How My Slacker Attitude is Helping Me Get Stuff Done

Right now I am (still) trying to figure out what I'm doing next year. Am I wandering off into the wilds of Mexico and Central America, or am I going for a really long walk?

I've pretty much slacked this whole year. I'll admit it. I quit my job back in January, and until about two weeks ago had earned maybe $300. All Year.

So I know what doing nothing at all and feeling bad about it looks and feels like. I know what sort of things make me less likely to do something. I know what makes me *more* likely to do something. I also know the idea of daily production at a set rate gives me brain-hives.

As much as writing short articles for $3 each works for other people, and as much as I wish I could pay all my bills writing easy articles forever, I have to accept that I'm just not interested in writing 5000 words a day on office chairs. It's something I've been looking at for a while now, but I've reached the "Start making things happen now, or be stuck here another year" point.

So what have I done? I've:

• signed up at Commission Junction, so when I get my "real" site built I can put something on it. 
• Changed around my other blog, dropping the advertising network I've been using
• worked out an upfront to residual balance that works for me- every article I write for upfront pay, I write one for myself to toss up on hubpages or ezine arts, or my own webpage
• made lists of upfront costs, and what I need to do each of my two surviving plans for next year (bare-bones-style)
• written most of a halfway decent first chapter (longhand), and mentally mapped out where I want those characters to go.
• sketched out three or four new book ideas as they wandered past
• re-set my goals to match what I *really* want and can get now.

Most of that happened since Thanksgiving, so in about a week. Compared to what I've done over the last month, it's really pretty good. I'm also trying not to think about what I *should* be doing. I'm working on setting an alarm, and just doing what I said I'd do for that couple hours. 

Oh, and I've given myself permission to stop writing articles for upfront pay when I have enough to cover the month. So I don't have an endless stretch of 3 dollar SEO articles reaching out before me. As soon as I can pay the rent, put food in my stomach and gas in my car (with some for the tax man, of course), I can stop.

Makes writing them so much easier. Now instead of "Just three more and I don't have to write anymore today" it's "just $30 more and I can stop writing these things for the month." Remarkably motivating.

Which leaves me with my choice for next year. Do I "move" to Mexico, or walk from Georgia to Maine? Mexico will (probably) always be there and it's been on my list for about 10 years. The hiking trip's been on my list (way up near the top) since I was probably 14, so over half my life now. It will, of course, also be there later. But will I be interested in taking the time to do it later?

Either way, I need about $500 a month coming in without any real direct work from me. And *that's* what's really motivating me right now. Back to work time.

Slacking And The "Real" Job

I might have mentioned last week that this outside the house job is killing my energy. I think I mentioned that I was getting none of my own work done.

It also made me sick, but I guess that happens when you touch money and/or things touched by germy other people all day.

I'm taking today to work for myself, though. In a 10 hour day working for tarjay I'd make $75. If I can make $60 today, I'll consider it win, and quit my outside job.

I think, not working for so long, and having so long when I didn't have to(savings) followed by so long when I just didn't (thanks dad, really), I forgot just how much I hate working for other people. How even though $7.50 an hour would pay the bills, it's less than I can make working for myself. How even writing the worst, spammiest, most unpleasant article is better than working for someone else.

Simply because if it's going bad, or I'm sick of it, or there's something I'd rather be doing, I can drop it and come back (or not) when I want.

Don't want to write articles about stainless steel countertops at textbroker? I don't have to. I can write about something random and put it up on CC or hubpages, or someplace else. I can put it off until late at night, or I can go for a walk in the neighborhood, then come back to it when my brain is working again.

Working for someone else, not so much. Don't want to re-fold infant clothes? Too bad, do it or leave. Don't want to stand for 8 hours, smiling at angry people? Too bad, they've bought your time.

So yeah, I made about $300 at that dayjob. It sucked the work right out of me, though. I bet I can make just as much working at home. I bet I can even enjoy it more. I just needed to be reminded how much it sucks.

