It’s a darn good question and it’s with that question in mind that you should decide up front what you want to accomplish with your blog. Unfortunately, the answer requires more than just pointing you at the nearest source of inspiration. If your objective is minimal work and growth over time, you’re going to take one approach. If you want to put your all into a single blog, you’re going to take another approach. Since we’re focusing on optimized niche blogging, we’re going to focus on the former but I’ll touch on the latter a bit to help you make the distinction.

With optimized niche blogging, your focus is on volume. You want many blogs covering many precise topics which cater to a very specific clientele. Drop the word “optimized” and you’re left with a niche blog. Rather than spending your time building many blogs targeting very specific keywords, you will invest your time becoming an expert in one or two fields and writing a lot of very good content. Either way, your objective is to offer value to your visitors but, with a niche blog, you’re offering it virtually to the exclusion of all else.

You may be able to apply some of the concepts you learn here to niche blogging but that’s not my objective. Again, we want to optimize our time, our effort, our potential and our niche blog in an effort to minimize the effort over the long term. So why was all that information about non-optimized blogs important ? Because, if you are going for optimized niche rather than just niche, it helps to think of the visitors you want to target.

If you are writing a regular niche blog, your objective is to be a subject matter expert. You want to provide the best information out there on your particular niche. In doing so, you will garner the best traffic for that subject and place high on search. Months or years later, when you do decide to monetize the site, you may or may not do well. Again, you’re giving away the cow with the milk as far as subject matter information is concerned. Still, sponsors will be willing to pay you to show their ads based, if nothing else, on the high volume of traffic you bring to the table. That’s important.

Sponsors are not Adsense. Sponsors may be perfectly content with paying you CPM – for every thousand views, you get a little money (potentially a LOT of money). Adsense pays per click (on the ads). If you’re getting thousands of visitors everyday on a non-optimized Adsense site, you might very well not manage to convert those visits into clicks because, again, all the information your visitor needs is right there on the site (unless it’s about a product they might want to purchase.)

Now with an optimized niche site, your focus is on introducing visitors to ads relevant to their needs. You need them to click on those Adsense ads or you aren’t getting paid. They are looking for very specific information. Your blog provides information on the topic in which they’re interested but also provides ads which are very well suited to their needs. The visitor clicks the ad, sees the perfect solution to their need and buys from your advertiser. Everybody comes away a winner. Which brings us to the important question – who clicks on ads?

As you analyze the keywords you want to target, keep your audience in mind. High tech terms don’t convert well. Neither do blogs focused on keywords like this blog you’re reading now. The more tech-immersed your readership, the less likely you are to convert readers into clicks and money. Why? Well these are people who likely spend hours of their week online. They are so internet-saturated that they effectively become ad-blind.

Having seen thousands of sites just like yours and owing to the fact that they are familiar with page layouts, their eyes naturally skim over what they consider to be non-relevant (even though an ad may be exactly what they need) and they just peruse the true content of your blog. Not finding exactly what they needed, they move on. Or, worse, click a link in one of your posts to another site better suited to their needs (ouch). Now consider the alternatives. Who do you think might not be as web-savvy? Who do you think might be just as happy with the content of an ad targeted at the information or products they are searching for as the information on your page?

I read somewhere that the best keywords target the young and the old. Though true, I think that approach omits a large potential audience. Yes, grandparents looking for good information on a toy or product for their grandchildren are more likely to click on an ad than, say, the father of those children who works in the tech industry. But the farmer shopping for parts for his combine might be inclined to click ads too. The elementary school teacher is also inclined to click ads. The sweet lady working in the craft store down the street might be a clicker. Your uncle Charlie, the fisherman, he might be a clicker. There are plenty people out there who are not so jaded to online advertising that you can focus your optimized niche blog on. No need to just target the very old and very young.

So at this point you’re probably thinking I’ve gone completely off topic. Wasn’t this supposed to be a post about finding keywords? Yes it was and no I haven’t. I had to take you through those considerations because without that information you might have used what’s next to go out and hunt for what you thought were great keywords but which, in fact, cater to audiences unlikely to click your ads. Now that you have the information you need to begin your hunt, let’s talk about inspiration.

When I first started optimized niche blogging as a vehicle to self employment, I really struggled with where to find ideas. I thought there was some formula, some font of inspiration that could help me. Now that I’ve been at it a while, I find there are, indeed, great sources. In fact, in researching one keyword of interest, I often find several completely unrelated ideas. I can’t describe to you how I got to that point other than to say that time and familiarity with the process make it easier and easier. But you need a jumping off point and I’m going to give you several.

First, look around your room. What do you see? I’m looking at an IPT phone, my Blackberry, several computers, the speakers for my computers, my aquarium, several cans of Mountain Dew, a flash drive, my Climbing magazine (and right there’s another source of potential ideas), some quarters on my desk, some decorative pottery, a VPN concentrator, my guitars, and on and on. From that alone I can find several ideas to start with. Acoustic guitar strings, for example, or rock climbing shoes. Saltwater aquarium fish might be an idea as might antique gold coins. Now I’m not saying those are good keywords. There’s research still to be done to determine if that’s the case, but I hope I’m showing you how everything in your world can serve to inspire ideas if you just open your eyes.

Get in the habit of looking at the world differently. Whether at home, watching TV, driving to work, at lunch with a colleague, just take in the world around you and look for things people might search for online.

Second – Ebay. Go to Ebay now and look at the long list of categories. From there, browse into one of the categories and dig a little deeper. For example, we might click on Crafts. From there we might click on Airbrushing and find ourselves subsequently inspired to create an optimized niche blog on airbrush compressors or airbrush spray guns.

Third – Amazon. Go to Amazon and check out their offerings. They don’t just sell books, folks, but if books are your interest, fine. Rather than just “books,” for which you’ll never rank above someplace like Amazon, dig deeper. Books could become books on forts and fortresses. Maybe you’d want to focus further on Ancient Roman Fortifications. Look at some of their sporting equipment. Maybe there’s some inspiration there. Heck, look at anything and everything.

