Before You Write A Post, Ask Yourself This One Question

by in Lifestyle on Oct 29th, 2014

The other week I woke up around 4am because I passed out at 9pm. I had played tennis the night before and ate a big meal afterward. Food coma hit me instantly.

Given there’s nobody to talk to at 4am, I decided to finally write a long and detailed post about venture debt on Financial Samurai. It’s a new investment category I’ve allocated a good chunk of change towards, and I wanted to make sure I fully understood what I was investing in and share the investment with my community.

The post is 2,300 words long and took about 2.5 hours to write. It has four charts as well. After editing the post I scheduled it for the next day and that was that.

Several days later I Googled “venture debt” to see if my article appears in the search results, and it does. BUT, the article is on page 5 of Google, which means nobody is ever going to read it. As I looked around the other articles about venture debt, I realized that I was competing with a investment fellowship organization and several other venture debt funds. That’s steep competition because those guys are experts in venture debt, whereas I’m simply an investor in a venture debt fund.

The quality of articles I’ve read on venture debt now that I’ve published my articles is very high, much higher than your typical blog post about investing, paying off debt, or what to buy your kids for the holidays. Lesson learned, if you are going to tackle a complicated topic, it’s probably best to do some research on what’s out there first.

That said, I do very little competitive research before I write about anything. The reason being that I don’t want to let competition stop me from writing what I want. Blogging is supposed to fun and free-flowing. Doing competitive analysis to try and figure out the likelihood of ranking for XYZ term is very soul-killing.  Read More

A Blog Is One Of The Greatest Small Businesses In The World

by in Lifestyle on Oct 20th, 2014

Anybody who says, “A blog is not a business” most certainly does not have a very lucrative blog. I firmly believe that having a blog is one of the greatest businesses in the world for a variety of reasons.

But before I get into why a blog is a terrific business, I want to first highlight what people think about when people refer to businesses. Here are some examples:

* A clothing store. Super low margin business due to rent, manpower, and cost of good sold.

* A barber shop. An unscalable business that is also low margin due to rent and manpower.

* An auto body shop. For the amount they charge to fix a dent, this should be a massively profitable business. But due to PP&E, rent, and labor costs, the business isn’t as lucrative as you might think. There are also health hazards to deal with due to the paint.

* A roofing company. A very low margin business that’s dangerous and labor intensive. Not scaleable and not sustainable on your own.

* A software business. A fantastic, high margin business that can produce recurring revenue through new releases.

* A drop shipping business online. A nice business that doesn’t hold inventory. Read More

Become Wealthy If You Treat Your Blog Like a Business

by in Lifestyle on Oct 13th, 2014

The following is a great post by MyMoneyDesign.com who is building up his own blogging business. 

Earlier this year Business Insider ran a story that described the 10 ways that rich people think differently. For the record, they defined “being rich” as having an annual income of $160,000 or greater and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million or greater. Though there are lot of good habits that can help people become wealthy, one of the more common ones is the fact that a lot of them were business owners who started their own businesses.

Being the owner of a business is significantly better than being an employee. In one situation you trade your labor for a wage. But in the other you get compensated for having a property that others need.

Being an owner is scalable. There is no limit to the number of money making assets you can have. But being an employee is not. No matter what your wage is, you’ll always be constrained by the limitation that there are only 168 hours in a week.

Even though you may think you don’t have any grand business ideas or great inventions that anyone will ever want, I’ve got news for you: If you own a blog, you’ve probably got more of a chance at joining the financial free than you think. Here’s why.

Read More

Conclusive Evidence Beyond Basic SEO Is A Waste Of Time And Money

by in Lifestyle on Oct 1st, 2014

I’ve kept the stance for several years now that beyond basic SEO, SEO is not a great use of time or money. If you artificially build links, you’ll eventually get penalized by Google. If you build a link-building business, your business probably won’t last very long either. If you build a link building network, it’ll eventually go away as we’ve seen with many Private Blog Networks getting hit in September, 2014. If you’re a link broker, be prepared to get a day job again.

Yet, despite the very obvious repercussions of trying to game the system with SEO beyond the basics of a good title, meta description, and keyword content inclusion, requests for direct advertising links and advertorial sponsored posts keep on coming in. Activity in the SEO forums, SEO social media, and SEO blogs are as active as ever.

I do understand publishing the occasional sponsored post because it’s such easy money, especially if the content is OK and relevant. But spending time and money on producing content is way more valuable than spending time and money trying to game SEO.

I’ve asked this question before and I’ll ask it again: If an SEO is such an expert, why doesn’t he or she build their own amazing SEO site and generate lots of passive income than work for an SEO company or be a SEO freelancer?