I Have Some Motivation, Kinda

Some famous guy, somewhere in the past (I think it was a writer) once said something like "the trick to getting things done is to have something you want to procrastinate on *more* than the thing you need to get done." Give or take.

I've found that thing. Well, ok, I've found dozens of those things, and dozens of things to do instead of them. Really, though, I've gone and done something so terrifying that I now *have to* do something.

I made a twitter account for the website I haven't actually built yet. And then I followed people with it. And it points people to the website. The not-yet-up website...

Um, yeah.

So now I *really really* have to get the website going. And you know what? I did a bit of work on it. Not much, but some. I see where I could go with it, what directions I can (maybe) take it. And I now risk people showing up at my empty, not yet search engine-listed website.

Which makes that now the biggest scariest thing in my entire list of stuff I have to get done. I promptly started thinking about story ideas, and will now probably be writing all day. Not what I *need* to be doing- I need to be making money. Closer, though, and better than watching tv or playing games.

Other than writing for NaNoWriMo, all the writing I have to do/ can do is internet content. Most of that pays crap. The content for my website will pay all of nothing until I get traffic and advertising, and who knows what else (i actually do know, really, just not getting into it now). Hopefully, though, I can switch between these terrifying things enough to get a bunch of work done on each of them. Heck, I wrote a bunch of articles earlier this week for $2 each. I can write articles for nothing.

In other news, operation "find a temporary, craptastic seasonal job" seems to have hit a wall. Again. If I weren't the "fall off the ladder" type I'd put an ad in Craigslist offering to help put up lights. But yeah, I'd fall off, break something important, and be worse off than I am now. Meh.

Question/ Wondering

Do I keep writing (not enough) articles at TB, even though they take a long time, pay crap, and are totally dis-interesting?

Or do I put on my big-girl pants and come up with my own topics to sell on Constant Content?

I'd have to (obviously) keep writing the penny a word articles until I am making enough sales to pay the bills (something I'm not even doing on TB), but putting up *one* article a day there could eventually kill the need for 7-10 articles at TB.

Which sounds pretty darned good to me.

Problems are:

• I'm not confident that I'll make it past ed. review at CC
• I don't have any idea what to write
• I don't know if I could keep coming up with subjects
• I'm scawed!

Um, ok, so fear is, I'm told, a bad reason not to do something.

Still, the bar is set *really* low at TB. What if I'm not good enough? What if I get banned on my first try? What if I manage to write on the only subjects *ever* with no interest in them *at all*?

Of course, the best way to get over all that stupid fear and what-if-ing is to just write the dratted things already. Just write something and send it in, right? That's what writers do. That's what anyone who wants to buy food and pay rent and get the oil changed does. It's what *I* need to do.

If I could write *one* article a day for CC and get it accepted, I'd be better off than I am now. If 1/3rd of the articles that I wrote and posted were sold, I'd be better off than I am now. If I wrote, submitted, and had accepted *3* articles a day? If 1/3rd of *those* sold in the first month? I'd be able to pay the rent, buy food, *and* get the oil changed, plus at least one other bill- all in the *same* month.

3 TB articles a day? I'd be lucky if I could manage just the food...

It makes so much sense to write for c-c... Why am I not doing it?

Actually Working!

I spent part of the weekend actually working! I'm not proud of myself, because I still didn't get even halfway through my list of stuff that *absolutely needed to get done*, but I got closer, so that's good.

Then I was so tired from that work that yesterday I did absolutely *nothing*. All day. Ok, around 5pm I picked up an article that I'm planning to write today. Otherwise? Nothing.

So today I'm "working" again. It's not work that'll earn me anything this month. It probably won't even earn me anything next month. Hopefully, though, it'll earn me something, someday. It's probably the most boring thing I've ever done, including the stuff I did at Walmart. Seriously dull.

But I can listen to music or podcasts while I do it, and if it works out I should eventually make between $200 and $800 a month off it. Just have to finish setting it up.

Have done nothing yet on the local tourist site. Need to get that done and start posting articles all over about it so I can get magic google juice. I'd like to have it done and ranking at least a little by New Years.