So to summarize, in the optimized niche blogging element of evolving into a self employed life, targeting an optimized keyword is critical but so, too, is considering your audience. Avoid catering to an audience unlikely to visit your advertisers. Think moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teens, farmers, dock workers, car nuts, hobbies, collectors, etc. Think of people who don’t live with a broadband connection practically wired into their skulls. Find your inspiration surrounding you every day as you work and live. Finally, write out a list of 10 keywords you think you’d like to start with and come back soon. We’ll be covering how to research those words to see if they’re worth pursuing in our next post.

Assuming you’ve decided to start an optimized niche blog or any other website, for that matter, you’d be wise to pick a keyword to target. On first starting out, when the idea of being self employed was a vague dream rather than an honest pursuit, my wife and I each wanted to setup websites around our hobbies and interests. I’m an outdoor adventure nut. She’s an animal rescue fanatic. With no clue about keywords and even less clue about setting up websites, we invested countless hours and tons of blood, sweat and tears into our first sites. And we made several unfortunate mistakes; not the least of which were absolutely no efforts to target specific keywords.

After months of building our two websites, we wondered why the traffic didn’t flow. Why weren’t we millionaires? Why weren’t more people showing up? The amount of work put in wasn’t translating to money or visitors. More than a year later, I’m much more informed and much wiser and no why. We weren’t optimized. We didn’t target keywords. So what’s a keyword?

First, the term ‘keyword’ is a bit misleading. A keyword may, in fact, be a single word. It may also be a series of words. Really, though, it’s what you’re looking for when you head to Google or Yahoo. Whatever you type in to find what you’re looking for is a keyword some savvy internet entrepreneur could be targeting to attract you. The main keyword for this blog, for example, is ’self employed.’ I am slowly building this blog around that word and will gradually gain page rank on Google as the months and years go by. Why not faster? Because this isn’t the blog on which I hope to make money. It’s the blog I write in hopes of helping others make money.

I’m also going to mention long tail keywords. A long tail keyword is simply a longer, more targeted term for which people might search. For example, red tail hawk migration patterns. If you’re looking for that, you’re looking for some extremely specific information.

As you’re thinking about setting up your first blog, jot down your high level keyword. Let’s say you like cars. The word ‘cars’ is our starting point. Now, how many sites out there do you think there are about cars? Do you think that’s a smart word to start with? Do you think you could quickly move up the rankings in Google and take page one if you’re targeting that keyword? Maybe you could… but only after beating out the 694,000,000 (as of this writing) competing sites. Not likely. You can see how much you’ll be competing against by typing your keyword in the Google search field in quotes, by the way. For this search I typed in “cars”.

With ‘cars’ as our starting point, let’s narrow the focus. You could immediately narrow the focus a bit if you limited yourself to a particular type of car. Being a bit of a speed demon and a motor-head, you decide you’d like your first blog to focus on sports cars. Our first filtering now and we’re focused on ’sports cars.’ Hey, look at that. Already we’re down to 6,010,000 competing pages. That’s quite an improvement but still a lot of competition. We might be able to rank against that eventually but, unless you have years to kill, it’s still not a good starting point. Let’s narrow the focus even further.

The next keyword combination I’m going to try is “Italian sports cars.” And, bam! Just like that I’ve found a keyword that might actually be worth targeting. At 20,800 competing pages, I might actually be able to rank up there. I know 20K competing sites sounds daunting but, remember statements I’ve made in previous posts. The internet is littered with the decaying corpses of failed, unwanted, never-updated sites and blogs. Many of those 20,800 sites will fall in that category or will be poorly optimized and beatable.

It’s that narrowing of focus to a long tail keyword that makes optimized niche building what it is. Had you begun with just “cars” as your target, you’d spend years of link building and content writing and probably never get anywhere. By narrowing your focus, you dramatically increase the likelihood that you’ll make it to the top of Google’s first page for that term. Think of your own search habits through Google? Isn’t your inclination to hit the first item that shows up in your search? How often do you go beyond page 1, 2 or 3? See how important it is to rank well for a keyword?

Does that mean you can’t ever go for that broader term? No it does not. Over time, assuming you continue to grow your blog, you very likely will target other keywords. Also remember that every time Italian Sports Cars appears in your blog you are actually building some juice for each of those 3 words and every possible combination of them (Italian, Sports, Cars, Italian Sports, Italian Cars, Sports Cars). As you write about them, you’ll also find search traffic hitting your site for word combinations you never even thought about.

Now, don’t start jumping for joy and planning your retirement yet. On the road to self employment through optimized niche blogging, there’s a lot more to it than just picking a keyword. Heck we still have to determine if that keyword is worth targeting from an earnings perspective. At this stage, we’ve just surmised that it may be possible to rank well for. There are other variables to consider and we’ll move along with those in our next post as well as introduce you to some free tools. See you again soon.

It’s almost a taboo keyword (keyword sniping) which people are avoiding. I won’t hide from Google and erase my earlier content because I’m simply reporting on a technique described by somebody else. In the interest of fairness to you, Google and Courtney Tuttle, I’m leaving the few posts I’ve put up on sniping but emphasizing honest use rather than abuse. Why? Because I respect Court and because I want you to learn about methods which might help you realize your dreams of self employment.

That said, there have been some changes and will be future changes coming, so read on.

Instead of keyword sniping, we’ll focus on Optimized Niche Blogging or ONB. The difference between Optimized Niche Blogging and regular niche blogging will be explained in a detailed subsequent post.

Next, I’ve edited my previous posts on keyword sniping slightly to emphasize a point I tried to make but didn’t make clearly – INTEGRITY is paramount. I refuse to pass on anything blackhat or even greyhat I may learn in my studies, nor will I use such techniques myself. When it comes to optimized niche blogging, we will focus on methods to expedite the process, but not by throwing away our scruples. Court tried to make that clear to folks but there were still people who abused his technique and cost him dearly.

