Like many of you, I’ve been on this passive/semi-passive income building journey for quite a while now. I love the blogosphere because most of us like to write, and we’re all looking to see if we can develop a fun side or main income stream to buttress our financial situation.
In my latest passive income report, I finally realized that I’ve been seriously neglecting one key financial asset: my Lake Tahoe vacation property! It’s weird, because for the previous two passive income reports, I thought I was doing everything possible to boost my passive income.
I occasionally advertised the vacation property on Craigslist to supplement the existing efforts of the hotel property management company. But I stopped after about several months because it became tedious.
Then I fired the hotel property management company after six years and went with a new property management company that charged half the commission. The risk was that since they are an outside property management company, volume would decrease. But they guaranteed me a minimal amount of income to switch, so I wasn’t too worried unless they welched on their promise. I decided not to help them market my property due to the guarantee and due to my desire to focus on my consulting and online business.
Now that the annual guarantee income period is over, it’s best to help them, help me beyond just advertising on Craigslist and e-mailing my friends. I could write an in-depth post full of pictures about The Resort At Squaw Creek to rank for the terms “lake tahoe vacation property rental, Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Resort At Squaw Creek” and link back to my property management company! If that post could sit on the front page of a Google search for years, then voila! An extra $500 – $1,500 a month in income could very easily be generated
So that is exactly what I did. I finally wrote a 1,550 word post about the best vacation property rental in Lake Tahoe on November 7, 2014. But what I should have done was write that post five years earlier when I first started Financial Samurai! Doh.
BLIND FOCUS
Because I didn’t publish a post five years ago about my rental property in Lake Tahoe, I seriously missed out on $30,000 – $60,000 in lost revenue. But perhaps I’m being too harsh on myself because the property was originally managed by the hotel, which randomly assigned rooms once someone called in to book or reserved online. In other words, you couldn’t choose to rent my specific units. Rental income depended solely on the hotel’s overall volume.
Only after I switched property managers in 2013 was I able to point people directly to my units to rent so I wouldn’t have to manage the booking, collecting, and canceling. OK, so maybe I lost out on $5,000 – $12,000 in lost revenue instead. But still, that’s money lost due to blind focus and inaction.
I’ve been thinking to myself why I didn’t put two and two together? It seems so obvious now to leverage Financial Samurai and all online platforms to help market a lagging asset that is worth a decent percentage of my net worth. Here are three reasons I’ve come up with.
1) One track mind. 2014 is the year where I joined Personal Capital, a digital wealth management company in San Francisco as a part-time consultant. They’ve got an excellent affiliate program that I recommend all bloggers who write about wealth management, investing, and retirement to sign up. I’ve been going into the office two or three times a week since January and working another 8-25 hours more a week outside of the office. My contract is only for 25 hours a week, but I try and over-deliver all the time. My focus on being an excellent consultant not only took my attention away from developing my Lake Tahoe rental property income, it also made me neglect many other online income opportunities in the P2P, credit card, and travel space. If I wasn’t a consultant, I’m pretty sure I would have spent lots more time trying to make revenue with what I’ve got.
2) Inability to recognize opportunity. I think we’re just dumb or blind sometimes. We need someone else to help see what we are missing. No matter how many times I review a post for grammatical mistakes, someone will always find one. I was just happy with Financial Samurai’s growth all year that I didn’t realize it was a strong enough locomotive train to add more containers to it. I strongly suggest asking your relatives and friends what more you can be doing with what you have.
3) Purchased a new home. From April – October I’ve been overwhelmed with the purchase and remodeling of my new home in San Francisco. I already spent a lot of time bidding on other properties and losing. So I decided to change strategies and buy a fixer. That of course entails a lot of sweat equity, cash flow, and frustration. I’ve come a long way since purchasing in June, but I’ve still got to build a bathroom, a couple decks, and landscape the back yard. Going through the SF permit process is painful. Housing stress really took up so much of my time that I didn’t have any time left over for my other properties. I’m definitely done with buying anything else for at least 10 years. At least I wrote a beefy post on Golden Gate Heights being the best area to buy in San Francisco after I had secured my purchase!
TAKE A STEP BACK SOMETIMES
We can’t always be running at 100%. But I bet if we take a step back and reflect on what’s being neglected, we can do a much better job in maximizing our resources. The key is to not try and do everything because you’ll end up not doing anything. I told myself I’d start a podcast in 2014, and I finally did this Fall. I still don’t know how to record a fancy musical intro and outro, and I don’t plan to learn until I get more time. I just want to get “good enough” out there in order to build momentum.