Other money stuff... Dunno. I've got the productivity plug-in on my browser now, dunno if I said that already. I get 2 hours of internet goof-off time between 8am and 10pm. Each time i find myself spending too much time on a site that doesn't get me anything useful (like work), I add it to the block list. There's not much left for me to enjoy at this point.

I keep finding new ones, though, so... yeah.

Off to write dull articles for slave wages....

Blogging Dollars

So I got paid by my blogging network-thing. It's not a huge amount of money (just over the payout, in fact...), but it's mine! (cue evil laughter)

By check, of course. I guess I got the paypal request/ info in too late.

In other news, I'm trying to decide what direction to go with my travel site... direct paid ads, adsense, affiliates... it doesn't make much difference to the content, but it might change the layout a bit. I don't have to decide now, but I'd like some idea of what direction I'm going to take it in before I get too far into it.

So... yeah.

Still deciding if I should stay with the ad network or not... There isn't much ad inventory now, and I don't know if it's worth it to follow their rules and whatnot when I could make the same (or more...) with Google.

This internet stuff is tough.

Ok, back to writing crappy content articles for next to nothing.

Internet Business is Srs Business

You don't really think about it when you put ads on that first blog (at least, I didn't), but you're starting a business. I don't think about my food blog as a business, I think of it as practice, but it's still a (hobby) business. And that means there's all kinds of stuff I need to know.

So I went to the library yesterday and picked up a pile of books on starting a business, and women in small business, and bookkeeping and stuff. It's answering some of my questions, but for every answer--or part answer--I find, I come up with three more questions.

There's always the SBA, and Charleston has another group just for women starting businesses, but this is *not* a tech center and most of those are traditional businesses. So I'm not sure how much help they'd be when most of my really *wanna know* questions are solidly online business-based. Questions like:

If I sell ads directly instead of using a network for everything, is it a sale? Is it a sales tax-type sale? Do I need a DBA for my blog name? And what about business licenses?

I don't know, maybe the local small business groups *could* help. The books sure are, but not with the internet bit, and I've no interest in buying a "everything you wanted to know about blogging and taxes" ebook. I probably need to figure out other businesses that do similar things, and find out how *they* do it. Something like the local free newspaper, or those newsletters you find in coffee shops with ads down the sides.

I have a strange suspicion that this stuff is why people hire lawyers and accountants when they have *real* businesses. Hopefully hobby status gets a girl some leeway. I don't wanna end up in jail or owing piles in back taxes just because I didn't know better.

Interesting money stuff

So, I have no ads here. I did at one point, but I decided to pull them from this blog.

The other one, though, has ads. And they were doing pretty good for a while, and I changed to a new ad network thingy. It lost me the more profitable adsense space, but it brings in traffic (mostly) and was earning more.

I don't know what's up, but September seems to be a crap month for advertising. It's probably better on family or child-centered blogs, but food and general life crap? I'm making more (and have *made* more) on the much less profitable adsense placement than I am off my big pretty hot-spot ad.

Part of it, I suspect, is due to some kinda blogger flub. But mostly? There's no ad inventory. something like 2/3rds of my page loads have been PSA's or in-house ads. that's 2/3rds of my pageloads earning either nothing or almost nothing. It's kinda a startling change.

Good thing I don't live off that revenue, I'd starve to death. Ok, I'd starve to death faster.

It does help me realize that if/ when I get everything going with web sites and whatnot, I need to make sure that money can come in from more than one place. There *are* ad networks that will fill in with ads from other networks when they have nothing to serve, but this isn't one of them.

It really reinforces the whole "diversify" thing. Lucky for me the blog is for fun and keeping track, or I'd be forked. I think about this more than i probably should, actually. With building a working-for-myself type life I am running into this more.

I probably ran into it more when I was working for a company in a "real" job, but when your ability to pay rent depends on kissing the boss' ass and behaving in public, you try not to think about that stuff. Now I'm trying to build as many different streams of income as I can find. Every dollar that comes from blogging, or book reviews, or a website I build, or an article that sells at CC is 100 fewer words I have to write for textbroker. Forget saving the earth, I just want to save my wrists at this point.

