meet my $2K/month objective. I’ve made some great progress but I still need to tweak all my sites to make it happen.

Expenses: roughly $4,000

About a year ago, I wrote about my cost structure. Many of you were skeptical on why I was spending so much on my company. I was forecasting a total cost of 66,7K which never happened (my main VA went in maternity leaves and was not replaced). This is how I got down to spending roughly $4K on my online company since then.

I can understand your skepticism since 4K/month seems a lot of money for a sideline. However, I want to outline that my cost structure has not grown for the past year while my income has. In fact, my last 6 months show an average of $10,833 while the last 12 months show an average income of $9,770. So the extra $1,000 of income is just pure profit in our pockets . In 2012, I expect to have an average expense of $5K per month (4K as a stable budget + random peaks according to our needs). For example, we will soon pay for another design for our ebook and mini site. This will cost about 2K in total.

Total Income: $10,704.38 (-3%)

I’m very proud of what we earned in January even though it’s not an astronomical number. Why? Because it’s the fifth month in a row we show an income exceeding 10K. This is also an increase of 43% compared to January 2011 (when we made $7,626). I’m posting our blog income progression with a comparison to the 2011 numbers (I hope that all the red columns will be bigger than the blue columns ).

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be home (as we’re expecting our 3^rd child to arrive anytime now!).

If you are patient enough and read through this post (and follow me through my newsletter), you will learn how I did it.

Most people agree that we all as bloggers, need a newsletter. I wasn’t part of the majority at first, but now I am a believer). However, most of you keep asking:

How the hell are you making money with your mailing list?

The answer will come, just bear with me for a few more minutes. But just to make sure you are with me, here’s proof of what I’m saying:

You can see that my affiliate sales show $471 for “Today’s 50 Top Trending Stocks for the period of Jan 1^st to Jan 24^th. So I already lied to you with the title of my email, it’s not $463, I made $471! The best part is that I will keep making money throughout the year with the same affiliate program. This is obviously the very definition of passive income!

But once again, how the hell can you make money with your mailing list????

I told you to be patient because I know this post is long. Because the truth is that you can’t just start running around like a chicken with his head cut off and make money with your mailing list. To be honest, this was my first attempt to monetize the DGB newsletter with an affiliate link in one of my mailings. I wasn’t too sure how to set it up and didn’t want to burn my audience. My Aweber dashboard is showing me an opening rate of 74.21%, a click through rate of 62.08% and a 0.465% unsubscribe rate (10 out of 2152) and 0% complaint rate (because Aweber doesn’t allow you to use their software for spammy reasons). So I guess that I did my job right and made money in a good way.

But before you can do that… there are a lot of things to accomplish first!

#1 Build Your Newsletter

The first step has nothing to do with your readers but everything to do with yourself. Personally, this was the hardest step of them all. I’ve been wondering a lot about what kind of content I should include in my newsletter that would not be redundant for RSS & Blog readers. I also wanted to find a way to provide exclusive content that would be complimentary to my blog.

In fact, the newsletter is like a second blog within your blog! So you need to clearly establish what you want to write in your newsletter and what you want to write on your blog. Make sure to create an incentive for people to a) read your blog and b) subscribe to your newsletter. This is why I haven’t change my way of writing or choice of topics on The Dividend Guy Blog and decided to provide more technical stuff and stock lists in my newsletter. This is how I was able to successfully separate my blog from my newsletter.

I use my newsletter for the following purposes:

-          Give eBooks to my readers

-          Offer stock lists and website resources (free)

-          Announce new projects (such as What is Dividend or Canadian Dividend Stock)

-          Ask my readers for feedback (through surveys or quick questions)

-          Provide more technical concepts (such as the different ways of calculating Payout Ratio)

On my blog, I write about the following topics:

-          Dividend stock analysis

-          Sector analysis

-          Stock market commentary

-          Investing strategy (leveraging, moving average, etc)

As you can see, I’m able to make a clear distinction between my blog and newsletter. It makes it easier for my readers too!

#2 Build Your Readership

Once you know where you are going with your blog and newsletter (this is also called having a direction), you can start building your readership. You can attack 2 sides of the same problem:

a)      Growing your Blog readership and then sending them to your newsletter

b)      Growing your mailing list directly through incentive posts on your blog (such as my Best 2012 Dividend Stocks article)

I guess you already know the basics of growing your blog readership (playing the SEO game, doing guest posts, commenting on other blogs, being active on social media, connecting with other bloggers, submitting your stuff to carnivals, etc.). But I guess that it’s a bit tougher if you want to grow your newsletter readership (it has been for me anyway!).