If you want to learn shady ways to make a living online, move along please. I’m not smart enough, crooked enough or wicked enough to take the time to learn that stuff. In my post Goals and Objectives for the Self Employed I stated “100% legitimate. I do not want to engage in scams, shady dealings or any other activity that isn’t completely up front. Integrity with my clients and adherence to all local and federal laws is of paramount importance to me. I never want to feel guilty about a single penny earned nor do I want to ever jeopardize my long term livelihood for short-term gains.” That goal remains unchanged.

Finally, since Court no longer provides his methods, I’m going to try to reinvent the wheel as well as introduce you to some additional people out there I consider the real pros in this business. You’ll have to judge for yourself if their methods are suited for you but I will be borrowing a little bit from each of them so you’d be well served to study them in detail yourself.

As a brief preview to what Optimized Niche Blogging will cover, I’ll describe from step one how to select a keyword, buy an expired domain name dirt cheap, set up your hosting, install your blog software, write enough valuable content to begin drawing traffic, develop good link building habits and then rinse and repeat.

Over the course of your blog’s life, you will not invest every day writing content for that blog. Your objective will be to let it stew for a while, then add a bit to it. Eventually you’ll monetize the blog (which I’ll also explain) and then move on again to work on the other blogs you’ve developed.

You will experience slow growth in income over time but you’ll be surprised at how much fun it is to watch that income grow from pennies into a few dollars into a legitimate income you can be proud of with only a few hours a week invested. It ain’t a get rich quick gimmick, folks. It is work and you won’t reap rewards immediately, but you will eventually.

In the meantime I want to emphasize this… Courtney Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School is invaluable with or without his keyword sniping posts. I fully endorse him, his personality and his techniques and hope you’ll continue to visit him often. His videos alone should go a long way to getting you started on this element of your self employment strategy.

At the heart of our current economic crisis is credit. Poor lending, ill-advised borrowing and unwise debt management have left companies challenged to secure loans for such things as expansion or even payroll. Folks… PAYROLL!? Don’t you think you should be a little bit shocked that the companies for which we work have to borrow money to pay us for the work we’re doing? Don’t you think the work we do should result in profits from which we’re paid? Does this sound like wise money management to you? But I digress.

Now conventional wisdom will have you believe that debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, they’ll tell you, if you haven’t held debt, you haven’t gained credit and, by extension, will be hard pressed to get loans in the future. Ask any average first-time credit card owner if they got the best possible rate with the highest possible credit line. Odds are they were handed a starter package with painful interest and a low line of credit. But the statement is valid. A credit history (preferably positive) is practically essential in this country.

My problem with building credit is that there are so many incentives to just go out and do it without any real education afforded the public on what to watch out for. You are told debt is a good thing. It’s pushed day in and day out. Get a mortgage because you’ll get a tax break on the interest, they tell us! And we fall for it even though this amounts to handing somebody a dollar, being handed back 30 cents and thinking you came out ahead! In so many ways, we’re sold debt without being handed a very much needed instruction manual on just what the upside and downside is. But my personal favorite is the department store or gas station credit card.

Go to a department store and they push their company credit card on you. “You’ll save 20% on today’s purchase,” they proclaim. You’ll earn points! You’ll earn rewards! You’ll earn, you’ll save, your hair will grow back, your foot odor problem will be cured, you’ll finally understand your husband and your children will love you! Ever stop to ask yourself the down side? Why is this complete stranger so darn desperate to provide you with the apparent plastic equivalent of the crown jewels with no apparent strings attached? I’ll tell you why.

For that one time 20% savings on your single purchase (let’s say it’s $100) you’ll only spend $80! But for the lifetime of that card, you’ll be handing that company hundreds or thousands of dollars more than what you thought you’d be paying for those future purchases.

Friends, those stores don’t love you. You may have charm and a winning smile, but there isn’t a gas station or department store so charmed by your charisma that they want to lose money on you. They are pushing those cards on you because they make HUGE PROFITS on the American habit of floating debt from one month to the next and on the hidden fees you’re probably paying just for the privilege of carrying that thing around.

Store credit cards cost you. The rates on these things are atronomical. They don’t save you a dime in the long run and it’s the long run those stores are banking on when they push you to apply for one of their cards. There are individuals out there who do fine with any kind of card. They may use a card for the convenience at the moment, then go straight home and cut a check to pay it off before that interest hits. But, trust me on this, people, most of us don’t do that.

So, this first post in our debt management series offers you one simple solution - NEVER EVER EVER EVER accept, register, apply or sign up for a store credit card. If you currently own any, get rid of them. Yes, you heard me, get rid of them. Gather them together, pay them off or consolidate them and pay them off. We’ll discuss consolidation in a future post.

But don’t you need a credit card? Yes, you should have a credit card because it is a simple and effective way to build a positive credit history but be rational. You don’t need 8 credit cards. You don’t need store credit cards. Carry one or two major credit cards with the lowest interest rate you can get, build a good credit history with them and that’s it.

And one last thing… if you are accumulating store credit cards because you are so cash strapped that it’s the only way to get what you need, stop. Really put on the brakes here. Falling deeper and deeper into credit card debt because you are hurting for money is applying the same logic as cutting deeper and deeper into a wound to get rid of infection but then never applying an antiseptic. The bigger wound gets infected again, you cut deeper again, it gets infected again and on and on.

Recognize that in such dire circumstances you have to STOP. Take a long, deep breath and accept where you are. Don’t hate yourself for it, just recognize that accumulating more debt is not a solution, it’s just compounding the problem. Once you’ve taken a deep breath it’s time to consider responsible options such as reprioritizing needs, eliminating expenses, consolidating debt and speaking to credit counselors. Nothing pains me more than the idea of a family strapped with debt sinking themselves deeper and deeper into a hole from which they are ill-equipped to escape.