Now I just need to get the novelling going so I can earn real, live royalties. Write once and get paid for it forever (or until the book pirates get their hands on it... either one works for me).

But, yeah, oddness with the advertising income this month.

Crazy Flat-out Working Time, Again

You'd think I'd time my work-flow better. You'd think I'd fight off the demon writer's block faster. You'd think I'd try harder for (much) better paying Direct Orders.

But no. I put it off and put it off, and do one here, and two there, and then run around, headless-chicken style and totally broke the week before pay-outs. So that's what I'm doing today and most of tomorrow. Well, the part of tomorrow that isn't spent getting Dad from the airport and dropping him off at home. So flat-out working, followed by more super-speedy work, followed by my "challenge" article for the better paying site. Basically, I'm working most hours I'm awake between now and Labor Day.

It's going to be a long, exhausting week. Well, what's left of it.

Luckily, though, I *know* I can write 3 300 word articles in an hour. So I'm starting by challenging myself to write $10 worth of articles and turn them in each hour. Then, if I make that, I'll bump it up 50 cents or a dollar each hour until I either can't do it, or it just gets silly. I think, by the end of the day, I can be pushing out $15 an hour. I bet I can, even.

Now I just have to go do it. Drat this strange need I have for living inside!

One plus, though- I actually got something done on my local-type website. at this rate it should be up and running by the time I'm 50.

Building Something from Nothing- part 7

I haven't worked on my website-dealies in a couple weeks now. More like months, actually. That's not good.

You can't succeed at something if you never do anything. Or so they tell me, anyway. If I don't build the stupid site I'll never make anything off of it. If I don't make money off that one, I'll not be able to expand into another.

It's kind of silly, I guess, to earn money over and over on the same work. Build a decent site once, get everything set up, do the SEO, all that jazz, and (if I picked a good niche) I could eventually make money off of it forever. Well, or until the big G smacks me down.

My wrists are telling me that this not-actively-working thing is a good idea. My brain is seconding. I'm pretty sure my fingers or behind are interested in a vote. What I'm doing for money right now doesn't pay well, and it only pays once. If I can do something that pays equally crap, but over and over again, that's the start of something magic.

Sorry, lots more airy-fairy stuff today, not so much with the hard numbers/ hard work/ results. So to be fair-

Making the writing easier-

Like anyone else who spends more time with their computer keyboard than their SO (or other interesting people) I have bad wrists. My "desk" setup doesn't help. 'Parently sprawling across the bed isn't any better than slumping in a crap office chair. Loafing about on my side puts extra pressure on shoulder joints and spines and whatnot. It also encourages me to wander when I'm writing.

So I'm trying out speech recognition software. Sort of.

In the interests of cheap, I didn't buy anything new, I'm just using the speech recognition that's in Win7. I don't know how it stacks up against other products, I know that it works better than the one I had with XP. It recognizes most of my words and directions. Best of all, it was (sort of) free- it came with the OS.

I like speech recognition because when I *say* the sentences they make more sense. I stick to the topic, don't get lost as quickly, and don't (usually) go off on random parentheticals or just drop a sentence half way through. I can lie (lay?) on my back, eyes closed, and just talk. I can toss the words up in my head, hear them as they come out, and edit on the fly. It's kinda nice.

Problems I have with it, well...

You have to speak clearly- after half an hour or so I lose that ability. You need to remember the commands (another problem for me), and you need to check that it's translating correctly. About 10% of the time it comes up with something that, when reading it back later, really makes me wonder WTF I was writing. Also, I don't think I've managed more than 15 words per minute. If I compose in my head as I write, then type away, I can think for 20 seconds, write for 40, and still ge 30 words down. The talking-thing doesn't work that way. more time is spent going back and fixing things, correcting the computer when it doesn't know what I want, or deleting off what I don't want.

I've read (don't remember where) that eventually the speaking/ writing thing gets faster- the computer learns your speech patterns, you remember all the commands, and it all just works together better. Right now, at a penny a word, I can't really afford to play. My average output with speech to text is 600 words an hour. That's less than minimum wage. Much less, when you consider that I have to pay self-employment tax on it.