THE ANSWER TO THE MOST OBVIOUS SEO QUESTION

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How to Use Coupons to Cut Down on Medical Bills

by in Personal Finance on Sep 30th, 2014

Whether you’re seeing the doctor for some allergy relief or even the common cold or you need some lab tests done, you would be surprised at how medical bills can get so expensive. Fortunately, there are a number of ways that you can reduce your healthcare costs. If you’re a coupon clipper or the type who doesn’t mind the extra effort in finding a good price on the products you buy, then you will be glad to know that one of the best ways to cut down on your medical bills is to use coupons.

Now, there are many pharmaceutical companies that have made it one of their direct-to-consumer marketing tactics to offer free trial periods or coupons for their best-selling drugs. While there is some debate that surrounds the use of drugstore coupons, there are healthcare advocates who encourage consumers to take advantage of these money-savers for drugs that are marketed directly to consumers. Supporters also argue that drug coupons make medications affordable for patients with medical conditions that cannot be treated by generic or non-prescription drugs.

Free Trial Periods

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Yahoo!-Bing Media.net Review: Five Years Later Using A Google Adsense Alternative

CPC Advertising Option

by in Lifestyle on Sep 15th, 2014

When I first started blogging in 2009, Google Adsense and selling text links was all the rage. I remember reading everything I could about ad positioning with heat maps, figuring out the optimal number of CPC ad blocks to place, and understanding which keywords were more lucrative. It was fun and exhilarating to earn several bucks a day. But all I really wanted to do was write for the fun of it for the first couple of years. Writing posts to try and rank well for CPC advertising was quite a soul-less endeavor, especially for one who had a full-time job at the time.

After working on CPC income for the first couple of years, I began focusing 80% of my efforts on developing affiliate income because once you’ve optimized your CPC ads, there’s nothing much more you need to do as the ads show automatically. CPC income is truly the most passive of incomes there is online! With affiliate advertising, I wanted to further optimize my ads displayed by choosing the best products to feature on my site that I personally use as well.

After five years on the Yahoo-Bing Media.net platform I’d like to provide another review about the pros and cons of using Media.net specifically. I also have Google Adsense on Financial Samurai as well, so I’ve got a good idea of how everything works and compares.

MEDIA.NET CPC ADVERTISING REVIEW

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When Should You Quit Your Day Job To Become A Full-Time Blogger?

by in Lifestyle on Sep 2nd, 2014

I was doing some financial housekeeping the other day and I realized my online company’s operating profit YTD finally outstripped my day job income from the very last full year. I was excited not so much by the amount, but because I had finally proved to myself that I could finally make something sustainable on my own. Creating something from nothing is a thrill.

Financial Samurai and the Yakezie Network started in the summer and winter of 2009. We’ve all heard that most businesses fail within 5 years, so getting over the 5 year hump is definitely something I’m pleased about. It’s been a fun and long road since then – lots of failures, lots of conflict, lots of stolen ideas, and lots of doubt. I’m not sure I’d be as appreciative of my situation now if it wasn’t for a lot of problems in the past.

It wasn’t until 2012 that I decided to focus more attention on making online revenue since that is when I left my job. Before then, I was just writing for the fun of it. I still write mostly for the joy of writing, but there’s a little more business strategy involved now. Writing for leisure and connecting with other people online is probably what saved me from quitting. I think most of us blog because it’s a rewarding experience unlike any other. Read More

Should I Still Accept Guest Posts? Absolutely Positively!

Guest Posting Diversifies Your Audience And Keeps Things Interesting

by in Lifestyle on Aug 25th, 2014

In early 2014, there was a lot of buzz that Guest Posting was dead thanks to Matt Cutts from Google saying that a lot of guest posting is just spam.

I seldom host guest posts on FS because most of the inquiries are thinly veiled advertorials or indeed spam. My average guest post hosting frequency is probably one every 1.5 months over the past five years. But for the SEO industry to go in a tizzy and say that guest posting is detrimental to your site is just ludicrous. I swear to goodness, if I wasn’t a blogger, I’d be an “SEO expert” because they have successfully been able to make a ton by making clients do things, and then undo things, and then do new things, and then undo the new things!

Remember, if an SEO is such an expert, why doesn’t s/he have her/his own site to make tons of passive income? Passive income is clearly superior than active income. I play poker with a couple Google middle managers in the search department and they consistently tell me about crazy stories some webmasters do online to try and game the system. Beyond basic SEO, there’s nothing much more you need to do! Read More

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