There are many ways in which you can start down the path to more intelligent debt management to ensure you don’t sink yourself when you are self employed. The insane APR and uselessness of store credit cards makes this a no-brainer starting point. Next up we’ll talk about those major credit cards. Though your Visa or Mastercard is an improvement, poor debt management strategies here can be just as bad.

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if some of you have already started blogs, niche sites, sniper sites or any number of other efforts to make money online. Perhaps you’ve followed my advice and visited some of the giants in the industry and have begun following their advice. Or, perhaps you’ve tried and failed in the past and you don’t see much hope for self employment through online efforts.

I’ve mentioned how the internet is littered with the corpses of failed blogs and websites and I’ve mentioned that the lack of persistence is one of the primary site killers out there. I want to give you a little bit of encouragement from my own experience.

As mentioned before, I am currently experimenting with various internet marketing techniques and, though it’s still far too early to give you a valuable review on effectiveness, I noticed the one thing that many first time bloggers probably miss before they throw in the towel… earnings (early on) are nothing you should get hung up on. What you care about is growth.

One of the things I’m working right now is keyword sniping. You can read my initial reviews of keyword sniping in my keyword sniping case analysis. I can’t take credit for the method and, again, direct you to the master on this topic over at Courtney Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School. I’ve setup several sniper sites and the earnings, so far, while better than I’ve been accustomed to, are still relatively low. And that’s where most people bail. That’s where most give up.

When you invest upfront energy and see maybe $3.00 the first month, you are disappointed but can live with it. By month three, your earnings might only be $5 or $6 dollars a month. In a world full of short attention spans, that’s probably enough for 50-60% of people to give up. Again, they look at earnings only and feel it isn’t worth the effort. By months 9-12 I’d expect fully 80-90% of those with dreams of internet wealth have jumped ship and resigned themselves to continued slavery in the day-job world.

As for the ones who stick it out, keep at it and eventually find success, they are the ones who are either stubborn as hell or smart enough to look beyond the present and into a future they are willing to patiently work towards. It’s the latter mindset I want you to focus on.

What if you didn’t look at earnings early on? Instead, take a look at your unique visitors and how much they grew from one month to the next. This is something you have control over. It is in your power to build an increasing visitor base through quality content, promotion and link building. I’m seeing as much as 51% growth in visitors on one of my sites and expect to see similar numbers on others as I continue to build page rank and back links. So let’s play a game and assume you make $4.10 your first month from a couple of your sniper sites but are also seeing 30% increases from the first month to the second.

Assuming the above conditions, you’re looking at $5.33 per month earnings by month two. Still sad. Project that out at 30% monthly growth and by the end of the year you’re averaging $73.44 per month earnings. Again, that’s hardly motivation to keep at it but stick with me here.

It isn’t until you think rationally and recognize that 30% growth over time really means something. By the end of year two you are averaging $1710.96 per month. Not enough to retire on, but nothing to sneeze at given that this is just from a couple sniper sites you don’t have to invest a lot of time in. But now consider this. Just 6 months later, assuming the same rate of growth, you would be earning just shy of $8300 per month!

Now I really have to inject some reality here. Your growth will eventually plateau and the numbers above from just a couple sniper sites are unrealistic. Conveniently, you can setup dozens of sniper sites if you’re so inclined. You likely aren’t going to see consistent 30% growth for years on end from a sniping blog but you WILL definitely grow if you follow the process. What you have to remember is that growth, not initial earnings, are what you need to be focusing on because it’s growth that will get you to that what-you’ve-been-striving-for point. Those low upfront earnings will sap your energy time and again if you lose that focus.

Keep your eye on the future and you’ll struggle through and keep at it until the real rewards start rolling in. Just don’t lose your focus and your focus should eternally be on growth regardless your business strategy. Be it growing your blog visitors, growing your page rank, growing your back links, growing your real estate holdings, growing your investment portfolio, your client base, your product line, etc. Repeat after me, “Growth, growth, growth.” That is your mantra.

Your dream of self employment will require you to think like an investor or a business person and a wise one in either camp never looks exclusively at the bottom line. There are simply too many important variables to consider and, at the risk of repeating myself, one of the most important is (say it with me again, folks) GROWTH.

Here endeth the lesson.

The difference between you and a wealthy person isn’t strictly how much money you make or how many cars or villas you own. You could own 3 houses around the world and still be essentially cash poor. I don’t know about you, but when I think about being rich, I don’t think about the house I own. I think about the ability to go anywhere and buy just about anything when I want to without having to mortgage a piece of property. It’s about cash flow. It’s about having money handy. It’s about financial freedom and flexibility. The houses and cars are all just icing on the cake.

If you want to be self employed and get rich doing it, you need to consider more than just how you’ll make money. That means thinking about what can keep you from your goals. Here’s One Proven Strategy to Ensure You’ll Never Be Rich.

1. Fail to manage your personal debt.

That’s it. It’s a short list so that leaves me room to elaborate.

If a room half full of poor people and half full of rich people were to swap financial positions, it would be just a matter of years before most of them were right back where they started. The poor would be cash-strapped again and the rich would be bathing in $20 bills after a rough day playing golf. Consistent financial independence is only partially about income. Far more important is outflow.

A million dollar a year income isn’t going to do you a bit of good if you’re also floating a million dollar a year debt. It’s why the VAST majority of Americans remain financially challenged despite landing one higher paying job after another. Their spending habits rise in lockstep with their earnings.

Is there ever a point where the income so far outstrips outflow that the balance shifts in favor of growth? Perhaps. But there are plenty formerly rich lottery winners out there who make my point for me. Despite tremendous financial windfalls which FAR outstripped their previous debt, many find themselves right back where they started in a sickeningly short time, struggling to find pennies to rub together.