On jobs that pay better, I might go back to it. For now, though- before I've built up decent residual income- I need to write faster. Right now, that means typing.

Maybe someday I won't have to write at those rates, and I can get paid over and over for the same words. Today, it's all about efficiency, baby.

Writing to Pay Bills

This is pretty different from writing for fun. Mainly because it takes up most of the day. I've got about 10 hours of work ahead of me (at least), so no big drawn out chatty post today.

All my articles have been accepted without revisions, so far. Demand Studios tells me there's nothing for me with them. I'm not sure if that means my writing sucks but the buyers at TB don't care, or DS is just flooded with "real" writers with "real" experience...

Oh well, back to work.

Learning about PayPal

Up until now I haven't had much to do with PayPal. Strange, I know.

Everyone and Everything (just about) uses PayPal. Except me--until recently I'd only used it once. To pay for my Africa trip. But I'm learning.

Most of the places I'm "working" with use PayPal for payments. So I earn it, and when they pay me, it's sitting there in my account. Online. Where I can only spend it Online.

Problem. I don't think my roommate's mother (also known as my landlord--talk about problems...) has an account with them. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to pay transfer fees, if she does have an account. I sure as heck don't want to.

So where does that leave me? Well, I can transfer money from my online account to my linked bank account. It takes 5 to 7 days (might even be *business* days) but it's free. Or I can use a debit card linked to my PayPal account, but if I get cash from an ATM there are fees (from the bank I'm using, I don't think the card has fees). If I get cash back while I'm shopping, I'm limited by the amount the store allows. And I'd have to shop. Plus, to even be eligible for the debit card you have to upgrade your account.

Not a problem, I chose the debit card (for when I need money *now*), and I can always still transfer cash whenever I have a week or two to wait. So I upgraded my account (no fee) and applied for the debit card. I'll have it in a week or two- just in time to pay the rent a bit late. Better than a lot late, I guess.

Now I just have to get my W-9 to TextBroker so they'll pay me. Well, and write. A lot. Every day until payout. Pleh.

Building Something from Nothing- part 6

I haven't really done much lately. Building a site is a lot of work. I'd rather be doing that work for me, obviously, but really I'd rather do no work at all.

But the site still needs to get built, the setup finalized (I'm going back to WP), content written, uploaded, and pimped throughout the interwebs. Like I said, a lot of work.

And then there's the book blog, which I haven't even started.

And somewhere in there I need to decide if (when I do take off on my next trip) I'm going to switch my blogging energy to that, or just enjoy it. I'll probably blog it- there's a lot of interesting stuff to write about when you're wandering around the world.

First, though, I need to get that first site up, running, and bringing in some money. I don't want to be writing cheap spam for strangers forever, ya know.

Income has been slowly inching up. I'm trying to decide if I want to have full out social media fun with my travel site. I can see how it would be good for traffic and buzz, but I don't know if it's worth the work. And if I'm not in the country, let alone the city, do I tweet and update facebook, and whatnot, or do I pay someone else to do it for me? Obviously, the more places people can find you, the more people will find you. Which is good, of course. But how does one person manage a bunch of different accounts like that without it taking over the whole day? I guess the answer is probably to make enough on the sites that I can hire someone else to be responsible for it, but at the rate I'm going the world will belong to the robots before I get to that point. Hmm...

The Power of Slacking

This article was supposed to be written almost 12 hours ago. I slacked hard core- think sleeping and drinking and wandering the house aimlessly.

But it wasn't all wasted time. I also wrote two articles for a content mill (about $4 worth), found out that my local grocer has discontinued my favorite non-dairy ice cream, and got half way through signing up for demand studios. I even talked a friend into signing up at one of the content mills, and he's also done about $4 worth of work.

So while I didn't do what I was supposed to (get a blog post up by 9am) I did do *something*.