I have a calendar reminder to write at least one post every two weeks on Yakezie.com because this site has a fantastic link profile that can help with some key words I’m looking to rank for. If I stay consistent, that’s at least 24 links a year from Yakezie.com pointing back to Financial Samurai in a completely natural way. Every little bit helps and I encourage every Yakezie Member to utilize Yakezie.com to help build their presence online as well.
We’re so often caught up in the blog-specific things such as Adsense placement, posting frequency, subscriber building, design, social media, etc that we forget we might have other assets that could be promoted with our respective websites. You can use your site to market your piano lessons, handyman work, or new invention. There’s so much you can do once you’ve built a solid platform!
STARTING A MONEY MAKING BLOG
I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build. If you enjoy writing, creating, connecting with people online, and enjoying more freedom, learn how you can set up a WordPress blog in 15 minutes like this one.
Leverage the 3+ billion internet users and build your brand online. There are professional bloggers now who make way more than bankers, doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs while having much more fun, much more freedom, and doing less work. Get started. You never know where the journey will take you!
Updated for 2017 and beyond.
I love this quote “The key is to not try and do everything because you’ll end up not doing anything.” That has me written all over it. I feel like I get bursts of inspiration where I start having all these exciting ideas of what I want to be doing and I keep building a list of so many things that I want to do, that I end up spending so much time just thinking about them all that I don’t end up taking sufficient or any action. It’s like falling down the rabbit hole.
Nice work on utilizing your site to advertise your vacation property, and for taking the initiative to start your podcast. You’re good at diving into something and just getting started and not worrying about having everything perfect in the beginning. That’s definitely an effective way to get more done. I on the other hand am always flighting my perfectionist tendencies which has prohibited me from being efficient and producing as much. It’s something I gotta continue to work on if I want to survive! Thanks for another inspiring post!
Pick two or three things and stick with it Sydney!
It is easy to miss some things when there are major events going on in life. Moving, new jobs, etc. can take much longer than you think to readjust to your daily routine. I moved to California almost 5 years ago and I am still adjusting to it!
Yes indeed. We get so focused on some things that we FORGET about all the other stuff we have!
Utilizing my blog to increase and improve my online income is something that I overlooked for the past months and it’s a great loss financially. Focusing into other income opportunities is sometimes hard when your mind is full thinking of other priorities.
I really should be doing more tutoring. I have just come back to the UK from 2 years in France and so I am very well positioned to tutor students with their French studies at school (and anyone else looking to learn). I’m sure that I could use moneystepper a little to help out with that as well.
Just need to organise my time a little better to be able to fit a few sessions of tutoring in each week!
However,
Ahh, I’d LOVE to learn French! One of the most beautiful languages in the world. I loved my time in Paris! Saw the French Open, stayed with my mom when she was stationed there, and ate a lot of pastries.
This makes me think about taking a step back and taking a macro-focus on all the things going and on with the online efforts. Opportunities that are plainly there can sometimes be really hard to see when you are caught up in all the stuff you mention: writing posts, social media, or trying out strategies for getting more engagement.
Will keep your Lake Tahoe experience in mind whenever I get too micro-focused on some small aspect I am working on and let myself take a step back to see the whole canvas.
You’re doing a great job Steve. If we can build a good enough platform, we’re really blessed to be able to leverage it.
Sam, I’ll jump straight into answering your question: no. I know it and I know that very soon I have to start doing something about it. For the time being I use my blog in a very limited fashion and I certainly under-estimate the income (and business) that can be build using the traction of the blog.
No time like the present Maria. After all, you did win International Blog of The Year! :)
One day, I hope to follow your lead.
Sam, one day I hope to follow your lead in terms of traffic and business acumen :)
HI Sam, You definitely have your plate full. But, you are absolutely correct that the opportunity to post on Yakezie.com is an amazing opportunity that I and many of my blogging colleagues have put on the back burner.
Count me reminded :)
btw, when do you sleep?
Haha, all the time! But only about 5 hours a day. I do like the afternoon 20 minute siestas though.
You’re welcome any time to post here and build your link back profile.
I can relate to the taking a step back. I have been so busy with my early retirement side hustle that I have missed a recent financial opportunity. It came and I didn’t even see it until it had slipped through my fingers. It was a 24 hour delayed OMG I can’t believe I missed that moment.