Before you do anything at all to build wealth or start your own business it is absolutely fundamentally positively ESSENTIAL that you prove you can manage your personal finances first. Without the discipline to do that much you can practically guarantee your business or wealth building endeavors will fail. After all, if you can’t apply sound debt management principles to your personal life, how could you reasonably expect to do so in your business life?

Check back soon for something a little more concrete to help you avoid this one major hurdle and get you on track for a financially secure life that’s ripe for growth.

There are often a variety of wealth-depriving obstacles to overcome on the journey to success. Some are beyond our control and must be prepared for in advance. A savvy investor, for example, will plan for downturns in the economy to limit or entirely eliminate losses. But the most frustrating barriers to success in my opinion are those self-imposed walls that result in failure to launch.

Assuming we can agree that there are obstacles we all have to overcome if we hope to make it into a wealthier, happier world, I decided to run through a list of what I feel is most likely to hold us (any of us) back.

1. Self-doubt. How many of you don’t have a head for numbers or don’t know if you could do better than you’re doing now? If we were meant to be rich, we’d be there already, right? Clearly we don’t have the required skills, right? Wrong on all counts. For every element required to be wealthy, there’s something you can learn or somebody you can hire. Do you really believe Donald Trump or Bill Gates do their own taxes? Recognize that, while you will have to build some new skills, there’s a world full of people out there willing to help for just a small slice of the pie you’re building in return and they’ll have a vested interest in your success.
2. Fear of Failing. Investing so much of yourself into something does come with the frightening prospect of falling flat on your face. But is that really so bad? My strategy from the start has been to accept the potential for failure and decide up front that I will embrace it when/if it happens. Recognize failure as a good thing. Accept it as a learning opportunity. Invest yourself in the process of becoming self employed or independently wealthy, NOT in the particular vehicles you choose to get you there. If the method falls apart on you and fails, that’s ok… the dream and ambition of financial freedom is still very much viable. Just be sure you learn from your mistakes or you’ll be doomed to repeat them.
3. It takes money to make money. Maybe, maybe not. But not necessarily YOUR money. If you’re like me, you probably don’t have a great deal in the way of spare capital to use in starting your particular business idea. If you let that stop you then you’ll always find an excuse to give up. Start small. Or, start big and seek investors. If you are committed to your objective then you should be equally committed to finding ways to make it work.
4. Debt. If you are already so deep in debt that you can’t begin to find your way out then you aren’t ready yet. That doesn’t mean you’ll never be ready, it just means prioritizing one hurdle before you jump another. My next few posts will focus heavily on this and I strongly suggest you read them starting with 1 Proven Strategy to Ensure You’ll Never Be Rich.
5. Discouraging influences. Your father thinks you’ll never amount to anything. Your sister thinks you’re an idiot full of dumb ideas. Your mother smiles encouragingly but her eyes tell you she doubts you’ll make anything of your fancy widget idea. At least she offers you some ice cream to dull the insult. Before you listen to anything anybody else has to say, consider the source. Are any of them independently wealthy? Are any of them successfully self employed? Have any of them pursued their challenging dreams and succeeded? Never let anybody else deprive you of your dreams. Listen to mentors. Listen to industry experts. Do your own research. At the end of the day, after thoroughly educating yourself, make your own decision on whether or not your idea was a good one.
6. Knowledge. Nobody said this would be easy and if you already knew everything you needed to know to succeed, you’d be busy running your business rather than reading this list. Of all the hurdles out there, this is the easiest to overcome. Everything you need is out there. Visit the library, search the web, read the business section of the newspaper to expand your financial vocabulary. Invest in yourself and take some classes. Attend seminars and get to know experts on whose knowledge you can later draw. If you can’t be bothered to put in the time to prepare yourself for financial independence then it’s a sure thing you won’t remain financially independent for long even if you do succeed.
7. Burnout. For most of us, the path to self employment and financial freedom is going to be measured in years. Some of you might have a brilliant idea that will sell you into freedom tomorrow, but you’ll be the exception rather than the rule. Recognize early on that this is journey, not a jog around the block, and commit to the task from the start. When you find yourself burning out, take a weekend off. Review your business plan. Review your goals. Review your motivation and remember the payout you hope to achieve. Then get your nose back to the grindstone and keep at it. Nobody said this would be easy. But if it wasn’t worth it in the first place, you wouldn’t have even started.
8. Lack of ideas. Yes, you desperately want to quit your day job and finance your own life as a free and self employed boss of your own empire. Yes, you want to be filthy stinking rich. But where to start? What to do? How? The frustrating part for both of us is that I can’t give you a laundry list of ideas today and set you off on your journey. I just don’t have that many to give yet and that’s not the point of this blog. The point of this blog is to try many things out over time and let you know how things went, if it was worth it and how successful (or not) I am. In time, there will be dozens of ideas to try. But not yet. Keep coming back as I learn and maybe I’ll have stumbled across something you’d like to try. In the meantime, read. Read every book on investing, wealth building and business you can get your hands on. It’s what I’m doing and I’m growing for it. Ideas are springing up. You’ll experience much the same.
9. Lack of Time. You’re preaching to the choir, buddy. I’m right there with you. You only have to read my first post – Self Employed or Bust – to see that my day job eats up way more than its fair share of my week. Then there’s time with the wife, walks with the dogs, family time, house work and chores, ambitions to move to a new home, and on and on. Time is the toughest of the bunch to manage. But manage it, you must. If you don’t make or find the time to invest in yourself and your dreams, you’ll never get them off the ground. Engage your husband or wife in your dreams. Make them a team member so they are more sympathetic when you fall down on the chores because you’re writing content for your blog, researching material for your book or meeting with your business strategy team. Beg, borrow or steal the time to get your dream moving and keep it moving no matter what it takes.
10. Lack of skills. Good news. That’s mostly a mental thing. Look at the myriad ways people make money these days. Some idiot films himself jabbing himself with fish hooks and there’s an audience willing to throw gobs of money at him for it (no I’m not recommending you do the same). The point is that you probably have more marketable skills than you give yourself credit for and what you lack in existing skill can be learned over time. My hope is to become a skilled entrepreneur and a sophisticated investor in many different areas. I don’t have the required skills today but I will as this process moves on. If you commit to your objective and define your goals, you’ll learn what you need to learn in time.