I think that's kinda a key feature of slacking for me. When I'm driving hard at a goal, it's too tough to reach- it's a huge scary monster standing between me and what I want. When I say "ok, self, goof off now," that pressure is taken away and things just flow.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't need to pay the bills at the end of the month. I'm also not saying that endless slacking is good for anyone. But for me, sometimes, it gives me the freedom to just *do* something.

A sort of push past the fear, as it were. Now, I need to go write 3 more articles and fix up my resume before drinking time starts in an hour. I can do it, I'm sure- I'll just relax first!

Makin' Money

I've been wondering for a while now if potential employers can sense that I don't want to work for them. I wouldn't be surprised if they can, I don't try that hard to hide it. Does anyone like working for other people? Doing unknown work for silly reasons, when and how someone else says to do it?

It's so not my thing, though I do try to pretend to be excited by the idea of it all. Obviously I'm an even worse liar than I thought.

So I'm switching focus a little. I need something that motivates me (like paying the rent) and that has a specific reward for a specific action (like money for doing x) to actually get things done. With the unknowns of payment and earnings and traffic with building a website very little gets done right now, the rewards are too vague.

I've been playing around with a little freelance writing (I *can* actually write, you know, despite all evidence to the contrary) and I think I'm going to put more time and energy into that for a little while. Between ghostwriting for peanuts at Text Brokers and writing for slightly more than peanuts at Demand Studios (if I ever get in there) I should at least be able to cobble together rent each month. Maybe in a couple months I'll have enough confidence to actually bid on jobs over at elance, rather than just looking at them.

That'll be a change from job hunting, which really just costs me money- money to keep my "nice" clothes clean, wear and tear on them and my car, gas for my car, junk food I buy when I'm out and about. I already have just about everything I need to write online for dollars (or pennies)- a computer, a keyboard, and an internet connection. If I need a book, well there's a library nearby. It'll mean I actually have to *do* my bookkeeping rather than just say I'm going to, but I needed to start doing that anyway.

I've been putting writing off for a long time. It's scary to think that my words will be judged by strangers. It's scary to rely on only what's between my ears for money- I've been sticking with what are basically labor jobs up until now. Knowing that all that stands between me and enough money to pay the rent is some serious time in front of the keyboard- it's a bit of a change in thinking. When I do this I'll be totally responsible for whether I fail or succeed.

I'm freaking myself out now.

Basically, though, knowing that all I have to do to pay the rent is write enough (coherent) words between now and the various payout dates to cover rent is... scary. I'm not dependable. I'm not hard working. Deep in my brain (or not so deep) there's this big screaming voice telling me I'm really not good enough or smart enough to get paid for something like that. Usually I'd listen to that voice- hard not to with how loud it is.

This time I'm going to ignore it. Not try to ignore it, but actually ignore it. I like writing more than I like working a job. I like it more than cleaning houses, or mowing lawns, or chasing strangers sticky screaming spawn (uh, I mean cute, adorable children, yeah, that's it). So long as there's work out there I can work. Two in the afternoon or two in the morning. In my pj's or in a ball gown. Eventually I might have enough regular clients to throw that off a bit, but right now it's all my choice.

And maybe, just maybe, writing filler for other people's websites and article marketing endeavors will give me the intestinal fortitude to write for myself and my own projects- those smutty romances won't just write themselves, you know.

I didn't get that article written. I knew what I wanted to write, and i just didn't do it. It could be fear (I'm unusually good at that), it could be laziness (good at that too), or it could be this sort of creeping ennui, in which case I think I'm SOL.

After all, fear can be fixed with a quick trip to the doctor for some tasty valium, a trip to the liquor store for a bottle of something cheap and strong, or the ever popular "finding something worse to fear", which for me usually just makes it doubly unlikely that I get anything done.

Laziness is something I'm working on. I've actually developed and (mostly) stuck to a schedule here and on my food blog, which is quite an accomplishment. I just need to add two or three more things into the mix. I can't say here that i'm going to do something, then not do it because I don't want to.