I’ve used several techniques to grow my mailing list but the most successful was to offer a free eBook to get it (read the full post about it here). Here are other great techniques you can use:

-          Host a contest (you get tons of new subscribers but they might very well cancel after 2 emails!)

-          Make your mailing list box visible (just look at the DGB printscreen):

-          Plug your newsletter whenever you have a chance (mention it at the end of each article, and link to it whenever you have something relevant such as “this question came from George, a newsletter subscriber).

-          Write about what is coming up on your newsletter (I’ve used this to tease my audience, especially for TFB, and it works pretty well too!).

What can you expect from these techniques? How many subscribers is a good number? Here’s what I have experienced so far with the DGB newsletter. This is another screen you can get from Aweber that help you see the progression of your newsletter:

As of January 2011, I had only 203 subscribers. As of January 25th,  2012, I have 2,456 subscribers. The major change was definitely due to the fact that I now require people  sign-up before downloading my eBook (October 2011 and January 2012). Since then, I’m getting an average of 20 new subscribers per day. Can you imagine how fast this will grow in 2012?

#3 Build Trust

Yeah… okay… I didn’t invent this one, I know! It is obvious that if you want to do business with someone, you first have to earn his trust. This is true for any kind of business. But how can you gain trust from someone who you are not directly talking to? Unless you have a few email conversations with your reader, you don’t really know who he is and if he really trusts you to any extent. Since you can’t discuss with everybody by email, engaging the conversation via this media is not the best way to earn the trust of 2000+ individuals!

Some people use their newsletter to plug in roundups or previous articles they have written. I don’t think it’s a bad idea per se, but this is not how to build trust with your audience!

The way I’ve built trust with mine was by sending a series of great articles including great content and absolutely no promotions. I actually do the same thing with my newsletter that I send to clients at my day job. I never mention any of my products or services. I just write good articles with a lot of “what’s in it for me” points for the readers. The point here is to add value each time someone opens your newsletter. You want to create that hype from your readers where they will be looking forward to receive your new stuff.

I also put my subscribers at the top of my list when I want to offer something. For example, when I produced my 2012 Best dividend stocks eBook, I sent them the download link before I even mentioned that the book is available on my site.

#4 Find a Real Good Offer That YOU USE

All right, press fast forward on your time machine and teleport yourself 6 months later (or simply bookmark this artcle ). You have a solid mailing list of 500 subscribers (at least!) that follow you and are eager to read your newest articles. We are still down to the very same question:

How the hell are you making money with your mailing list?

The answer is quite simple. By using affiliate links . However, it’s useless to simply “plug and play” any product in your newsletter. Believe it or not, your readers are far from being stupid and they became BS detector pros after being bombarded by advertisements every single day of their life.

This is why you need to talk about products that YOU use and YOU like. If you don’t do that, forget about this whole strategy; you will end-up hitting to the brick wall. I personally like INO products as they help me make technical analysis before I buy a stock. Therefore, it’s not a problem for me to offer for free, a list of 50 top trending stocks. So INO pays me for each lead and my readers have the opportunity to take a look at the best trending stocks on the market. WIN-WIN situation and everybody is happy .

#5 Make Money Forever With This Single Email

The most interesting part of this strategy is that you can make money forever with the very same email. Say what? While the bulk of my income has been done when I first sent this email, I will continue to make money out of it because… the very same email will be sent to all my new subscribers in the future.

How crazy is that? That’s another AWESOME option offered with Aweber! You can either send a “broadcast” (which is a one time email sent to your current subscribers) or send a “follow-up” message (which will be sent to all your subscribers that will eventually join your newsletter).

The “broadcast” mode is perfect when you want to write a timely email such as announcing a contest or forwarding important news. But if your article is timeless, you can use the “follow-up” mode. The follow-up mode will automatically send your article to subscribers after a specific time determined by you. Therefore, you can create your series of articles and send them to your subscribers every 15 days. Take a look at what I have as “follow-up” with The Financial Blogger at the moment:

So if you subscribe today, in 2 days, you will get my “Do You Know How Dividend Investing Works?” email. 7 days later, you will receive the “No BS” email, and so on.