Whatever your excuses, recognize them as just that… excuses. They are not legitimate reasons to keep you from success. They are simply obstacles to be overcome, one after another. Once you find some momentum and realize a little progress towards your goals, the progress you’ve made will further motivate you. You’ll look back and laugh at your corporate-slave friends who told you your ideas would never amount to anything. You’ll be embarrassed at how shy you were the first time you talked to your mentors about your ideas. You’ll flash a cocky grin and wave as you drive by in your Lexus at the banker who didn’t have enough faith in your vision to fund your venture. It will all have been worth it in the end.

Last week I introduced Courtney Tuttle’s Keyword Sniping Technique and highly recommended you check out everything on his blog at Court’s Internet Marketing School. In case I didn’t make my point then, this is somebody whose work and business model I highly respect.

I’ve also mentioned that I’ve setup a few sniper sites and, though very young, wanted to give you my first impressions of the process and the early results. Before we get going on that, I want to throw out a few points.

First, if you’ve read his introduction to keyword sniping, you’ll see Court recommends 200+ searches and less than 1,000,000 competing pages (based on keyword). He also recommends a certain CPC average and PR rankings for the top 4 competitors. None of that will make sense to you if you haven’t read his stuff. Again, go read it. I’ll be here when you’re done.

I modified those recommendations in an effort to test out some of his theories to avoid winding up in Google’s sandbox from the get go. For example, he mentions a pretty quick potential for page 1 ranking using his methods. In order to speed things up even further, I gave myself a little flexibility on the searches (100 or better rather than 200) was VERY conservative on competition (100K or less to dodge the sandbox) and didn’t care much at all about the CPC averages as long as they were over $0.50.

Court also recommends avoiding putting up ads right away. I abstained for the first two weeks but put ads up on week 3 (from which point I started counting profits so the blogs are actually 1.5 months old but have only been monetized for 1 month).

Ok, so there are the rough statistics. Remember, the objective of keyword sniping differs in a very fundamental way from what you may or may not know as niche blogging. In niche blogging, you are setting up a targeted blog (much like with sniping but maybe not quite as targeted) but it is a blog to which you are constantly adding content. Keyword sniping takes a different approach. It requires some upfront labor but then you pretty much leave it alone. Every 6 months you come around and spend an hour or so to refresh things a little and then walk away again.

As I’ve stated before, my idea of a great business is one that continues earning money whether you’re there working on it or not. While any established blog can essentially fit this category, you will inevitably begin to lose readers of a “real” or “niche” blog if you stay away for too long and don’t continue building content. With a sniper site, you don’t really care about that. You aren’t banking on a loyal and returning readership. You are banking on upfront labor followed by virtual indifference which trickles money in steadily. If you’re asking how less money is a good thing, consider the next paragraph.

Another benefit to keyword sniping is that you can setup up 4, 5, 10, 20 of these things, pouring yourself into the effort up front, then walk away and let the cash roll in. Again, less long term labor allows you to create more of these to compensate for the smaller earnings from each. That said, Court mentions having earned $3500 in one month from one of his snipes. That’s nothing to sneeze at in my book.

Let’s talk a little about what you need to get started with keyword sniping.

1.      A computer with internet access and a web browser. You don’t even need to own your computer but you’ll need semi-regular access to one early on for your initial blog creation, posts and link building efforts and occasional access to freshen the sites up and keep them alive.

2.      Writing skills – If you aren’t a “good” writer, don’t fear. An “ok” writer can do just fine providing you proofread your work and research your material. You will have to invest a little more of yourself into the effort but if it pays, isn’t that worthwhile? It also wouldn’t hurt to run your work by somebody who you feel does have a talent for writing just to contend with grammatical issues. And for God’s sake, use spell check.

3.      A keyword specific domain name and hosting. Your sniper blog will need a domain name which you can purchase for under $10. You will also need your blog hosted. Mind you, you can pay for hosting (and Court walks you through how to do this with both written and video instructions) or you can get hosted for free through blogger.com.

4.      Wordpress – this is your blogging software. Good news. It’s free. You won’t need Wordpress if you create your site on Blogger but remember you won’t ever be able to sell your Blogger site if it does well and you decide you want to unload it for hard cash.

5.      Your targeted keywords which Court explains how to pick.

6.      Time and motivation. How much of either depends on your writing ability and how much you like watching money trickle in for indefinite periods of time.

If you can meet the above criteria, you can set up a sniping blog. So how are my sniping sites doing after a being alive and monetized for a month?

One year ago my wife and I setup a couple websites with no idea what we were doing. About 6 months ago I also created a couple here’s-what-I-think-about-stuff blogs just to see if I’d enjoy blogging. So, between two websites and two blogs (which I’ll admit I did virtually no promoting, marketing or link building for) I earned less than $40 from Adsense in 1 year.

Using Court’s sniping methods, I have earned almost that amount in the first month. That will grow. Mind you, I’m targeting low paying topics with less searches than he recommends. In other words, my sniping sites aren’t setup as well as they should be (by a long shot). I’ve also not made as big an effort to get links coming in as he requires in that’s absolutely essential. I also didn’t write 10 posts as he recommended for each. I only wrote 5 for each (though I’ve added 1 to each of them recently).

In other words, half-assing Court’s methods, I’m already earning more than the “real” blogs and websites I’ve put up with 1/100^th the effort. The earnings will only grow as more traffic rolls in. They will grow as I make more efforts to get inbound links. They will grow as I gradually add enough for 10 full posts on each site. They will grow substantially as I create more lucrative sniper sites based around better CPCs and other starting conditions.