Heck, most of the time the thing I don't want to do lately is even *interesting*. How often is the thing you have to do *interesting*? Sure, I need to figure out some design stuff, but other than that, this is *fun*. I get to create something from nothing, and because it doesn't otherwise exist, no one can really tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Then, I'm also fighting the new shiny ball problem. I have another idea (or three) that seem like they'd be less work, or more fun, or just different, and I want to do those instead. Pleh.

So how do I think I can work with this? Simple, i'm thinking about taking the weekend off from the internet. I'm sure i'll be twitching by Saturday afternoon, but I don't need internet to write articles for a web site. I can fix them for SEO Monday. I can fix the page itself Monday. But if I'm actually going to get something done, I need a stick to smack me into wandering in the right direction.

My motivation for finding a job is just as low as what I've got for my projects, lower even. I'm applying for jobs that (mostly) don't interest me doing (mostly) things that disgust me, working for companies that I (again, mostly) don't support. I'm sure this has a lot to do with why everything else is all screwy. Maybe I should listen to the roommate and get a paper route. The money really *can't* be any worse than doing nothing, right?

Building Something from Nothing- part 5

So I brought in 116 and change so far (plus $5 that went.. somewhere- let's count that for the $3 or4 photo hosting cost me back in march...).

What I've spent so far is $42 for hosting for my shiny new site. It's a work in progress, of course, but it's working...

I've also spent $8.59 on a book for the review site. It's a book I wanted, it just came out, and i really like the author, so I would have bought it anyway. the domain for the review site shouldn't cost more than $7, and it'll be hosted at teh same place as the other site, so the only real expense there (other than time) is the domain and books. hopefully I can make part of that go away pretty quick.

I'm doing pretty good on my adsense goal, I'm right about where i wanted to be, but it's a long month, and plenty can still go wrong.

I need to do a lot of writing, I just haven't yet. I need to write articles for the site, since I've already got something up, and it just looks sad and abandoned now. I also need to write the review for the book I'm reading (which is actually why this is a little late today), so I can get it up on not only my site (which I still need to pick up), but also on the various online book sellers. woot?

So yeah, that's now. Halfway through the month.

This earning money thing is actual work. Who'da thunk it....

Equipment, or When Paying More Is Worth It

I am not at home this weekend. I'm dog sitting, so I don't have my computer, I have my mother's. It's not as nice, but it was free. It's also about 5 years old.

I could probably make it a worthwhile machine for $30 in RAM. It'd still be slow as all heck, since it's running windows and five years old, but it'd at least be able to keep up with running the OS, virus blocker, and loading web pages without a 20 minute wait.

This wouldn't work for me, though. Loading a page every 20 minutes is great if all you do is read some AOL mail, look at a couple of pictures of puppies, and sign off. I don't do that. I need to upload photos, stream video, and read blogs (I know, strange needs). When there's a 5 minute lag while something's loading to switch between tabs, that's just not gonna work- what I do at home in 20 minutes has taken me about 2 hours so far this morning, and there are no photos getting loaded anywhere.

While I'm here I'm going to pull their computer case open and see what's inside. I might have a few (free, from previous canibal jobs) parts that will speed things up. If not, at least I can see what they've got and point them in the right direction for picking up some things to fix it up a bit. I do most of their "advice" -type stuff already, might as well fix it up so they don't need to call as often.

Really though? To do something on the internet that earns money (or at least doesn't eat your whole day) you need more than they've got. I *could have* done it on my older laptop. It was designed for battery life and not woot 1337-ness, but it was faster, and sometimes a little upgraded- replacing RAM isn't that tough, even on laptops.

When a netbook able to run graphic intensive games is only $350, there's no real excuse to use something that doesn't work right. Sometimes you don't have the cash (that'd be me, now- but the library could fill in here), sometimes you don't know what you're running isn't enough (that'd be this machine I'm typing on now), and sometimes you just don't care (I don't understand this one, but know it exhists).

Really though, plumbers need pipe wrenches, taxi drivers need cars, and people who do stuff on the internet need computers that are able to do more than one thing at a time.