This technique allows you to:

#1 create a funnel of trust

#2 make sure everybody gets your previous exclusive content

#3 make sure that you have a shot at making money with everybody (KATCHING!)

All right! That’s enough for today!

All right, if your eyes are not burning yet, it’s because you are not human . I’m leaving you with enough work to book your entire month, lol!

However, I’m not done on the topic just yet. I’ll actually continue this series in my newsletter in the upcoming week (don’t forget to subscribe ). I want to create a “step by step” series on building your newsletter and how to do it. And of course, I’ll add this series to my “follow-up” messages ;-D

Send me your questions if there is anything that’s not clear so far!

Cheers,

Mike

Do you want to know how to make $463 with 15 minutes of work?

Do you want to know how to connect with more than 6,000 individuals in a single minute?

This is all possible if you have a newsletter!

Only 7 months ago, I couldn’t see this as a really good idea… all right: I’ll be truly honest; I thought it was just more work added to my routine. And I also thought that it was on the edge of being a stupid idea. Yup, I’m talking about my partner’s idea to have a mailing list.

Why in the hell would you want to run mailing list when you are already posting on a daily basis and offer RRS feeds?

Why would you write more content that you can’t put on your blog if you put it out via the mailing list? Why don’t you just post it on your blog if you are willing to hustle more?

Why would you PAY a monthly fee to have a professional email marketing service to manage your mailing list on top of that? (I use Aweber by the waywink wink wink

Seriously, is it just me or is this just not making any sense?

Well, believe it or not, it does because having a newsletter attached to our blog completely changed our way of doing business.

I realized it for the first time when I was at work. Since I can’t send clients to my blogs (this is obviously unethical!), I decided to start a newsletter. For about a year and a half, I sent a newsletter about the stock market, interest rates and other financial news to my clients every 6 months or so. I provided them with great content as I don’t advertise any products but instead I give them useful info to manage their finances. After a while, I noticed that every time I sent my newsletter, it generated meetings with my clients. The newsletter was actually their trigger to take action and schedule to meet with me regarding their finances. This was going well until the day that I landed a $1.9M meeting generated from my newsletter. On that day, I understood something about having a newsletter: this is a direct and privileged contact with someone who gives you full trust. You don’t give out your email to someone you don’t want to hear from. You give it to someone from whom you expect to get insightful information.

Since my partner was pushing me to take care of my newsletter seriously for a whole year, I started to invest more time in it. Those who are subscribed to my TFB newsletter (the big box on the right column on the top of the site ) already know that I provide awesome and exclusive content on it. It’s not just a lame excuse to do a round-up and self-promote my other sites. I brought this to a whole new level with The Dividend Guy Blog Newsletter. I guess I have more ease in making it interesting as I’m used to writing financial and investment related newsletters.

This mailing list alone has over 2,413 subscribers (and we started from almost 0 back in June 2011). The opening rate is over 63% and the click through rate (when I include a link inside my article) is over 42%. These rates go through the roof (near 100% for both opening and click through rate) when I look at my free eBook offers (Dividend Investing and Best 2012 Dividend Stocks).

The funniest part is that I only have 753 RSS readers on this blog. So I have 3 times more readers for my newsletter than on my blog (I might stop blogging right away then… lol!). I hooked them up with some freebies (read how I did it here) and they stay connected (I only have 271 unsubscribes so far) since I provide them with great stuff. I’m now able to connect directly with them, ask them questions and send them to my new sites such as What is Dividend and Canadian Dividend Stock.

But it’s not only for bloggers, you just need a newsletter regardless what you do!

The following posts (and next newsletter article!) will be about how I manage (and make money!) my mailing lists. But you can do the same in just about any field. I just gave you my example where I have a mailing list for my clients. In fact, if you are in sales, regardless of which kind of product or service, you need a mailing list! This will enable you to get direct feedback from your clients, connect with them, be the top name in your field when they think of it and ultimately generate more sales!

But if you want to be able to do that, you’ll have to follow the upcoming series carefully. A mailing list can be the most awesome tool for growth in your business but it can also have the effect of a weapon of mass destruction on your clientele if you bully your clients with a bunch of ads and promotions. This is exactly what the big brands haven’t realized yet. But what do you want? Their marketing departments hire kids who only think about pushing sales (I was once like that so I know what I’m talking about ).

So are you in? what are you waiting for? Subscribe to my newsletter