And the real kicker is that 3 of the 4 sniper sites I created are already number 1 on page one on Google for the full keyword I was targeting. The fourth is on page 8 and climbing. I consider that proof of concept.

So, after 1 month the verdict remains encouraged and positive. You are missing out on a fantastic opportunity if you don’t at least go to Court’s Internet Marketing page and read everything you can on keyword sniping. If after visiting you decide the method isn’t for you, that’s fine. But to not even look could leave you missing out on a method of self employment that might be lucrative, fun and right up your alley.

Next steps: Create a couple sniper sites following Court’s directions explicitly and targeting higher payout keywords. I expect it will take them longer to rank on page one but I also expect much better income when they do. I won’t revisit this topic for a couple months so that these sniper blogs (and new ones I’ll be creating) have some time to develop further at which point I’ll offer up a new status update.

In my previous post, How Do You Think About Money, I presented two hypothetical women who followed two different paths in life and then posed a few questions. I asked you to think about the questions and I hope you did because my own interviews garnered some interesting results.

To recap – one woman leads a modest life, raises a family and devotes personal time to charitable efforts including a very nice contribution (given her income bracket) to her church on her passing. The other woman also raised a family but eventually started her own businesses and formed charitable partnerships through those businesses. She also started charitable foundations. Finally, she ultimately left a sizeable donation to a charitable organization on her passing.

Let’s address the questions I then asked.

1.      Is either person better, kinder, more giving of themselves than the other? If your answer is in line with the majority I’ve interviewed, you likely answered no. While opinions can vary slightly, the overwhelming consensus is that both women did good things for others with their lives. Both sacrificed in their own ways to help their communities.

2.      When Susan goes to sleep at night and when she ultimately dies, do her charitable acts keep giving? I answered this one for you and the answer is, no, not really. At best, only a little. In a manner of speaking, she does leave behind a legacy as her children will likely carry on her tradition to some greater or lesser degree. But when Susan is asleep, she isn’t handing out blankets or feeding the poor. Her giving largely depends on her being alive, conscious and actively working for the good of others.

3.      When Cheryl goes to sleep at night and when she ultimately dies, do her charitable acts keep giving? Yes. Cheryl’s financial success has allowed her to create businesses with charitable partnerships as well as a foundation which continues to work for the good of others whether she is asleep or awake, alive or dead. Like Susan, Cheryl passed her values to her children. If we give Cheryl’s kids the same benefit of the doubt we’ve given to Susan’s children, we can assume some of them will start businesses with charitable partnerships.

4.      Susan led a humble life and did not pursue personal wealth while Cheryl did. Is Susan a better person? And here’s where the answers started to show the first signs of an imbalance. While most folks answered no, some felt the need to elaborate further and say she did invest more of herself directly in her charitable efforts. The point lost on some people I interviewed is that working harder and longer for others isn’t the best thing if working smarter and more efficiently helps more people.

5.      Susan led a humble life and did not pursue personal wealth while Cheryl did. Is Cheryl a greedy person? While most answered no, the answers weren’t as cut and dry as before. Some felt Cheryl was greedy for pursuing wealth (despite her tremendous charity efforts). Others, because she didn’t invest enough time with her children. Both arguments are odd because I never mentioned that Cheryl started businesses in the interest of attaining wealth. Perhaps she was doing what she loved and reaped rewards in spite of herself. Also, I made it a point to emphasize that her business success allowed her the freedom to spend time with her children and work on her charitable interests.

6.      Who do you like more or emotionally connect with, Susan or Cheryl? Guess who most people picked. Susan.

The results didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me. As I mentioned in The American Wealth Gap, 80% of us own only 16% of the wealth in the US. I don’t think that has anything to do with education or ability. I honestly believe that the culprit is more deeply rooted in the way we think. My questions helped validate that as people made wholly emotional decisions in their answers the closer we got to number 6.

On at least some level, most of us associate the pursuit of wealth with greed. Cheryl must have been greedy because she went back to work rather than being a stay at home Mom. She must have been greedy because she started multiple businesses that made her filthy rich. On another level, we associate martyrdom and self sacrifice with goodness regardless how small the comparative impact. Susan, we feel, was the self-sacrificing woman who nurtured not only her family but her community as well. She gave of herself completely. Somehow that just feels better; nobler. Why?

Folks, at the end of the day, a homeless man would rather have a home than a blanket. A starving man would rather have 3 square meals a day rather than a sandwich for lunch. A woman down on her luck would prefer a job over a handout. All of Susan’s individual acts are a darned sight better than no good deeds at all, but if you had it in your power to do more, wouldn’t you feel even better? I assure you the recipients of your generosity would.

Wealth does not represent an automatic membership in the greed club. A greedy person is going to be tight with their money regardless how much of it they have. I’d argue, in fact, that a greedy person with wealth is less stingy with his money than a greedy person without wealth. Why? Because at some level of income, it simply becomes fiscally sound to give up some of your wealth to charity for the tax benefits. The system practically assures the death of greed when one is wealthy whether they like it or not. Furthermore, if a person earns large sums of money through business, he is likely employing others and at least some of those others will be charitable with their money.

I hope this first set of posts on the way we think about money has started you down a more rational path. Wealth is not a bad thing. Pursuing wealth is not an act of greed. Good people do great good with their money. Just look at Oprah or the Bill Gates foundation if you don’t believe me. When it comes to charity, the only thing wealth assures you is the opportunity to do more than you could before you became wealthy. My mother in law, for example, would probably change the world for the better if she were wealthy.

If you wish to be successful in business, the first thing you need to do is change the way you think. And if you succeed? Well, when your mom or pastor tells you they are happy with your monetary contributions but would rather have more of your personal time, remind yourself that it’s the very time they’re asking for, time you’ve applied to your business success, that has allowed you to give so generously in the first place. You may never make them understand, but that doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t make you greedy.