Should have just brought the desktop to begin with- or double checked that I had the power cord for my slow but still faster laptop. Oh well, live and learn and all that. I'll just bring the cord back with the ram.

Building Something from Nothing- part 4

I got my first ever payout from the magical Big G today. $116 and some change.

And thanks to a super nice father (to whom I now owe both kidneys) it can all go toward interwebby- costs.

Unfortunately, I have *nothing* written. Less than nothing, even. So now I have to write.

After all, I can't get cool, interesting information out there for people if I haven't written it. Without information, there are no visitors, and without visitors there's no money. So for the rest of today (after I go do another round of applications so I can pay *real* bills) I'll be picking up (real, on paper) information, calling places, and taking photos. I'm going to walk around, see what I see, and try to figure out a couple different walking routes, or "things to do and see" for different lengths of stay.

Oh, I'm doing a travel site- did I mention that?

Anyway, I'll collect information, take photos and try out ideas for most of the rest of the day, then tonight I'll write, do some photo editing, and hopefully have enough to get a (very rough) site up by tomorrow. I can then flesh it out over the next month or two.

But by the end of the week I want at least 30 articles/ pages- enough that if someone actually stumbles into the site they have something worth reading. Visitors first, then money. That's what everyone seems to say, anyway.

So how am I planning to get these visitors? Well, first I need to have the information up there, obviously. Then I am going to do a little (or a lot) of article marketing- where you write articles with keywords related to the ones on your site and put them in article databases and various other sites with a link back to your own, main site- places like hubpages. I intend to use some "free" adwords money Google sent me- once I have enough information to make it worthwhile- it'll cost $5 to get that actually running though, and I'm not sure they'll let me do a campaign for just the $100 I'll have. But I can try.

I need to send out some kinda press release- which I also need to write- so that people in the community know about it. This one's going to have to wait a little while. I could probably get something in at the local free press, but I don't want to point people at a shell- that just feels dirty to me.

Which brings me back to writing. I think everything comes back to writing. Once I have enough written, I can do all of this. Money is not (right now) what's holding me back. What's holding me back now is me.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering why I'm using this money to build something rather than to pay bills (as I'm sure my creditors would ask if I told them)- this is such a tiny amount of money that it makes no real difference in my bills. It would just get absorbed, and I'd be back where I am now, only worse. So I'm building something with it.

Most of what I'm buying with this money lasts at least a year- domain name registry, web hosting, photo hosting (maybe). Some of it's mine once I buy it- though I might have to buy upgrades later- like ad management software. I'm not buying a WordPress theme (tho the site(s) will be built on WordPress), I'm not paying someone to design a spiffy site for me, and I'm not buying beer with it. It's more durable than food or gas, and should be better in the long run then throwing it after debt right now. Even if I only ever make back the money I spent (which seems unlikely, if I really work at it), I'll have more than if I just use the money for bills now.

And isn't more for less the whole idea?

Building Something from Nothing- part 3

I don't intend to pay for any advertising- yet. Google, to try and get me hooked on AdWords , sent me a "card" for $100 in advertising. While it's not enough to drive any really interesting traffic, it *will* get me some at the start. Most hosting comes with some "free" advertising bundled into the sign-up, so I'll probably pick some up there too.

After that, though, I've got to bring the money in before I can send it back out. To bring money in I need real, organic traffic. To bring in that traffic I'll have to give in and do some (free) article marketing and some (bo-ring) SEO. Which means I need to do keyword research on my topics, in addition to normal research on them.

If I had the money and didn't care I could hire someone else to do it for me. Again, though, we run into the time, money, quality equation, and as I have no money I'll just have to spend time. Which is hopefully going to become a slightly more scarce resource soon. Until then, though, Ihave plenty of work to do.

After a month, I might spend some money on an ad at a genre site to advertise my review page. I haven't decided yet. They're full month ads on a pretty busy site, so I'd get some exposure, but it'd take up most of the rest of the money I've "earned" so far.

I can decide later. For now I need to write articles, search keywords, read books, think about layout, and a million other things. Oh, and I need to do life stuff too. Meh, who needs sleep, anyway.