In The American Wealth Gap I mentioned that I’d come back to the issue of how we think about money, business and investing. I think it’s important to discuss and something we’ll likely revisit often in the future because, at the heart of what separates us from the filthy rich is the way we think about and approach those issues. If we want to be self employed and get rich doing it, mindset is an important thing to assess.

Our parents and, to a larger degree, their parents grew up in a different world. In my lifetime I’ve watched pensions become archaic. The working world they grew up in was very different. Employees and employers formed loyal unions. Employers rewarded loyalty by way of providing for one’s retirement years. Pensions were the norm. Safety and stability were the smart approach. Saving money wasn’t an unreasonable way of going through life. And our parents have tried to pass those same values down to us. Most of us are a product of their mentality.

I like to think that there are very few truly stupid people in the world (despite beltway drivers desperately trying to prove me wrong every day.) Instead, I believe that there are a great many people so firmly rooted in tradition and habit that they don’t always see the truth in front of them. Others are easily blinded by emotion, which is no surprise given the powerful influence our emotions have over us. Others, still, are influenced by trusted people who, despite their sincerity and apparent knowledge, are no better suited to be offering advice than is the recipient.

The point is, though we are not stupid people, we do stupid things because it feels safe and familiar or because somebody we trust (such as a parent) has molded us into a stupid-acting person. They’ve often done so with all the good intentions in the world and it really shines when you consider the way our parents have taught most of us to think about money.

Here are what might be some familiar statements from our parents, grandparents or moral guides:

Money doesn’t grow on trees

All he thinks about is money

Money equates to greed

Money is the root of all evil

You should spend less time at work and more time involved in charity

Your money is certainly appreciated but your time would mean a lot more (when it comes to charitable acts).

Any of that sound familiar? More than words, these are all ways of thinking. Ways your parents or pastor might routinely think and ways in which, as my previous post shows, 80% of us still think today. I hope to show you over the next few days that they are all WRONG ways of thinking. And before you tune out and think that I must be greedy, I intend to also show you how that’s not only the wrong way to think, it’s also just plain wrong. Greed has nothing to do with it. Quite the opposite, in fact. But we’re jumping ahead. Let’s get started.

I want to create two fictional women who are going to take two divergent paths in life. Their names will be Susan and Cheryl.

Susan meets the love of her life shortly after college. He’s a real looker, works a steady job at a stable company and brings home a reasonable salary. They marry a year after meeting and Susan quits her job to start a family. She is a loving, devoted wife and mother. 

Every week, Susan volunteers at the local soup kitchen. Twice a month, she also goes on food drives to collect canned foods from local grocery stores. She also engages in whatever volunteer needs her church may have whenever she can find the time and she instills the same values in her children. She lives to a ripe old age and, when she passes away, leaves her children with a modest house, a little bit of money to divide and $2000 to her church where she was much loved for her participation and generosity.

Cheryl also graduates from college and marries the love of her life. She has a couple kids whom she dotes on but she decides to go back to work part-time when they start school. In her early 30s, she decides to start her own business (doesn’t matter what it is). Cheryl’s business takes off. After a few years she has put a great management team in place to run her business so that she can spend quality time with her husband and vacation with her children. She just needs to check the books now and again and attend monthly and yearly meetings. As the business becomes more established, she has even more free time which she spends organizing charity drives.

By 45, Cheryl is a millionaire and starts another business. With experience under her belt, the startup runs more smoothly. She can afford a strong management team right at the beginning meaning the new venture demands far less of her time up front than her first business. Her charity drives are now fundraisers attended by wealthy individuals who contribute to the tune of thousands of dollars per person. By 55, Cheryl has several businesses managed by exceptional teams and she has instilled her values and beliefs in her grown children.

Each business contributes a percentage of their sizable profits to charitable organizations. Cheryl’s family also contributes to charity out of their earnings. Cheryl also starts a charitable foundation focused on feeding the hungry in her state. With more money than they know what to do with, she leaves a sizable sum to charity in her will with plenty left over for her children (who don’t really need it because they’ve started businesses of their own as their mother taught them) and grandchildren.

First question – Is either person better, kinder, more giving of themselves than the other?

Second question – When Susan goes to sleep at night and when she ultimately dies, do her charitable acts keep giving? When Susan calls it a night so do her charitable deeds. She isn’t serving anybody soup. She isn’t collecting canned goods. She isn’t visiting anybody elderly, distributing blankets or providing clothing and toys to the poor. Her generous $2000 contribution on dying will help dozens for a short time. Her children, though, who have learned from the values she instilled, will likely emulate her and do much the same as she did in their lives. She has left a bit of a charitable legacy behind.

Third Question – When Cheryl goes to sleep at night and when she ultimately dies, do her charitable acts keep giving? She has established several well-managed businesses with charitable partnerships which will live on long after she is gone. She has created a charitable foundation which will also outlive her and continue doing good for others. The large sum she donated to charity has the least value of all because it is finite in nature but it will feed hundreds for several years. Cheryl may or may not be forgotten. Perhaps her foundation was named after her, perhaps it wasn’t. Ultimately, even if she passes into anonymity, her charitable legacy will live on long after she’s gone. Her children, who have learned from the values she instilled, will likely emulate her and do much the same as she did in their lives, representing another legacy left behind.

Fourth and Fifth questions – Susan led a humble life and did not pursue personal wealth while Cheryl did. Is Susan a better person? Is Cheryl a greedy person?

Sixth Question – who do you like more or find yourself emotionally connecting with, Susan or Cheryl?

I don’t want to influence your thinking much at this point. I want you to review both scenarios, digest the differences for a bit and think about those questions and how you personally feel. We’ll revisit this tomorrow in a continuation – How Do You Think About Money (continued)